Problem with album artwork showing as band image (and more)

[joder79]

Server Version: 1.40.2.8395 on Synology NAS
Player Version: Plex Web, Plex on AndroidTV, PlexAmp - doesn’t matter

Plex eventually started to add new local album cover art to the band’s(!) images available. Not always, but recurring. The albums themselves then fail to update to the given artwork. I don’t get why it’s doing that. I’ve got a media collection with thousands of albums and Plex just did what it should do most of the many years. I didn’t change my behaviour when adding new media. For me, it goes like this:

Bandname
–Bandname - Album
----song1.ext
----song2.ext
----song3.ext
----cover.jpg

Band and albums are matched, nothing seems off.
In the library settings, scanner & agent both are “Plex Music”.
“Prefer local metadata” is on.
Album artwork is set to “only local files”.

See example in screenshot - three new EP covers are now available as image for the band while the EPs fall back to the band image because of the allegedly missing artwork…

What’s going on here?

[OttoKerner]

Is the cover file only in jpg format?
Or do you also have other picture formats?
Did you refresh metadata of the album after adding the cover.jpg?

[joder79]

In the example’s screenshot it was only .jpg - same happend also with .png before. Always only one file with the name cover.jpg (or cover.png) in the album’s folder.

Refreshing metadata doesn’t help.
Unmatch & rematch doesn’t help.
Even “Plex dance” doesn’t help.

[OttoKerner]

Which of the folder levels has been added to the Plex library?
It should be like this:

/Music <-- this folder is added to the library 
   /Artist
      /Album 1
         01 - track.mp3
         02 - track.mp3
         ...
      /Album 2
      ...

[joder79]

Yes, it’s like this.

Only difference as written:

/Music <-- this folder is added to the library 
   /Artist
      /Artist - Album 1
         Artist - 01 - track.mp3
         Artist - 02 - track.mp3
         cover.ext
      /Artist - Album 2
      ...

Worked like a charm for many years… I added seven albums today; not one had the above mentioned problem. Driving me nuts. Can’t see where this should/could be a problem on my side.

[OttoKerner]

Have you checked the access permissions on those files?

Synology FAQ - Questions, Answers, and How-To's

FAQ 19: Setting permissions to allow Plex access to media files Before beginning, it’s important to remember one key point; Plex doesn’t have any special privileges on Synology except for being able to access the Video Transcoding acceleration hardware. It cannot read any of your files unless you expressly grant permission. This is a fundamental principle of Linux (which Synology uses for DSM) Because of how Synology grants permission, access to files is broken into two different …

[joder79]

Sorry for not replying the last days - had to check before to make sure: everything’s seems fine. Moreover - wouldn’t the fact that the images are shown as band pics (instead of album artwork) contradict with the assumption that the permissions weren’t set correctly?

[OttoKerner]

I’d verify again which folder has been added to the library. Do also verify if there have been several overlapping folders been added to the library.

I’d also avoid doubling the artist name in the folder name of the album.