HI there: I have thousands of .mp3, m4a and .flac files with embedded genre metadata. Plex only shows this metadata for a fraction of tracks. I have set the Music Library to read embedded metadata and have set the server agents to be Personal Media Artists. A few questions:
I have read references that Plex has trouble reading metadata from .flac files. Is this true?
How important is the file naming. It is fairly organized into Artist/Album/track, but it doesn’have a consistent naming format for the actual files. Some have track numbers in front of the track name, some don’t.
@sjkiss said:
and have set the server agents to be Personal Media Artists. A few questions:
It is enough to put ‘Local Media Assets’ into the top position under
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - last.fm/Plex Premium Music
That way, internal metadata are preferred, but if something is missing the online databases may have the chance to supply it.
I have read references that Plex has trouble reading metadata from .flac files. Is this true?
Not if the tags are according to standards. But there are some whacky meta tags out in the wild. We even encountered files which had a URL instead of a text in the genre tag!
How important is the file naming. It is fairly organized into Artist/Album/track, but it doesn’have a consistent naming format for the actual files. Some have track numbers in front of the track name, some don’t.
If the embedded metatags are complete, you have quite some freedom with file naming.
Although personally, I am sticking to a proper file name schema which acts as a ‘safety net’ if the embedded metadata should fail (for whatever reason).
It works so well, that you can even manage without any embedded metatags at all. (WAV or DTS files don’t support embedded meta tags for instance)
Do I have to be using Plex Premium? In your example above, you have PLex premium.
I really really need the genre metadata to be available. I am using Plex to stream my music to a Denon Heos (DLNA compliant music player). And I usually like to search through genres first to access music.
I have taken great care to ensure the metadata are pretty clean, at least in the genre field, so I don’t think that is it. Could wonky metadata in other tags be causing a problem? Thank you for your responses.
Do I have to be using Plex Premium? In your example above, you have PLex premium.
No, this applies to both regular and premium libraries.
I really really need the genre metadata to be available. I am using Plex to stream my music to a Denon Heos (DLNA compliant music player). And I usually like to search through genres first to access music.
If there are genres stored in my Flacs, I can see them within Plex.
I have taken great care to ensure the metadata are pretty clean, at least in the genre field, so I don’t think that is it. Could wonky metadata in other tags be causing a problem?
I wouldn’t rule that out.
But you must also keep in mind that Plex only reads genres for Albums from your files. If you filter your Artists for Genres, these Genres will only come from one of the online databases.
Argh. This is so frustrating. I thought Plex was going to be my saviour. It turns out, it’s worse than Twonky. So, all of my music has an embedded “genre” tag. Does the Plex Media Server convert that into “Album Genre”?
One more thing: Even when I filter genres by selecting Albums, there are still at least 10 different genres that are represented in the files that are not showing up as filter options on Plex.
What is weird is that when I select an artist or an album to edit the metadata, Plex provides a list of ready-made options to select from. Those options are all the genres that are in my metadata. So somehow, it is reading the metadata, it’s just not migrating it to populate the Album or Artist Genre field.
Disregard the previous post. It’s not the case. But I am still wondering about this:
“So, all of my music has an embedded “genre” tag. Does the Plex Media Server convert that into “Album Genre”?”
OK, I can still see how this can work.
Thank you for answering all my questions. Can you help me a little bit more.
Can you send me to a step-by-step tutorial to set up a library where genre metadata is not downloaded from the internet, but only imported from the files themselves.
Two, can you give me a few candidate sources of why genre metadata that I know is embedded in the files is not being imported as Album Genre? I’m really grateful.
@sjkiss said:
Can you send me to a step-by-step tutorial to set up a library where genre metadata is not downloaded from the internet, but only imported from the files themselves.
Exactly like you did it.
create the library,
set it to ‘Personal Media Artists’
then add the media
Two, can you give me a few candidate sources of why genre metadata that I know is embedded in the files is not being imported as Album Genre?
Maybe it has to do with how the Genres are embedded?
In mp3 files, there are several delimiter character occuring in-the-wild. Some use a semicolon, some use a slash.
And in FLAC files, it is perfectly according to spec to embed several different genre tags. But it cannot be ruled out that some software uses simply the same delimiter character as in mp3 tags.
It may also be an issue whether this is a m4a, mp3 or flac file.
And I am also not sure, how many different genres Plex is importing and whether it discards some if there are too many.
Thank you so much for the tips.
One last question: I am thinking of using MusicBrainz Picard to go back to the original files and strip out all the extraneous metadata that I don’t need, maybe even strip out all the genres and do it from scratch and reimport to Plex. Advisable?
@sjkiss said:
One last question: I am thinking of using MusicBrainz Picard to go back to the original files and strip out all the extraneous metadata that I don’t need, maybe even strip out all the genres and do it from scratch and reimport to Plex. Advisable?
@sjkiss said:
One last question: I am thinking of using MusicBrainz Picard to go back to the original files and strip out all the extraneous metadata that I don’t need, maybe even strip out all the genres and do it from scratch and reimport to Plex. Advisable?
Why the effort? What do you consider extraneous?
Hi - I have run in to this problem as well. I have a very well curated music library with genres tagged as I like them. There is no whacky tags/metadata here. To be sure I have only two artists from my library who couple of albums each. Now I can see my curated genre tags to filter from when I select Album, but I see lastfm downloaded genre tags when I select Artist. So far so good. But on my android app, I only see lastfm downloaded genres from filter from for both Artists and Album. And if I do not use lastfm, I do see genre filter stays empty. This is a big problem for me as I have spent hours in curating genre tags. Any help will be greatly appreciated
@OttoKerner said:
You might have found a bug in the Search code.
I have reproduced the issue on my server.
I will file a bug report.
Hi @OttoKerner , is it possible to view the status of this bug? I have received two Plex app updates on my Android phone since then and this issue still exists. It is annoying as I am unable to filter based on my genres. Just want to know if this will be fixed?
I am new to Plex and would like to see if it meets my needs. Unfortunately, every library program I try falls short in different areas. I have noticed that my music library is not being read properly by Plex.
I use Tag&Rename to ensure my metadata is compliant. Two problems. The genre metadata is not applied to the album or tracks. Second, the album art appears to default to a web database on instead of drawing from the library. I have each album folder with a album art folder.jpg and I also embed the album art in the track metadata.
I’m the next affected by the bug: “By Genre” is empty regardless DLNA client (controller) is in use. And it’s absolute stopper for me also. Any info about bug’s status?
I was tracking this bug and it was fixed a few months back. Are you facing this issue on your Android app? Because I was.
That said, I haven’t checked recently and not sure if it has been re-introduced. I am finding it difficult using Plex right now with so many other bugs in the app.
