Various Artists cover with Plex Scanner

Plex Media Server
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Hello,

is there any way/option so that “Plex Scanner” for music
keeps/honors the setting “Prefer local media data” and/or album art “Local files only” for cover art?
(or identifies the cover art by actually reading the tag information inside every file, instead of just the first file)?

I know that the guide https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/ specifies that one should create one folder per album. But sometimes that is just not possible, as I have thousands of various artists files (e.g. in a folder called 90s).
And what Plex Scanner does is take the cover art of the first read music file in that folder and use that cover for all music files inside the same path. It doesn’t check the artists or anything and just uses that cover.

Right now I am stuck with the workaround of using the old Scanner “Plex Music Scanner” in conjunction with the “Last.fm” agent". There it works. But I know that that is the old scanner and I suppose it won’t be around forever…

Is there any way I can get this working? (via setting
or by creating special naming of my folder, so that Plex knows that there are Various artists inside.
The guide suggests creating a “Various Artists” parent folder and the creating album folders inside that, but that doesn’t help me eigher, as that would still be thousends of folders just for 1 or 2 files each…)

Thanks a lot in advance!

Server Version#: 1.19.3.2852 and also the latest
Player Version#: n/a

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Unfortunately if you have hundreds or thousands of random files in a folder or scattered folders, then plex just won’t handle that.

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But than I dont understand, why there are options like “Prefer local media data” and/or album art “Local files only" in the first place. If they are ignored completely in that case…

In programming there is always a way to get things done; if there’s a will, there’s a way (It’s mostly just a matter of will and how much effort it takes). I’d even be willing to buy a Plex Subscription if that were to help…

I have seen other posts in this forum with users facing this particular problem (e.g. Multiple artwork for Albums are the same ).
It would be nice if a solution was developed. Probably the most easy solution would be a “Various Artists” (or whatever name) parent folder, and everything after that is by user choice (no matter if subdirs are created inside that or all files are dumped in that folder). And plex honoring the “Various Artists” in cover.

Or - independant of such a folder idea: Plex honors “Prefer local media data” and/or album art “Local files only" also in “Plex Scanner”.

Thanks again (for considering).

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oh there are dozens of thread if not more complaining about the way the new music system works.

plex wants to insist that your music files are clean and properly organized, and that they match against musicbrainz.

plex will continue to try to match against mbz even where there is and never will be matches (ie random files in scattered folders).

and yes, plex allows way too much priority to how the files/folders are named/organized, than simply reading the tags, even with ‘prefer local metadata’ enabled…

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I am not resistant to such guidelines… It’s just next to impossible (and also not very beautiful) to have the storage clustered full with single-mp3-folders, just to satisfy the system…

A little flexibility - also in the current scanners - would be helpful.
I’d even be willing to buy a plex pass, if ther were to help as an incentive for the developers (which it probably won’t…).

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there are many reasons to get a plex pass, but that isn’t one of them.

never buy or pay for something with the ‘hope’ that it will someday satisfy your needs/desires.

there is only ever what works now, and even that is not guaranteed (see loss of plugins/plexcloud/etc).

plex does many things well, no doubt. is it perfect, surely not.

are there other alternatives, maybe, but everything has it’s own pro’s/con’s for which only you can decide what best suits your needs/desires.

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