I have some music I have downloaded from HDTracks - a set of Bach’s Cello Suites played by Pierre Fournier. My preference is to show the Album Artist as the Composer ( ie. Bach) whereas Plex prefers to show the musician as the Album Artist_(i.e. Fournier). Whilst I don’t like the Plex approach, I fully understand that I am not going to win that battle.
Accordingly, using MusicBrainz Picard, I have altered the tags to show both the Album and the Album Artist (as well as the Sort orders for both) to show the composer (i.e. Bach). I have also set Plex to prioritise Local Media Assets as the agent.
Plex is clearly listening to any changes I make to the metadata through Musicbrainz as whenever I make a change it automatically refreshes the metadata. The problem is that it does not do what I expect it to do. It shows the Artist as Cello Suites (which co-incides with my first Finder folder under Bach) and makes no reference whatsoever to Johan Sebastian Bach. What am I doing wrong?
I’m attaching a copy of the relevant Plex page overlaid with the relevant Musicbrainz page.
Plex is clearly listening to any changes I make to the metadata through Musicbrainz as whenever I make a change it automatically refreshes the metadata.
It only does this when you add the files the first time into Plex. After that, not all meta data changes are respected anymore. Particularly when they would cause the track to “switch” Album or AlbumArtist.
Perform the Plex Dance “lite” (with music, step 4 can be omitted).
I moved the offending folder out of the sight of Plex, scanned the library (automatically), emptied the trash, double checked the naming scheme, moved the folder/files back and (automatically) re-scanned the library. Nothing has changed.
My Finder folder has been set as I want it and shows Media/Music /Bach, Johann Sebastian/Cello Suites, BWV 1007-101 - Pierre Fournier/track…
The metadata in Musicbrainz has been changed to reflect this, i.e. Artist = Johan Sebastian Bach; Album = Cello Suites, BWV 1007-101 - Pierre Fournier; Album Artist Sort Order = Bach, Johann Sebastian.
Weirdly (to my eyes anyway), Plex shows Artist = Cello Suites, BWV 1007-101; and the Sort Artist = Bach, Johann Sebastian. So I guess, I’m halfway there.
Also, I note that when doing the Plex Dance the Trash is empty despite the fact that I have jus re-scanned the Music section of Plex and it has removed the offending piece of music.
I noticed in your screen shot that you have several entries in the AlbumArtist category.
Please reduce that to one and try again - just for the sake of experimentation.
There were two entries for AlbumArtist - I have removed one of them and done the Plex Dance again.
Unfortunately, nothing has changed.
I don’t know whether this is relevant but the Artist name that Plex is showing is not precisely the same as the Album name that I had put in Musicbrainz. Plex shows Cello Suites, BWV 1007-101. In Musicbrainz I had added the actual artists name to the name of the piece, i.e. Cello Suites, BWV 1007-101 - Pierre Fournier. Within the album, Plex is showing the Album and the Sort Album as Pierre Fournier. I have intentionally left the name Pierre Fournier out of the tags in Musicbrainz other than to amend it to the name of the piece.
To my eyes, it looks like Plex is not reading the tags I have set up in Musicbrainz which makes me think that I have missed the point somewhere along the way.
My process has been as follows:
(1) Download or rip from CD (using dBpoweramp) the piece of music.
(2) Put it Finder as I want it - Media/Music/Composer/Piece+Artist/track…
(3) Use Musicbrainz to ensure that the tags are as I want them.
(4) Open Plex hoping to see something resembling that which I want.
(5) Swear a lot!
Following your question I had another look. This specific piece of music was actually AIFF, not FLAC. I converted it to FLAC and it works almost perfectly.
Ironically, the only thing that was working correctly when I was using an AIFF formatted file was the Artist Sort. That is it came out as Bach, Johan Sebastian. It now comes out as Johan Sebastian Bach.
Everything else is fine. Thanks for your great help. Do you have any idea why the Sort (last name fist) might not be working?
I assume this particular meta data field is not read from flac files.
or, if there is already another album with AlbumArtist ‘Bach’ in the library, then its sorting is used.
