That recommendation was added to that article at about the time that they revamped the music metadata scanner a few months ago. The scanner is much more accurate than it was, and it eliminated greatly reduced the need for the “Plex Dance,” which by itself was worth the change. But the trade-off is that the scanner is also a lot pickier about the accuracy of metadata than it was before. It’s also pickier about folder structure and filenames too, which I don’t understand at all. (A subsequent update to the scanner removed dependence on folder/filename structure when embedded tags are used)
I took exception to that recommendation (I wish I could find the thread) when I saw it, as I have long railed against the online databases for all the garbage they have in them. My embedded tags are far more accurate.
It was explained to me that the recommendation was made primarily because they expected most users would not take the time to maintain their embedded tags sufficiently to be useful.
As for “…potentially be missing out on future musical enhancements that rely on new and even richer metadata information coming from online sources,” I’ll cross that bridge when it falls on me, but I don’t quite buy it. The scanner behavior when preferring embedded tags has always been to use local tags if they exist, and fall back to online sources if a local tag is missing. If they continue that, there should be no reason to “miss out” based on this choice.
So my recommendation is to use the ‘Prefer local metadata’ option if you want to, and if you have made the effort to keep your embedded tags in good order. The new scanner will definitely show you where your tags are not in good order, believe me (it won’t spell out the problem - it will just give weird results)!
