(I’ve listed some relevant information about my system and my folder/file setup to the bottom of this post.)
Only a very few of the album(s) that I add show an album image, and the ones that are shown are not from the file cover art embedded in my files. Note that all other tags are respected, i.e. artist, album, track number, track name, and disc number (including cases with 2 discs to an album). It is only the album art that is being ignored. As noted below, the embedded album art works fine in every other music player I have tried.
(My music library has a mix of well-known artists, as well as artists for whom agents will rarely find relevant metadata. Hence, I have spent a lot of time ensuring that the tags are consistent and up-to-date, including album art.)
I have read many posts here relating to music folder structure, tagging music files, setting up Plex to extract embedded data etc, but nothing they suggest seems to make the slightest bit of difference. I have tried the “Refresh All Metadata” command on the libraries after changing various Settings/Server/Agent/Artists and Settings/Server/Agent/Albums settings, but I gather that this command is essentially useless.
Therefore, and after reading posts like this one, I created test libraries in all four combinations of (a) premium Plex music library / basic music library, and (b) with and without the “Use embedded tags” option checked. In all four cases, I had all three options under Settings/Server/Agents/Artists and all three options under Settings/Server/Agents/Albums set such that “Local Media Assets” is at the top of the list and checked. The results were:
-
for the two premium music libraries I created, regardless of whether I check “Use embedded tags”, the agents ignore my embedded tags. They find album art for the well-known artists, whilst leaving the unknown album art blank
-
for the two basic music libraries I created, regardless of whether I check “Use embedded tags”, the agents ignore my embedded tags. They find no art for any of the artists
(I also tried a few random test libraries with the Settings/Server/Agents/Albums agents set with “Local Media Assets” unchecked or sent to the bottom of the lists, but none of these worked either.)
In other words, it seems my embedded album art is being ignored, and agent-derived art is only used if I select the premium Plex music library type - which is no good for me because a lot of my music will never be found by the agents.
Can anyone see what I’m doing wrong?
Some background information:
- PMS is version 1.9.4.4325 running on a QNAP TVS-871
- the client is version 3.26.2 running in latest-version Chrome on a latest-version Windows 10 PC
- I see the same issues with client version 6.7.1.2498 on my Android phone
- my music files are in the format MusicFolder\Artist\Album(Track#) TrackName.flac
- Artist = Album Artist in all cases
- all files have a “File cover art” image embedded
- there are no folder.jpg files (or any .jpg files at all) anywhere in my music library
- there are no additional folders under the …\Artist\Album folders
- all tags, including album art, work correctly in all other music players I have tried, e.g. iTunes, Foobar, Groove Music, JRiver Media Center 21, VLC etc. The tags are fine
