Hi all!
I would like to purchase a Plex Pass, but before I do so, I have a question about the premium libraries, especially Premium Music Libraries. I manage my music library with beets and have the tagging a file structure completely down. I don’t need tag support, would honestly just rather have the artist bio and pics, concert details only instead. How do I disable gracenote and quite frankly all the tagging features of a premium library? My fear is that Plex would ruin said tags.
Please let me know, thanks! -m
You can turn off Gracenote options when you create a premium library. I haven’t figured out how to turn off Last.fm suggestions, though.
The first thing is this: Even if you let Plex gather metadata from Gracenote or Last.FM, Plex will never write into your embedded tags. Plex has no facility for writing to embedded tags. It only reads them (and only a few of them at that). The only time Plex can do anything with your files is delete them in very controlled situations that you have to deliberately enable.
You can disable some of the things that Plex gets from Gracenote when creating/editing a Library:
You can’t disable absolutely everything Plex gets from Gracenote, but you can configure Plex to prefer your embedded tags. If that is set up correctly, Plex will only get info from Gracenote when your tags are missing, or things that aren’t part of embedded tags (like concert info).
Excellent news! I would rather prefer my own tags. 
Thanks again! -m
@mariolopjr said:
Excellent news! I would rather prefer my own tags. 
Thanks again! -m
Me too. Gracenote and Last.FM are full of garbage, and absolutely useless for classical music.
Now, dumb question, aside from other features PLEX PASS gives you, would a premium music library even benefit me? I have lyrics embedded into the files, and cover.jpg for all albums that have a cover. What else would a premium library bring to the table? -m
Also, @beckfield your guide to using embedded tags is superb. I am very particular about my tags…as are others. -m
@cubanresourceful said:
Now, dumb question, aside from other features PLEX PASS gives you, would a premium music library even benefit me? I have lyrics embedded into the files, and cover.jpg for all albums that have a cover. What else would a premium library bring to the table? -m
Plex won’t read lyrics from embedded tags. It will only take them from sidecar files (.txt, or .lrc for timed lyrics) or from Lyricfind.
I wrote this post some time ago (before lyrics were available) with my impressions of the premium features. It may help.
@mariolopjr said:
Also, @beckfield your guide to using embedded tags is superb. I am very particular about my tags…as are others. -m
Thanks! I was forced to become particular about my tags because Gracenote and Last.FM were so terrible. The headaches are gone since I put in the work.
@beckfield said:
@mariolopjr said:
Now, dumb question, aside from other features PLEX PASS gives you, would a premium music library even benefit me? I have lyrics embedded into the files, and cover.jpg for all albums that have a cover. What else would a premium library bring to the table? -m
Plex won’t read lyrics from embedded tags. It will only take them from sidecar files (.txt, or .lrc for timed lyrics) or from Lyricfind.
I wrote this post some time ago (before lyrics were available) with my impressions of the premium features. It may help.
The post is only for Plex Pas subscribers, can you please quote it if possible?
Oh, whoops, sorry. Here’s copy/paste:
Here are the listed added features of Premium music libraries, according to this page, and my impressions after several months of using them:
Gracenote sonic fingerprinting
- For popular music, I encountered about as many (but different) metadata errors using Gracenote as I did with the basic libraries and Last.fm. It took about the same amount of work to correct the errors with each service, although the Premium libraries took away some of the ability to fix an incorrect match. When I try to do so, it never gives more than one possible match, which is the one I’m trying to correct, so what’s the point? The Basic libraries are actually better in this regard.
- Both services are absolutely horrible at matching classical music.
- I eventually put in the effort to fix the ID3 tags embedded in my music files, and took every step to minimize any dependence on Last.fm OR Gracenote.
Better artwork, bios, album reviews
- “Better” is subjective. Different artwork, definitely. “Better” is up to you. Probably more choices with the Premium libraries.
- The artist biographies offered in Premium libraries are definitely longer and more thorough, but I rarely read them.
- With regard to album reviews, after reading a few reviews that were rather negative, I realized that I have no interest in reading album reviews for albums I already own. I already know whether I like it - I bought it. So why bother reading what someone else thinks? I ended up requesting an option to not download album reviews, which was eventually added.
Vevo videos
- This is nice, and I use it frequently. Vevo has discontinued this service. Vevo videos no longer appear in Plex.
Plex Mix
- I have not had occasion to use this. The ability to create playlists came first, and I use that heavily, so I have not felt the need to try Plex Mix.
Mood mixes
- Moods come from Gracenote. They’re correctable in Plex, but, again, I rely more on my playlists, so I haven’t put in the effort. Like the rest of Gracenote’s services, I find them unreliable. As one example, I selected the “Happy” mood. Among the tracks it selected was a song called “I Count the Tears” by The Drifters about a guy lamenting his lying, cheating ex-girlfriend. “Happy.” I don’t use Moods.
So, over time, my use of the added features of Premium music libraries has boiled down to Vevo videos, and those are gone now too. If it were me, I would not feel like I’m missing much if I could not use Premium libraries.
Thank you @beckfield! That mirrors what I thought when I looked at the premium library features – not really for me. I created a regular library, it’s reading (some) of my tags and working as well can be expected. Thank you! -m
You should keep in mind, my comments relate strictly to Premium Music libraries. You should look at the other benefits of the Plex Pass to make your decision.
