Plex media server artist radio not working

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.41.0.8992-8463ad060
Player Version#:4.1361
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>

Since the last plexmediaserver update, the “artist radio” button - which I enjoy - often doesn’t do anything when I tap it.

Signed into Plex from a Web browser, I get an error message “Playback error. An error occurred loading items to play.”

When I try to do the same from an Android phone, I get the message “Unable to play meda”. I’ve tried several different Android phones - same result.

To be clear, this is the radio button on an artist’s home page.

Some more-popular artists do not have this problem. E.G. The Beatles seems to work fine. Miles Davis as well. Django Reinhardt also works.

Ry Cooder, Grateful Dead, Pokey LaFarge, Billy Childish (who is nothing if not prolific) all —> error messages.

As mentioned, this is a new issue. In case it matters, Plex runs on an Ubuntu 22.04.05 headless server.

Thank you.

Note: I attached the server logs - I’m not sure if these are the ones you want because I just enabled the debug logs setting.

I just restarted the plexmediaserver and tried to do an artist radio from the Beatles - that throws an error now as well. But Charlie Parker radio works fine.

Alright, something else I noticed: When the radio artist button works, two songs are played and that’s it. Because there are only two songs created in the radio artist playlist.

I tried to start artist radio stations twice and this is the debug log I think is desired. And if you want the full logs I attached that as a zip file.
Plex Media Server Logs_2024-09-23_20-57-49.zip (4.5 MB)

debuglog1.txt (24.1 KB)

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It appears your server finds similar artists but fails to find any “good candidates” for a radio.
If you filter your logs for lines with Radio: , you’ll see how it tries to populate the queue but not finding any “good” options.

Just wondering if you might have started a sonic analysis of your library at some point but never finished it?

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I’m not sure what a sonic analysis is - but I do not think so. Someone else had a similar problem but they had Plex premium - he failed to check the " “Download Popular Track Information”" setting - when he did that things were OK. I don’t have that setting available to me.

Under “Manage-Libraries-Edit Library-Advanced” there are a number of settings - I’m not sure which to choose. Plex Scanner

Plex Music vs Plex Music Scanner - scanner… agent… ???

Although, to reiterate, I’ve been using Plex for several years and was always able to create artist stations - so I don’t know what changed.

Could changing settings in the scanner/agent area fix things? I’m wary to just try this or that - I do not want to make things worse.

Thanks for your reply.

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Before I forget, which file are you looking at? Just the debug file? Or something in the zipped logs?

6

According to Elan, sonic analysis is indeed used to augment the “Similar Artists” which are fetched from external sources for an artist.
Which means that an Artist Radio is potentially richer populated with a Plex Pass than without.

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I removed and reinstalled Plex Media Server on the Ubuntu Media Server.

Everything works fine - even the artist radio.

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Which sounds as if this would have helped you without blowing away the database: GitHub - ChuckPa/PlexDBRepair: Database repair utility for Plex Media Server databases

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