Server Version#:Windows 10
Player Version#:latest and up to date
Plex Music Library will not show the correct cover art.
I’ve got over 8oo songs in the library all with imbedded cover art, but every album is showing up with the same cover art photo. I have the agents for artist, and album set as follows:
Artist - ,Local Media checked, and Personal Media checked
Album -Local Media checked, and Personal Media checked
I’ve rescanned, and refreshed the library several time, but nothing changes.
What am I missing ??
Is the “Prefer local media” option set in the Library Advance Settings?
There may be some other steps you might have missed to make Plex use local media. Have a look at this How-To.
When you say “every album is showing up with the same cover art photo,” do you mean that if you have, say, 50 albums, the same cover image is used for every album, like this:
Or are you expecting each track to have a unique cover image? If so, Plex doesn’t do that. Plex will group all tracks from the same album under the album name, with one cover image, even if each track has a unique embedded image. That may be unlikely, but it’s been asked for before, and I just want to fully understand.
The Music scanning agent recently went through a major re-write, which made it a lot more powerful, but also much more reliant on correct embedded tags. Make sure album and artist titles are identical in all tracks from an album. If any albums have 2 or more discs, make sure the Disc Number tags are correct.
The “server version” question is after the Plex Media Server version, which you can find in Settings:
The Player Version: “latest and up to date” doesn’t tell us much. You could be talking about Plex Web, Plex for Windows, or Plex Media Player, and there may be different version numbers based on whether you’re getting updates from the Public or Beta channel. So both the specific app and version number are important information.
First - Thanks beckfield For Your Help !
Here is some additional information:
- Yes , The same album art is showing up for all albums (as your photos above)
- Version # 1.18.2.2058
- Advanced Library Settings has “Prefer Local Metadata” checked
- Advanced Library Settings has Genres = “Embedded Tags”
- Advanced Library Settings has Album Art = “Local Files Only”
- Advanced Library Settings has Scanner = “Plex Music”
- Advanced Library Settings Agent = “Plex Music”
So far - No change
Is there anything else to check ?
Jack
Those settings only affect new things you add, it does not alter existing media.
Check the folder that the library points to. Check if the cover you see is there as a file.
How are the files organized and named on the disk? Can you screenshot a folder for an album?
Here’s a guide: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
Take a look at the last section, entitled " Premium Music Library or Embedded Metadata." Some of the info is obsolete (there’s no longer a “Premium Music Library” type), but let’s see how closely your file structure matches the example given. Since the recent re-write of the scanner, I’ve found that Plex is pickier about this than it used to be, for reasons passing understanding.
MovieFan makes a good point. Set File Explorer to show hidden and system files when looking at the folders. Other apps (Windows Media Player??) may have placed hidden art files in the folders, and Plex will prefer those over embedded art.
Here is a small screenshot. Everything was setup using mp3tag.
I dropped some of these back into mp3tag for a little more info.
I see that the Discnumber fields are empty. As I noted in my first response, this should be fixed.
I also see at least two albums called out (“Beach Fever” and “Beach Music Anthology”). There should be separate folders for each album (one for Beach Fever and one for Anthology. You can have individual subfolders under Anthology for each disc, but it’s not necessary), and the Disc number should not be mentioned in the album name. That makes Plex think these are separate albums. The album name for all 4(?) discs should be “The Beach Music Anthology.”
I’m wondering if the problem you mentioned about all albums having the same art is actually Plex breaking Beach Music Anthology into several separate albums because of this. The How-To I linked earlier has a screenshot of the tags in a 2-disc set that illustrates the correct way to tag this.
Beckfield - I don’t think that’s the problem as I have another computer(plex sever) using the exact same structure, and the exact same music that has no problem. Everything between the 2 servers seems to be exactly the same as far as I can tell. I’ve tried to go line by line in all the setup structures, and everything looks the same unless I’ve missed something. I’ve also reinstall plex, but still have the same problem. On the plex server that has the cover art problem, all other libraries (photos, live ota tv, movie, video, and tv shows) work fine.
You’d be surprised, but I’ve had enough experience with having had those same errors in my tags that I wouldn’t take another step until I fixed the problems I mentioned. Results are just too unpredictable. There might be another problem in your specific case, but even if we found it, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were still problems.
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Perhaps that library was created before the new music system was implemented? It wasn’t as fussy as the new system is regarding file structure and embedded metadata.
I think the Artist and Album preferences you listed originally are the settings for agents. I don’t think the new music agent/scanner actually uses those settings. Everything is configured from the “Advanced” tab when you edit or create the library.
I may be wrong, but if you only want to use the Local Media and Personal Media for albums and artists, you need to edit the agent and scanner for the library to use the proper agents. The new scanner and agent are called simply “Plex Music” You can try changing those settings. Probably best to start over - Plex has probably tried to match them with the new scanner/agent and changing the scanner and agent only affects new additions to the library.
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Hey beckfield ,
What is the best way you’ve found for Plex to currently deal with “Various Artist” ?
Also, Do you use MP3Tag ?
My various artist albums in non-classical music are tagged like this:
Album Artist for all tracks = ‘Various Artists’
Artist = the artist for the individual track
This means there is an ‘Artist’ named ‘Various Artists’ (I put ‘000’ in Plex’s Sort Artist field so this artist is first when sorted alphabetically),
and that artist has a bunch of albums.
Here’s how the track artists appear on the album detail page:
This isn’t ideal, but it’s not bad. It doesn’t work so well for classical. If Plex implements
more thorough support for tags, this may no longer be necessary, but it works well enough for me for now.
My OS is linux, so MP3Tag won’t work. I use Puddletag, which is very similar to MP3Tag.
Thanks again beckfield,
Your use of “Various Artist” and “Artist” is the same thing I came up with last night when I was starting to redo my music collect.
beckfield - I’ve got one more question for you.
I’ve got my “Various Artist” setup as your example above. On my Windows 10 server it comes up just as your example showing a listing of tracks, and the actual song artist beside each track, but on my Plex Web App the actual artist is not there. Any suggestions ?
To make sure we’re talking about the same things, a little clarification: There is Plex Server, Plex Web, and the Plex for Windows app. Plex Server has no interface. You administer the server by logging into Plex Web (https://app.plex.tv). The Plex for Windows app is what you get from the Windows Store.
So, when you say “On my Windows 10 server it comes up just as your example…,” I’m guessing you are referring to Plex Web, and by “Plex Web App” you mean the Plex for Windows app. Is that correct?
If so, I’m not going to be much help. My OS is Linux, so I’ve never used the Plex for Windows app. I don’t know if that app doesn’t have that capability, or if there’s a problem causing it to not show the track artist.
I have no experience with the Plex for Windows app (my OS is linux).
beckfield - I have rephrased everything below.
I’ve got my “Various Artist” setup as your example above. On my " Plex Media Server for Windows", it comes up just as your example showing a listing of tracks, and the actual song artist beside each track, but on my “Roku Plex App” the actual artist is not there. Any suggestions
Ah, ok. I’ll have to take a look at my Roku this evening and see if I see the same thing. I thought the Roku was showing the track artist, but I haven’t looked at it in a while.
Okay, yeah, the Roku doesn’t show the track artist on a VA album. Neither does the Android TV app. You’ll see it when you play a track, like this:
But not on the track list. I think (hope) that’s just something they haven’t done yet.
