I am new to Plex.
I have some questions about how the Metadata feature works regarding Music files.
Does it read existing metadata or does it use acoustic fingerprinting?
Will it overwrite existing metadata or only fill what is missing?
Will it correct the “File Names” also or only the Metadata?
Does it write all the metadata id versions in file [3.1 / 3.2 / etc?].
Depends on how you’ve configured your server. Plex can use embedded metadata to identify your files – or other means 
Plex will however not update your files nor rename them.
What is the best way to configure the server so that it will accurately correct everything?
best start here:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/your-media/naming-and-organizing-music-media/
plex will not ‘fix’ any files or tags or naming. Period
plex will attempt to scan your files and match them to musicbrainz and use musicbrainz metadata, however this data is stored ONLY within plex library.
you can also choose to ‘prefer local metadata’ which will read most (but not all) tags and import them into the plex library, plex will still try to match all content to musicbrainz, even if you have stuff that does not match or is not in musicbrainz.
plex doesn’t let you ‘manage’ your music library files (no re-tagging, no organizing, etc), you can only edit what data is available within the plex library (and this does not save to any files).
thanks - Disappointing.
Where can I set “prefer local metadata”
on the edge of the music library is a context menu/3dots, you click that to edit the library and change various settings
Hi, I have recently joined the Plex community and subscribed with PlexPass. I have added my Music library and see that most of the albums matched correctly. However a few didn’t. All those have embedded tags. I have tried loading the matadata from local source (though Match menu) but after several hours the track title and most of album info disappear. I tried locking the track names but that doesn’t seem to help.
Seeing your post I am thinking “prefer local metadata” might help. The question is: will I lose the metadata collected by Plex from online sources with such configuration?
only the tag stuff, album/artist/title/genre
if you want, you can create a second test music library and copy a subset to a different test folder so you can compare.
if you do change you main music library to prefer local metadata, you will need to ‘refresh all metadata’ at either the whole library, or each individual artist.
Thanks.
So you are saying I will lose all metadata already collected if I prefer local metadata, correct? If that’s the case then how would you correct the metadata on certain albums in Plex without moving them out to a separate library. Those albums all have embedded tags but don’t have entries on MusicBrainz or all music, perhaps that’s why Plex can’t find a match for them. Manually locking the metadata through Plex doesn’t seem to work 
No, I am saying that if you have prefer local metadata, it will keep the artist/album/title/genre, but not much else.
ratings currently do not get imported, nor do many other fields.
again, create a separate test library, disable all the 3rd party stuff, then import a subset of your main library.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
