Server Version#: 1.20.4.3517 / Ubuntu 20.04
Player Version#: ALL (indexer misbehaviour, player irrelevant)
I recently deleted and rebuilt my library, as there were a number of problems with indexing and things appearing in strange places. After the rebuild, things are even worse! The new music scanner - ‘Plex Music’ rather than ‘Plex Music Scanner’ - has indexed a ton of single-artist albums under ‘Various Artists’.
The scanner options are set to prefer local metadata and when I look at the file properties in Windows explorer, I see that both album artist and track artist are correct.
An example:
Under Music / Ellie Goulding, we have:
Lights - this album is indexed correctly under Ellie Goulding
guid=“plex://track/5d07d947403c640290cfc43e” parentGuid=“plex://album/5d07c41f403c6402909cd85b” grandparentGuid=“plex://artist/5d07bd39403c6402905b5f0e”
Halcyon Days - this album is indexed under ‘Various Artists’
guid=“plex://track/5d07e074403c64029042a0dd” parentGuid=“plex://album/5d07c69d403c640290b27c63” grandparentGuid=“plex://artist/5d07bbfc403c6402904a5ec9”
As far as I can tell, this (1) only affects FLAC files; (2) it doesn’t affect all FLAC files. I can’t see any difference in the metadata tags between those that are indexed correctly and those that Plex screws up, though - all have the same tags, correctly populated. Most were ripped with EAC.
The XML guids don’t give me any clues - other than to confirm that Plex has incorrectly decided on the artist in some cases.
Refreshing metdata for the mis-indexed albums doesn’t change anything.
Has anyone run into this and solved it? What is causing the indexer to screw up some albums in this way when both the metadata and the folder structure indicate a single-artist album?
Thanks @OttoKerner for the reminder! I missed one track that didn’t have the album artist filled in. The other albums that were mis-indexed all have that attribute missing on some or all tracks, too. I’ve just spent a boring hour with MP3Tag, filling them all in. I guess that the data source EAC is using isn’t always providing the album artist attribute.
I have to say, it feels like the Plex indexer could be smarter. It has many clues available (track artists, folder structure, online databases); it’s over-dependent on that metadata attribute. Would it not be better if it said ‘okay, that attribute is missing from the local metadata so I’ll use the next best clue’, rather than ‘throw it into Various Artists’ ? Also, I’d prefer content that it can’t index to be indexed as ‘Unknown’ - that way, it’s easy to see when it’s had a problem. For me, hiding things among my 100+ ‘Various Artists’ albums is probably the worst possible choice!
I’ve also just seen a newly-ripped album indexed under ‘Various Artists’; all the album artist tags are correct, except for one WAV format file that was left by a rip problem, which of course has no metadata tags at all. For that one WAV file to cause Plex to mis-index an otherwise fine album, is just plain silly
!
Now, I can’t seem to get the index to change… I thought that the ‘Plex Dance’ was obsolete? I’ve just corrected all those album artist tags and told Plex to refresh metadata on each album as I went through, then re-scanned the whole music library at the end. The albums are still all indexed under ‘Various Artists’! What do I have to do, to make it re-index them properly?!
Perhaps you could also advise on another part of the indexing puzzle… I appear to have two ‘Various Artists’ entries and one ‘Various’ in the index. What the heck is going on?!
One classical compilation, which has no album artist tags, is indexed under partly under Various and partly under Various Artists!
Regarding the Cure sampler: do these tracks have a track number tagged? (if it is a multi-disc album, you also need to have a properly populated “disc number” tag.)
Usually you need these to be present, or some albums may get “fractured”.
Usually, it is obsolete. But only if you use the new music scanner & agent. (“Plex Music” set for both Scanner and Agent)
In some rarer cases, you still need to perform the Dance though.
Cureaetion (The Cure) has all the metadata correct, except for the one WAV file that can’t have any. Disc numbers and track numbers are there on all the FLAC files.
The classical compilation - forcing in an album artist might do the trick, but the question is, why has Plex created three versions of ‘Various [Artists]’ at all? I see a few other albums under the second ‘Various Artists’ and a few under ‘Various’, while most are in the original ‘Various Artists’. That just seems like an error.
I’ll try the wretched dance now, see whether that fixes the index… this all feels so much more like handholding a bit of beta software than a consumer-ready production application; I didn’t mind years ago when I first got Plex, but to still be doing this now? If there are any Plex staff looking at this thread, take note!
Decided I couldn’t be bothered with the Plex Dance for 50+ albums, so I deleted the library and rebuilt it to ensure a fresh start. I’ve also added the disc number tag to my compilations and removed ‘Disc 2’ etc from the album name tag -whatever I ripped a lot of my old MP3s with years ago, didn’t handle multi-disc sets too well. Hopefully those changes help the indexer.
Sadly, Plex still created three separate ‘Various Artists’ artist entries in the artist index again! It looks like one is the real ‘Various Artists’, the second is stuff that it couldn’t match and the third was just two albums that are in different folders but have albumartist ‘Various Artists’. Why it doesn’t put all of those under either ‘Unknown’ or a single ‘Various Artists’ index entry, I can’t imagine.
Frankly, this is getting pretty silly; I didn’t have all these issues when I first created the libraries in Plex a few years ago. Then they went wrong after an update at some point. Today, I’ve put in several hours of work editing metadata and rebuilding indexes and the result is worse than the old days! Seems that the new indexer is more fussy and less capable. I consider the creation of a second ‘Various Artists’ to be a bug - that should not happen. How does one report bugs to Plex these days?
I’ve made some manual edits, re-scanned the library and now two of the ‘Various Artists’ index entries have disappeared. One of them is the real one… aarrggggh! Found them - they’re all now under ‘Soundtrack’. What the hell is this indexer doing? This is pretty random, should not happen.
I also have this… these are all different albums under ‘Various Artists’. No, they don’t all have the same cover in the real world! That’s another bug.
Update: I did the Plex dance with the ‘Various Artists’ folder, including restarting the server while the folder was moved away, and it seems to have cleaned things up now. I’m down to one ‘Various Artists’ index entry with what appears to be all the right albums. Hallelujah!
Pretty sure one of the albums inside the “Various Artists” subfolder has an Album Artist of “Soundtracks” tagged.
And since “Prefer local metadata” is activated, this can overwrite the Album Artist name for all albums inside that one folder.
So you’re saying that
(1) the metadata on any one album within a folder could ‘poison’ the indexing of the whole folder? That’s not at all smart. It didn’t happen initially, only when I re-scanned, so it’s an inconsistent behaviour as well as unhelpful/undesired.
(2) we don’t know why Plex created several index entries for ‘Various Artists’.
(3) we don’t know why Plex gave all the albums in the folder the same cover art.
If there are any Plex staff looking at this thread, take note!
Found them - they’re all now under ‘Soundtrack’. What the hell is this indexer doing? This is pretty random, should not happen.
