Screwed up music library

[Lacyt]

Bear with me. This could get long and a bit complicated but it’s necessary if I’m to continue using Plex because after many, many days and nights spent reorganizing and thoroughly simplifying my local music collection, I am becoming so frustrated with how Plex Media Server has begun to handle my Plex music library (the only library I’ve had since I first started using Plex some years ago) that I am on the verge of quitting it altogether.

Windows 7 Pro completely updated
Plex version 1.14.1.5488, the current version, which I recently updated to.

ISSUES:

1. In the Plex browser, when selecting Albums then Album Artist so everything is displayed alphabetically, Plex has the notion that Uriah Heep falls between Aine Minogue and Al Green!

2. When selecting Artists / By Title, I get NO ARTWORK. I have to add it manually.

3. Frequently in Albums/Album Artist mode, Plex displays the wrong album artwork. All too often this wrong artwork is NOT in the album’s local folder and in fact, has been deleted from my computer.

What I’ve done:

1. Each singer / band has their own folder per album and is named that way (Aerosmith Toys in the Attic; Aerosmith Done With Mirrors, etc.)

2. Each song on each album is stored within its album’s folder individually along with the jpg album cover art for that album sized to 500 pixels square.

3. Next came MP3tag to meticulously inspect and tag everything and verifying that my changes were written to my local files by looking at them in Windows Explorer. Unfortunately, I have that annoying WIn7 issue where a file’s details are not displayed in Explorer and I cannot edit them in that file’s Properties/Details (MS doesn’t care about Win7 anymore so no help there.) However, MP3tag does see these files details and writes the tags to them else the information would not be displayed in MP3tag.

For those unfamiliar with MP3tag, the fields displayed on my copy are File, Path, Album, Album Artist, Artist, Title, Tag, Codec, Bitrate, Frequency, and Date Modified.

Album, Album Artist, Artist, and Title are editable (Frankly, Album Artist and Artist are redundant, but I have discovered these two MP3 tag entries MUST be present and MATCH each other exactly or Plex screws up how it organizes my music.)

As well, when you add or remove album artwork within MP3tag, 

it writes that information to your local files, too.

3. Created fresh Plex Music Library

   During setup, I chose the following options:
   
   	“Local Media Assets” as the default Agent
   	Album sort order “By Name”
   

One assumes this instructs Plex to look at the Music folder on my desktop and use the information located therein to properly display my music and associated covers.

I’ve emptied the Plex trash, deleted my Plex library multiple times, run virus scans, malware destroyers, Windows Disk Cleanup, CCleaner, cleared Chrome’s cache, yada, yada, waited a day or more before recreating my Plex music library because it warns you when you delete a library that it doesn’t empty “the cache” immediately – all to no avail.

Also am using a Chromecast Audio device to cast my music to a Sony Dream Machine which has no USB so the CC is connected via the Sony’s headphone jack, which has forced me to switch to Chrome because I’m also using the Sony as my Windows desktop speakers and only Firefox Android will cast.

So what’s the problem? Me, Chrome, Plex? Because I didn’t have any of these issues before the latest Plex update.

PLEASE HELP!

Thank you.

[OttoKerner]

@Lacyt

In the Plex browser, when selecting Albums then Album Artist so everything is displayed alphabetically, Plex has the notion that Uriah Heep falls between Aine Minogue and Al Green!

Edit this Albumartist and take a look at the ‘Sort Artist’ field.

@Lacyt

When selecting Artists / By Title, I get NO ARTWORK. I have to add it manually.

You have set the primary metadata agent of your library to Personal Media. This agent can only fetch album cover art from your files, but no ‘artist’ pictures.

@Lacyt

Frequently in Albums/Album Artist mode, Plex displays the wrong album artwork. All too often this wrong artwork is NOT in the album’s local folder and in fact, has been deleted from my computer.

This rogue album art might still be there, but in ‘hidden’ files or even in files which are marked as ‘system’ so you even have to activate another checkbox in Windows to be able to see them!
see How do I remove an incorrect tv show poster - #3 by OttoKerner

Each singer / band has their own folder per album and is named that way (Aerosmith Toys in the Attic; Aerosmith Done With Mirrors, etc.)

I urgently recommend you to use a folder structure like this:

/Music
   /Artist Name 1
      /Album Title 1
         01. Track Artist - Track Title.mp3
         02. Track Artist - Track Title.mp3
         03. Track Artist - Track Title.mp3
         ...
      /Album Title 2
         01. Track Artist - Track Title.mp3
         ...
      ...

Each song on each album is stored within its album’s folder individually along with the jpg album cover art for that album sized to 500 pixels square.

Name it folder.jpg and you can make it bigger than 500px for better quality on those fullscreen Plex apps.

Next came MP3tag to meticulously inspect and tag everything

Always a good idea!

Frankly, Album Artist and Artist are redundant

They are not, as soon as you have a ‘sampler’ album or ‘guest musicians’.
Then you need the Album Artist to keep the album together. Otherwise it will get split up into several albums – one for each differing Track Artist.

If you are changing embedded meta tags, your changes will in many cases only appear in Plex after you have performed the Plex Dance.

---

See some more tips regarding music in Plex:

multi-disc albums

Organizing Music - Soundtracks and Various Artists (Hit collections)

I am going to do a bit of copy/paste of posts I did in the Plex Pass only forums: ===== 1.“Various Artists” is the usual choice for ‘Sampler’ style albums. There may be exceptions for ‘collaboration’ albums which are credited to all participating artists on the album cover. 2. use the title of the single as it appears on the cover. You can augment that information with (CDM) or (single) or (Maxi) or (EP) as it fits. If it is a genuine release, Gracenote should have no problem identifying it. …

handling singles and EP’s

Best way to add album, singles & ep to a Premium Music Library

conventional CD release If we are talking about a conventional CD single release (where there is still more than one song contained), the tagging is not different from an album. AlbumArtist: “Depeche Mode” Album: “Blasphemous Rumours (CDS CDBONG7)” Artist: “Depeche Mode” DiscNo: “1” Of course you don’t need to include the full catalog number like I did in the example. It is just there to show you that it is possible. But you might still wanna include (CDS) into the album title, just to ind…

possible ‘side car’ files for music

Music Album artwork

Little tip: If you have lots of bootlegs etc. you want to bring your embedded metatags into order first. Then you need to have the Local Media Assets agent in top position. I wouldn’t trust last.fm to fetch correct info about bootlegs and special editions of albums, like those recent expanded re-releases of Zappa albums. Put as much info into the meta tags as possible. Put a cover art inside the album folder and you should be good. Makes sure to set at least ‘AlbumArtist’ and ‘AlbumTitle’ to…

soundtracks and ‘various artists’

Plex Folder View - folder.jpg not recognized?

@naddel81 said: album view does not work properly, because if you have various artists on an album (most cases) then it shows them as “various artists” instead of the album name. folder view would be the best option and I guess it has been asked before. is it too hard to implement? You can put what you like into the AlbumArtist meta tag, if you don’t like it to appear under VA. You could use the game title or the game developer or the game ‘universe’ (if you have several albums which fit in…

[Lacyt]

First off, thank you so much for your prompt and very informative reply. Most of your advice I can do, but there are just a couple more things still confusing me.

[Lacyt]

You said: Edit this Albumartist and take a look at the ‘Sort Artist’ field.

Not seeing a “Sort Artist” option. Where is this located?

You said: You have set the primary metadata agent of your library to Personal Media. This agent can only fetch album cover art from your files, but no ‘artist’ pictures.

First off, I set it to Local Media Assets (Albums). Don’t know what “artist” pictures is, but taking your advise as to hidden files and folders, I checked on that last night, and although I already had my folders set to Show Hidden Files, I did not have Show Hidden System Files checked. Now that it is, I’m seeing a LOT of iTunes stuff that migrated when I ditched that resource hog. Am cleaning all that out now. Am also redoing my file structure as you suggested. Artist/Album/ yada yada, and “folder.jpg”

As soon I’m finished revamping my local library and uploading it again, will post back with teh results.

“It’s me again, Drawing Board. Bet you can’t guess what we’ll be doing!”

[OttoKerner]

@Lacyt

Not seeing a “Sort Artist” option. Where is this located?

@Lacyt

Don’t know what “artist” pictures is

Some players and library software also allows embedding of a picture of the artist (and not only of the album cover) into the audio file. Plex doesn’t support this though.

@Lacyt

As soon I’m finished revamping my local library and uploading it again,

How about starting small and reduce it to a few albums, for testing purposes?

[Lacyt]

Well alrighty then!

I finally finished restructuring my entire music library according to your instructions. It’s all good now!!! Even looks spectacular on my TV as another poster said he resized his covers to 1000 pixels square to display nicely on a flatscreen so did that. And they absolutely do!

Did have a couple issues with Plex not capturing cover art on a about a dozen albums,
and one album artist refused to go where it should even though everything is right on my actual files and in mp3tag. Kept putting The Allman Brothers Band in the As instead of the Thes but was able to fix all that manually.

I did discover a couple things while doing this. I knew iTunes writes its own AlbumArt… 200 pixels square and Folder.jpg 75 pixels square files the first time you play a song with it but now I find out so does Windows Media Player, which I rarely used. Did a search for all those files (my Windows 7 refused to display all hidden files and folders or system files. Only some of them.) as well as any other iTunes slag left behind when I uninstalled it Also had mp3tag replace “iTunes” in each file’s “Encoded by” Properties field with “mp3tag 2.91”. Then I turned off the Windows Media Player in Control Panel/Programs and Features/Turn Windows Features on and off.

So Plex is once again my BFF.

Thank you so much for your help and patience!

PC