Hi,
I have been looking for a mechanism to share and organise all my family’s music and photos across many devices, and 4 users in an easy a method as possible. I got the impression plex was the answer. Seeing plex also manages video and movies etc, this also seemed a likely progression of my data.
However, I seem to have come unstuck. Plex doesn’t seem to do what I had taken it to do by the sales pitch.
It doesn’t allow me to share defined music playlists to my users. This was the way I have thought is best to control and share the music around my family allowing me to control playlists when needed, and pass over control based on maturity of users.
The photo management seems to require all my photos to be in segregated albums. I expected Plex to apply a variety of tags to my pictures (who, where, when etc) so that we could search based on whatever criteria came to mind, and on whatever device we were using.
Perhaps I haven’t found the bits I need to find. If so, can someone direct me to the right place to achieve the above.
Without these capabilities being in place, I will have to keep on my search it seems. Can anybody recommend something that will achieve what I am looking for?
Thanks
George
From my travels, I’d say what you’re looking for doesn’t exist.
Photos: iCloud Photo Library or Google Photos are the only tools that do what you’re suggesting that I’m aware of. Plex has some of this functionality, but not all, and it’s all ‘outsourced’ to another cloud processing provider who does the tagging and reports back.
Music: I’m led to believe Subsonic is the leader in this area. I gave up on local music and switched to Spotify some time ago though.
Movies: Plex is great at this.
TV Shows: Plex is great at this.
Worth keeping in mind I only use Plex for TV shows and Movies so my perspective is skewed. If you find anything to the contrary, please share! 
@george.deaves@gmail.com said:
It doesn’t allow me to share defined music playlists to my users. This was the way I have thought is best to control and share the music around my family allowing me to control playlists when needed, and pass over control based on maturity of users.
Instead of trying to restrict access based on PlayLists, use labels. Music Sharing can be restricted with the use of labels.
REF: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/204232573-Restricting-the-Shares
@deepseth said:
From my travels, I’d say what you’re looking for doesn’t exist.
Photos: iCloud Photo Library or Google Photos are the only tools that do what you’re suggesting that I’m aware of. Plex has some of this functionality, but not all, and it’s all ‘outsourced’ to another cloud processing provider who does the tagging and reports back.
Music: I’m led to believe Subsonic is the leader in this area. I gave up on local music and switched to Spotify some time ago though.
Movies: Plex is great at this.
TV Shows: Plex is great at this.
Worth keeping in mind I only use Plex for TV shows and Movies so my perspective is skewed. If you find anything to the contrary, please share! 
Thanks for your reply.
I have been very impressed by Google Photos which I use. I will need to investigate how to connect another user to the library in a sensible way.
I think the music question is resolved by hthighway.
@hthighway said:
@george.deaves@gmail.com said:
It doesn’t allow me to share defined music playlists to my users. This was the way I have thought is best to control and share the music around my family allowing me to control playlists when needed, and pass over control based on maturity of users.
Instead of trying to restrict access based on PlayLists, use labels. Music Sharing can be restricted with the use of labels.
REF: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/204232573-Restricting-the-Shares
Thanks for your reply.
Using labels certainly works for segregating music. Great, thanks. Do you know if I can have auto playlists that will automatically pick up a label/s?
This post explains how to create ‘smart’ playlists, which are based on filters. Unfortunately, you can only filter for Labels based on Albums (not Artists or individual tracks).
Thanks,
It will be a problem that labels can’t be applied at track level.
