Sorry to hijack this thread, I just wanna +1 on this request.
I find it frustrating that Plex refuses to read the full ID3 tags to build its library for music files. I understand for Videos, Plex needs to read the filename and folder structure to accurately build metadata, but for Music the files already contain rich data within the ID3 tags, Plex shouldn’t need music files to be set in a specific folder structure or filename imo.
The “Producer” credit is part of the Involved People List field, TPIL in id3v2.4
“Remixer” is TPE4 in id3v2.4
On another note, there’s this peculiar thing I’m finding out re: the three “time” fields in the id3 standard. It’s an ambiguous mess:
There is Recording Time TDRC: a timestamp describing when the audio was recorded.
Fortunately, this seems to be about as straightforward as it gets.
There is Release Time TDRL : a timestamp describing when the audio was first released.
They way I read this: even for later reissues, this should contain the first release date. Seems clear.
And then this field, Original Release Time TDOR: a timestamp describing when the original recording of the audio was released.
If I read this in the context of the descriptions of the other “Original” fields like TOPE (Original Artist) and TOLY (Original Lyricist), this is meant for covers, so if Artist X in 2020 records a cover of a song by Artist Y released in 1955, TDOR should say 1955 and TOPE should say “Artist Y”
However, this means that there is no field for the release time of reissues/remasters. If you reinterpret TDOR as original release year and TDRL as the release time of the reissue it works, and that’s how many people use it, but that’s not what the standard seems to say.
Yet another instance where the id3 standard isn’t clear enough.
Agreed. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of movement on ID3 specification development, unfortunately. There’s a new standard called MEAD (Media Enrichment And Description) that seems intended to clear up a lot of the confusion. Hoping against hope that widespread adoption will be very fast, though.
@beckfield you might also change some things in the start post:
TCOM: Content type [genre] [Needs to be on a per-TRACK basis] - [multiple genres (more than two) separated by “/”]
That’s non-standard unfortunately - id3v2.3 does not allow multiple values in the Genre field, and id3v2.4 has null-separated genres, not “/”. Probably best not to support custom hacks/workarounds.
TPE1: Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s) [multiple names separated by “/”]
Again maybe specify this better - id3v2.3 does allow multiple names separated by “/”, but id3v2.4 uses null. That’s how it’s stored though, not necessarily how it’s displayed in the UI of course.
Multiple names also should be supported in TPE2/3/4/TCOM/etc.
+1 for composer (most important for me) and the rest as well. I would add that it’d be nice to have the separator be configurable. MediaMonkey, for example, uses a semicolon.
5years for this topic and still no composer tag … why are we paying for ??
Composer tag pretty please!
Don’t forget to vote! 
I am coming over from Google Music. I would have bought a lifetime plex pass if you all supported composer tags.
5years for this topic and still no composer tag … why are we paying for ??
Reading the composer field from the tags would be trivial, but that’s only the first step. With the current Plex database design, Composer would have the same issues/limitations as Track Artist currently has (ie, issues with search, not able to group composer credits under the Artist, etc), and I can understand the Plex devs aren’t keen to add more half-functioning features.
I’m afraid all this will have to wait until there’s a major overhaul of the internal metadata database structure, if that ever comes. That would enable all the metadata goodies that are possible with id3/Vorbis tags, and Musicbrainz info, but not in Plex: Composer/Conductor/Producer/Remixer/Lyricist credits, multiple artists (per track and per album), track-level Genres and Year, proper compilations handling…
Isn’t it one of the most voted topics in this board, already?
No hope here… following this topics since a long time.
I’m confused why Plex doesn’t clarify things here.
It would already help to understand the decisions about this topic.
Sure we know about the technical difficulties…but come on.
Plex is about to handle media. Such a change takes time but the developers are able to do this.
In my opinion Plex should make a statement here. No matter we will like the message or not. To leave the users alone with this idea of a feature for 5 years is a shame.
I finally got around to this. I decided to just not specify how names are separated. They’ll know what to do, if they follow the specs.
Thanks for the corrections. I made some assumptions that weren’t warranted.
In my opinion Plex should make a statement here. No matter we will like the message or not. To leave the users alone with this idea of a feature for 5 years is a shame.
Plex never officially makes statements. Based on what I can see how current database is designed and my estimation how far-reaching the consequences are if they change things, I expect we won’t see any major new metadata fixes until the developers do a major, backwards-compatibility-breaking rewrite of the underlying data structure, and that will probably be Plex Media Server 2.0, whenever that comes. And if they are working on PMS 2,0, they won’t tell us.
+1 here. Trying to use Plex to bring order to Sonos, but it’s impossible without Composer
+1 to adding composer as well
This is certainly sad. Especially for a paying service.
It’s sad, but not unique - Spotify charges a lot more, and also doesn’t do Composer either (or any of the other fields like producer/conductor/remixer/etc). It can handle individual year and genre per song though.
The absolute mess that is tags in Spotify is probably the biggest reason I wish Plex had proper support.
I desperately want to be able to use the TIT1 tag!
Yeah, for classical music, it would be amazing to have support for TIT1 (Work), MVNM (Movement) MVIN (Movement #) TCOM (Composer) TPE3 (Conductor) TDOR (Original Release date, i.e. when the original work was released).
