I mean look at the date of this post. It is made on 2015 and got requests all the time. Are you seeing this being implemented?
Yes, I do know mkv does have tagging but the problem is there is no software that does batch tagging well, and many video programs simply do not use the information from the tag.
But for audio vorbis and flac have good tagging system as well as id3 tag for mp3 files, and we do have a lot of tagging software (I use mp3tag).
Yes, Classical music tag support is total disaster and about half of the online source is unfortunately garbage that you have to manually put them yourself.
Or Roon, but besides the price the support on remote play and android app are⊠yeah, they are bad.
There is some hope at least for the subsonic ecosystem, the navidrome developer is currently looking if thereâs enough support among the developer community of *sonic servers/players to essentially fork/extend the subsonic API into an independent open project, to include more metadata (this could be composer/conductor/work/movement/release type/remixer/etc), multiple values (eg, multiple artists/genres/composers per song) and more secure auth. If this takes off, things can get a lot better.
For Plex, there also seems to be some progress finally, after years of stagnation. The new PlexAmp is a big step in the right direction, a dedicated Music app is much better than having it tucked away in the regular video-centered Plex app. And the MusicBrainz integration opens up the possibility of much, much more metadata. For example, record label info is now stored in the Plex database - even though we canât use it yet in the clients. Hopefully Plex will add more new fields step by step.
Part of the problem as I see it is the way classical albums are put together.
You have albums by a composer with various artists
various artists playing the same composer
various composers played by one artist
compilations of above
plus who knows what.
I have my music in folders where I kind of know where they are. But to put it inANY music streaming platform would be a nightmare of trying to figure out if the album is under the composer name, the conductor name, the orchestra name, the soloist name, all four, who knows. And all of that assumes I know more than one or two of those at any given time.
The thing is, once all this metadata is in a database there should be no need to present the media in the same manner as it is stored. I do suggest that it be stored in one consistent manner; but you donât have to view that media in the same way that you stored it. Once ingested by the streaming service, you can view the media in any number of ways; and switch between those views with the click of a button. So in my opinion, itâs no big deal how itâs stored. So long as itâs properly tagged, and that I have a consistent scheme for storage.
Exactly. I take the time to tag my music with the things I am interested in (and I can retag it when necessary). Plex should be able to scan the library and build an index/database so that I can say âPlay all Beethoven coded with FLACâ or all Mozat played by Jasha Heifetz, or whatever.
If I update the tags or move files around into different folders and I can just kick off a re-index (or schedule it for late tonight).
To be fair all of those scenarios also exist with non-classical music - tribute albums with various artists, covers albums by one artist, albums where guest artists perform with the main songwriter, etc.
I mean, try filtering for all songs written by Burt Bacharach or Irving Berlin in your collection, for example - currently canât be done in Plex. Or all songs produced/remixed by a certain producer.
Classical music does have some unique characteristics in things like the Work/Movement naming convention, and Conductor.
Iâve seen lots of different comments about not leaving album artist empty, but I leave it empty and I donât have any issues. Maybe itâs just because I donât have any compilations, though.
Linux user. Only installed Plex yesterday so donât yet fully understand how it works. I have most of my music on a laptop, generally just use a long HDMI cable plugged into my hifi and play through Amarok, which is pretty good at sorting files how I want. Bought a Roku device, thought I should see if I can play tracks wireIessly through that, then migrate my music to a server. Thought Iâd experiment with Plex to see if it works.
Long ago ripped my classical cds and overwrote all the id3 tags so each individual work shows as an âalbumâ, the cd info is gone from the tags (have done this with downloaded classical music too). I canât see how any kind of automatic tagging can work and in the absence of being able to sort by composer Iâll be presented with a list of multiple albums that are called âSymphony No. 01 in âŠâ âSymphony No. 02 inâŠâ etc.
Sounds like Iâm simply wasting my time with Plex and might as well give up before I start.
I put this comment here just to give some support to those trying to get the sort by composer feature operating.
Very comprehensive post and you almost had my vote, until you wanted to repurpose what has become the defacto AlbumArtist field.
Almost all mp3 tagging programs follow the WinAmp approach (indeed having used WinAmp since the 90s, my music tagging was probably first done in there).
So I can support this, if we go with your alternative, " then Plex should implement a new custom tag to do what TPE2 is supposed to do"
This needs to be supported. Using agents when âUse Local Metadataâ is selected makes absolutely no sense.
If Plex is investing in Plexamp and wants to be a serious Media Center with a focus on music as well as movies, this needs to take high priority. This not working is a dealbreaker for many, not just myself but evidenced by others in this thread.
Just a note: This topic has 7k views, eclipsing the nearest recent things in the suggestions tab by a factor of 2-3x, and commensurate views to some other popular things receiving traction. Plex devs should be taking this suggestion seriously, it has the attention of the community.
Plex Support Article: Most users should not enable this option and we do not recommend doing so by default.
@beckfield 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.
@certuna âŠsince most people do not tag their movies, tv shows or music very well, Plex focuses primarily on getting the metadata from online databases, not local tags. Itâs annoying for the small group of people with large, well-tagged collections.
I wonder⊠are most users really that lazy or unaware? I understand if people use Tidal or Apple Music they donât want to mess around with tagging. But thatâs streaming.
These tagging issues only happen with local music files. If users are ripping their own CDs to make these files, usually the tags are added by the ripping program, and if they are out there ripping CDs, they should also be able to figure out a basic tagging program. If they are buying them online, tags are already embedded. If they are pirating them, then they are clever enough to know how to pirate music, and they should also be able to figure out a basic tagging program.
Who are these people that donât stream music, own loads of untagged music files, went to the trouble of installing a media server to play them, and have absolutely no knowledge of how to tag them or any interest in learning? Is it really âmostâ Plex users?
This nails it. The mentality that âeveryoneâs audio files are jacked upâ is stuck in 2002 when everyone was using Kazaa or whatever the flavor of the month pirating tool was. As noted here, the audience for this feature today, and Plex Music in general are people who have taken the time to curate a music collection to their liking, and probably have some semblance of tagging already done. If itâs that messed up, thatâs what the agent are for, overriding agents to fill the Plex DB with a snapshot of what was in the id3/flac tag and then watching for a change or resync cannot possibly be this big of a problem.
I want to love Plexamp, it looks great and Iâm glad devs are focusing on features outside of Movies (like TV and the new streaming offerings), things have looked more promising here than they have in a while and itâs exciting, PLEASE donât let this discussion get lost in the shuffle
This is a very important feature to make plex a strong contender in music. The ability for multiple artists is something that we already have in movie section of plex (we can have multiple directors) and is something that will help organize Tidal artists too.
It would be nice if Plex could at least read the metadata correctly that is already included.
I commonly see issues with covers not loading, albums with the wrong year. Funny enough, using the classic Agent with Last.fm doesnât seem to have those issuesâŠ
Edit: And before you say its a tagging issue, everything is locally tagged correctly. And it works fine using other software. And works with the old agent just fine. Local tags is also set to preferredâŠ
After painstakingly tagging my entire music collection, it was a huge bummer to realize Plexâs poor (or should we say non-existent) tag support. Imagine my surprise when Plex does even recognize Year from many files. I have Album, Title, Genre, and Year in all my files and Artist and AlbumArtist in many of them. Is it too much to ask to show titles from albums released in, letâs say, 2010? Plex gets even a simple query like that wrongâŠ
I think one of the big stumbling blocks is that the music feature began as a sort of aside. It wasnât planned as a mature feature-rich app that could compete with market. They probably created a lot of poor data structures which prevent implementing more complex but basic features implemented 10 years ago in other music programs. The bar was set low. After 5-8 years of development basic tags werenât supported. Disc 1 of 2. If I rated Track 5 on Disc 1, track 5 on Disc 2 got the same rating and the album showed up twice. Iâm not sure if theyâve taken care of that. Various artists is a mess right now. Multiple singles in a directory breaks the scanner. I have lots of songs that have no artist no title but an artist and album title. Thankfully I donât use PLex for music. So all these mistakes and poor design choices donât really affect me when i really want to listen to music. If I had bought into plex for the music server experienced I would be upset after all these years.
Note: Analog to the topic Composers, this is also relevant for DJ tracks (e.g. Robin Schulz or Avicii), where the track is generally associated with the DJ but not the actual singers.
