I said All Tags are not read by Plex. ALBUMSORT is only read in the new Beta, and to have it read, seems that all metadata needs to be refreshed. I have not been able to determine which tags Plex reads, and which it doesn’t
Also, the LYRICS tag is not read by Plex, To have custom lyrics we need extract them ourselves and save to a txt file.
For the most part Plex didnt even come close with tags for me, Im redoing my library manually anyway now, I do not think any “auto tagging” will ever be 100%, I dont know ANY that will get the genres right lol
Plex does a decent job when using their Naming Convention (in that link I posted). I was able to create a script that read my tags and copied my music files to another location and pointed PLEX to that location. This necessitated having a copy but having another backup isn’t so bad, and that script I used also keeps the Plex music data in sync.
For some of my obscure albums and my few bootlegs I needed to upload the info to MusicBrainz in order to get the correct information into PLEX. Not as bad as it sounds when using their App (MusicBrainz Picard)
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Tony
I am learning that MusicBRainz Picard will be the way to go, I am trying to avoid doing it all manually, as for Plex, the fact it does not actually “change” the tags was kind of a bummer to me, it just lets the server send the info to the client. I think MusicBrainz hard codes the changes. Glad it worked for you. If Plexamp was standalone I would have replaced all my music players instantly. I think for what it does and the fact its a “baby” using its momma to do the heavy lifting, the software is awesome. Elan is also great!
@Tony_T . Same here.
@TinywandererJay basic thing to remember. If tags in your files are not accurate then your focus should be on folder structure. If tags are golden then you don’t have to focus so much on folder structure. That being said, you do need to tell the server which folder/library you want it to default match and which folder/library you want it to pay more attention to tags. It rely’s on you to make those choices.
And that was the thing that took me a bit to get used to. Is that you are in control of the system that serves up the music. Your decisions on the server side determine your experience on the app side. It takes a bit more out of you to get it just right. But once you do. Its glorious. And the forums here are filled with people willing to help or at least try.
Such a great community 
Have you looked at SongKong? I run the docker container, great solution.
All my tags are “golden”. I have my files structured alphabetically i.e. Bowie in the “B” folder in a folder names “David Bowie’, Sort Artist Tag is Bowie, but Plex insists that it should be sorted under “D”. That is just one example. There were many other oddities when having PLEX read the tags under my Alpha structure. (The old reliable Squeezebox never had any issues). I first copied my files to my Plex server using my Alpha structure, but needed to copy using the “PLEX naming convention” to get it to work properly
That’s very interesting and a very good point. I wonder if Sort Artist tag, Artist tag, and Album Artist Tag, has something to do with that? Like does the folder name take precedent over the tags? Curious. I think I am going to test that out just out of curiosity. I wonder if there is an order of importance between Folder name and tags. Like if there is a difference in folder name and tag then folder name will be used to Match? I am just speculating for sake of conversation. 
With prefer local metadata set, tags take priority. It’s possible there’s a regression in reading one of these tags, and if there is we’ll fix it.
Ok so I did some testing on folder structure and artist tags to see how Plex handled things when prefer local metadata was turned on. Here is what I did and what I discovered.
The below pic is Musicbrainz Picard I pulled in Heroes by David Bowie and Picard automatically added the tags I was missing. As you can see we have Album Artist, Album Artist Sort Order, Artist, Artist Sort Order, and Artists. These are not the same, some are Bowie, David and some are David Bowie.
The file was saved to the following folder with this naming and folder path below:
In my TEST Library I have a bunch of random tracks for testing and David Bowie is being listed under the letter B alphabetically as would be expected in Plex Media Sever:
And also in Plexamp
Now to test this out a bit more to see which tag was causing the sorting order to trigger. I deleted the Album Artist Sort Order Tag and left all the other ones as they were and re-saved the file.
I then moved the file outside of the library folder and waited for Plex Server to remove the album from the library after a scan. And then dropped the file back into the same folder. Waited for a scan and there was no change. David Bowie was still listed under B alphabetically in Plex Server and Plexamp.
I then removed both Artist Sort Order and Album Artist Sort Order:
I removed the file from the library waited for Plex to scan the library, then put the file back in the same place and and here is where things got interesting. All of a sudden David Bowie was now being alphabetically sorted in D instead of B. David Bowie moved from after Blind Melon in the previous picture to now being after Daft Punk in Plex Media Server.
And same thing happened in Plexamp.
so @Tony_T you are experiencing this weirdness and I think I isolated it down to the Artist Sort Order tag and also for some reason when I changed tags and hit scan on the library Plex did not notice the change and Bowie would stay put in Letter D. It appears that this tag is being read and Plex is using it to sort alphabetically, but if you make changes to the tags you have to move the file out of the library and back into the library, and hit scan for it take effect. I also tried a test where I removed all the tags in the file that had the artist name except for Artist Sort Order. And it sorted alphabetically putting Bowie in the letter B as it should be.
The only thing I can conclude from my test is that Artist Sort Order must be the full name Bowie, David and if you are using Picard you need to save the file outside your library somewhere first and then move the file back into Plex for Plex to notice the tag change. I created a scratch folder and made changes to the tags and saved them with Picard first in that folder and then manually moved the files to the library and Plex grabbed the tag changes. I seems to me that saving with Picard in the library folder or having Picard move the files with a script is inconsistent and Plex doesn’t always notice the saved file has changes in it.
Anyway, this was interesting and a fun little test. Artist Sort Order is an important tag and I will make sure to double check my tags if I run into weirdness. Side note I tested this with prefer local metadata on and off and I got the same results.
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Nice bit of testing. Thanks for the info!
Generally speaking local tag data is read when refreshing the item, not scanning it.
There is an option to preserve file timestamps in musicbrainz picard. Could you have that enabled?
The plex scanner uses timestamps I believe to detect if files change. This could be why moving the file out and back in again helps. Anyhow, if this is enabled it might explain what your seeing so said I’d mention it.
Regardless, a refresh of metadata would always be needed to update plex with tag changes in your files.
It helps because it reads the tags on first scan as well as when refreshing metadata.
Yes. I do have musicbrainz set to preserve date stamp. Good point . I honestly can’t remember if I set that to preserve for some reason or if it was default. I’ll flip it and see what happens. I forgot about a metadata refresh, doh! But that makes sense. I’ll do that next time when I only change meta data.
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