For existing Albums in my Premium Music library, the “Album Artist” field is filled out, but the “Artist” field is blank. For new Albums I add as of today, the Artist field is filled out. Refreshing metadata does not fill in “Artist” where it is missing. How do I get that field populated?
Just to clarify, Artist is missing on the individual tracks on an Album. Album Artist is set for each track, but “Artist” is not.
Please clarify more:
is this album a ‘sampler’ type of release, that has different 'Track Artist’s?
Are the track Artists stored in the files as embedded metadata?
How are the files named?
Music is stored as follows:
/Artist Name/Album Name/Artist Name-Album Name-Track Number-Track Title.MP3
I have “Use Embedded Metadata” checked off for the library and all tracks in question have Artist and Album Artist set in the embedded metadata per file.
Albums in question are standard albums where all tracks have the same Album Artist and Artist.
For new albums added, the Artist field is populated. Just seems to be Albums added to Plex in the past that have blank Artist in the track and no way to refresh.
– UPDATE – As an experiment, I cleared the Artist field on 10 tracks I added today and made sure the field lock was off. I picked “Refresh Metadata” on the Album and the Artist field was not populated. So it looks to me like Refresh Metadata does not populate the Artist field either from a live lookup or from looking at the metatdata in the file itself.
@EricD1973 said:
I have “Use Embedded Metadata” checked off
Checked “off”
does that mean the checkbox is ‘filled’ or ‘empty’?
For new albums added, the Artist field is populated. Just seems to be Albums added to Plex in the past that have blank Artist in the track and no way to refresh.
Does this have any negative consequences? If so, where?
I mean if there are no artists on the individual tracks, it is pretty clear that the album artist applies, right?
Have you ever tried the Plex Dance (step 4 can be omitted with music)
@OttoKerner said:
@EricD1973 said:
I have “Use Embedded Metadata” checked offChecked “off”
does that mean the checkbox is ‘filled’ or ‘empty’?
Sorry, that means the checkbox is filled.
For new albums added, the Artist field is populated. Just seems to be Albums added to Plex in the past that have blank Artist in the track and no way to refresh.
Does this have any negative consequences? If so, where?
I mean if there are no artists on the individual tracks, it is pretty clear that the album artist applies, right?Have you ever tried the Plex Dance (step 4 can be omitted with music)
As for negative consequences, I’m not aware of any per se. I don’t know if the “Plex Mix” takes the Artist into account or the “Album Artist”. I get a little picky about how my music is organized so I just want the db to be consistent.
I did try the Plex Dance with no luck.
What file type are you using?
What kind of music library is it (normal/premium)?
Is the ‘Local Media Assets’ agent activated under
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - last.fm
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - Plex Premium
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - Personal Media Albums
?
@OttoKerner said:
What file type are you using?
95% MP3 , 5% FLAC.
What kind of music library is it (normal/premium)?
Premium
Is the ‘Local Media Assets’ agent activated under
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - last.fm
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - Plex Premium
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - Personal Media Albums
?
Local Media Assets is activated under all three, but at the bottom of the list in each case.
If you are confident that your embedded metadata are correct, you can move the LMA to the top. This will then override data from Gracenote/last.fm.
Unfortunately, it will also prefer your own local sidacar/embedded cover art, which may not be as high quality as the art from the Plex Music agent.
@OttoKerner said:
If you are confident that your embedded metadata are correct, you can move the LMA to the top. This will then override data from Gracenote/last.fm.
Unfortunately, it will also prefer your own local sidacar/embedded cover art, which may not be as high quality as the art from the Plex Music agent.
Didn’t seem to make a difference.
As a final experiment, I took an album with no “artist” info in the tracks and removed it from the library. Did the Plex Dance and then added the album back in. When Plex picked it up, it added it back into the library WITH the artist information in place this time.
Bottom line, “Add a New Album” seems to be pulling information correctly while “Refresh Metadata” doesn’t seem to take that Artist field into account.
Not a major issue by any means, just wanted to point it out. Thanks very much Otto for going through this exercise with me.
