Some music albums not reading Track and Disc metadata

[spectro1111]

Server Version#: 1.27.2.5929
Player Version#: 1.49.1.3146-73559c78

Plex is running on a Synology NAS

Some of my albums are ignoring some of their metadata. Affected albums appear to be random, old and new ones. The metadata fields for Album Artists, Album, and Title are read correctly. When viewing their info the Track field remains blank and while Disc states 1 correctly on one disc albums on affected albums with multiple disc all tracks state they are from disc 1. This leaves the tracks to be ordered alphabetically with track numbers starting from number 0 then 1, 2… etc.

I have tried:

• Refreshing Metadata for the album
• Removing the files from the their folder and scanning Library Files and then re-adding the files back
• Refreshing Metadata for the library
• Made sure “Prefer local metadata” is ticked
• Creating second Music library and adding some albums to it, (these where affected as well)
• Removing files then Scanning Library Files then Empty Trash then adding the files again

All tracks have their track metadata and disc metadata with the format (Track Number/Total Tracks on Disc) and (Disc Number/Total Disc). The files are organized with folders in Album Artist / Album / Track files. Track files are named “(Disc Number) - (Track Number) - Track Title”. All affected tracks are either mp3 or flac format. Music player MusicBee does read all metadata correctly.

Programs used:

• Mp3Tag v3.16 for metadata adding and editing
• MusicBrainz Picard 2.8.2 for metadata adding and editing
• foobar2000 v1.6.11 for optimizing file layout and minimizing file size

[beckfield]

My first thought is that Plex can be confused by track and disc number fields that include the total (1/15, 1 of 15, etc.).

Have a look at this How-To:

[HowTo] Configure Plex to use embedded metadata (music)

Please only reply to this thread with corrections or questions about the information in this How-To article itself. If you want to report a bug or ask a question about Plex and metadata, please post it in the appropriate forum, where it will have the best chance of being seen. This guide applies to libraries using the "Plex Music" agent only. Plex essentially has two ways to identify your albums: Folder/filename structure – If your files don’t have embedded metadata, or it isn’t accurate, o…

[leelynds]

I must be fortunate. Most of my music has the “1/15” and “1/2” for track and disc tags and I don’t think Plex has ever stumbled getting it right.

[OttoKerner]

Make sure all tracks of an album have an “album artist” meta tag set and
that the content of this meta tags is identical for all tracks.

[beckfield]

@leelynds

I must be fortunate. Most of my music has the “1/15” and “1/2” for track and disc tags and I don’t think Plex has ever stumbled getting it right.

I suppose it might have been quietly fixed at some point. I haven’t tried it in a long time.

[spectro1111]

All albums have an Album Artists.

[spectro1111]

Only some albums are having this issue but all albums are numbered in the 1/15 way.

[beckfield]

Could you take a screenshot of MP3tag showing the tags for an album that is having this problem? Be sure to show disc number, track number, album title, album artist, track artist. Filename might be good, too, if it will fit on screen. Just to get more eyes on it, something might stand out.

[spectro1111]

I figured out what was happening.

There was a space in the Disc and Track fields. So instead of reading (1/15) it read ( 1/15). The space was being introduced by the Picard scripts for adding the Disc and Track fields. I don’t know when it started to do this. I’m pretty sure Picard was not doing this before with these scripts.

The original script was: $set(tracknumber, $get(tracknumber)/$get(totaltracks))

The new one is: $set(tracknumber,$get(tracknumber)/$get(totaltracks))

Same for Disc script.

After deleting the space a Metadata refresh fixes the album.

So Plex can’t handle spaces at the beginning of tag fields.

[beckfield]

Ah, good. That’s good to know. Thanks for sharing the discovery.

[spectro1111]

Should this be reported as an official bug?

[beckfield]

I’ll leave that up to @OttoKerner , but, personally, I wouldn’t.

I’m not sure whether the metadata standards consider leading spaces allowable or not, or if they have meaning. If they’re not allowed, it technically wouldn’t be a Plex bug, and if they have meaning, applications shouldn’t ignore it.

At any rate, it would probably be faster to go through your music and trim leading spaces from tags. I understand MP3Tag has that capability, though I haven’t tried it.

[OttoKerner]

@beckfield

I understand MP3Tag has that capability, though I haven’t tried it.

Yes, it does.

If you combine 2 string functions, you can even automatically remove the 03/15 track /disc notation:

Scripting Functions – Mp3tag Documentation