Why are we forced to use the inferior Plex Music as "scanner / agent"?

[PunkleJones]

First off it cant find appox. half as much (meta) data as the “old” library with the “old” scanners / agents. Several albums not found AT ALL.
Doing “manual search” is Pointless, since Plex Music got a VERY limited selection (can ONLY use Plex Music as Scanner and Agent WHY), vs music scanner from the OLD library finds a freaking ton (Scanner: Plex Music Scanner, Agent: Last.fm etc).

You cant even Edit the info for a album, there is ONLY artist fields. vs OLD library you can edit E V E R Y thing. WHAT!?

Why even have the Music option at all when all you do is ruining it with each new “update”

[drzoidberg33]

The “new” agent uses Musicbrainz for matching, so if it’s in the Musicbrainz database it should match. Do you have some examples to share?

[don.alcombright]

can you give some artist/album examples? I listen to a lot of obscure metal, have over 100K tracks and have 0 mismatches, and at most had maybe 2-3 albums I needed to manually sync. Now, I use MusicBrainz to organize my media to begin with, so maybe start with making sure your music is correctly tagged?

[PunkleJones]

I already removed the main music folder, basically the same i did when i added the “new” Music library (a few years back when it was a Plex Pass only thing).
Funnily enough it works fine with files in my “iTunes” folder, even same mp3 etc copied from disk manually (via iTunes sigh)

Ok, “Old” library (Plex Music Scanner / Last.fm) → 188~albums. When adding this folder to “New” library (Plex Music) ~44 Artist are left Blank, some albums not picked up at all, and generally missing meta-data (tags, info etc) on mostly Artist. (of course Prefer local metadata is checked)

Im a bit mad i didn’t take screenshots, i was sure i did. But non of the artist are “obscure” or unknow really.

My main concern now is that my “old” music library want be useful anymore since i will not “upgrade” it and lose “half the data”
Im adding a few screens here, of course it doesn’t show the ones “missing” since its from the “old” libr. Just so you see its not really much obscure. (I got no idea why the ones in “kanji” are not in English in the lib)

[trumpy81]

Looking at the first image you posted above, I can see that some of your files are incorrectly named/tagged.

For example, Unknown Artist is the result of your file names/tags not containing the correct artist name, therefore no match can be found at Musicbrainz and/or you are not allowing Plex to use your tags/metadata.

Edit your Music library and on the Advanced tab, make sure you enable Prefer Local Metadata and click on Save Changes.

The same applies to Various Artists, your Artist tag contains Various Artists when it should contain the actual artist for that/those track/s. Only the Album Artist tag should contain Various Artists. The Artist tag should contain the actual Artist.

Here is an example of how to name and tag a compilation album:

Notice, this is Disc 01 of that two CD Album. You can tell by looking at the Disc # tag.

Also be aware, that this album will appear in an album named Various Artists within your Plex music library along with all of your other correctly named and tagged compilation albums.

For single artist albums you should name/tag them like so:

And keep a look out for misspellings, spaces that are NOT spaces, dashes that are NOT dashes etc., within your names and tags.

Also, do NOT add extraneous information to your file names or tags. Things such as format (mp3, wav) etc. or bitrates. That information can be found in Plex by accessing a track and then clicking on the vertical ellipsis and selecting Get Info.

It will even tell you if Plex has added Lyrics to the track.

If you must keep that type of information handy, then copy the information into a text file and store it as Album Name.info or similar, then use a .plexignore file to stop Plex from trying to access those files and slowing down your scans.

Don’t use .txt or .lrc, Plex will interpret those as lyrics files.

See this link for naming your folders/files etc.: Your Media

Plex can be very particular when it comes to naming and tagging and the new agents are much more strict than the previous agents, but if you follow the rules as set out above, you will have very few issues with Plex at all.

I recommend using mp3Tag (free) for all your tagging needs. You can even use it to modify/remove tags from .mp4 video files.

[PunkleJones]

(sorry for late answer)

Unknown Artist IS an Unknown Artist, literally.

Various Artist is correctly tagged. What ever Artist/ Complication/ Etc. for “Album Artist”, Artist for “Artist”. Bit confused how you can say VA is incorrectly tagged when all the Screenshot show is the “Folder” with VA’s
Tags are as you see here (Unless it was Budda Bar, thats from iTunes library):

Here is also the tags for the Artist that Plex for some silly reason decide to display in “kenji (or what ever its called)” Yoko Kanno, clearly Plex is overriding the tags…

And yes, it is Mp3tag, been using that for ages.

[trumpy81]

@PunkleJones

Unknown Artist IS an Unknown Artist, literally.

Fair enough, but if your files were named and tagged correctly and you allow Plex to use Local Metadata, then Plex would use your Artist name from the File name or Artist tag.

Of course, Plex would not be able to match and download metadata for this Artist because there would be no match at Musicbrainz.

Or perhaps you mean you don’t know who the Artist is … lol

You can always try using Shazam on your mobile phone to try and track down who the artist is, you never know, it might be able to identify them.

E.G.

Graeme is a local lad that performs in local pubs and clubs and is the husband of my friend. Unfortunately, he is not well known and is certainly not listed at Musicbrainz, but as you can see, Plex is clearly able to use his name from my track names and tags.

@PunkleJones

Bit confused how you can say VA is incorrectly tagged when all the Screenshot show is the “Folder” with VA’s

Your screenshot very clearly shows you have selected to view by Artist NOT Album, but my bad, Plex does show Various Artists as an Artist also. I was thinking that it did not.

If I had viewed my Compilation library, it would have slapped me in the face … lol

You show that your tracks do not contain the artist name anywhere (in the image you posted above). You should always include the artist name in your track titles so that Plex has the option to use that instead of the Artist tag, assuming your tag was empty or misspelled etc.

See the example images I posted.

As for the Kanji, check Musicbrainz, you may find the listing there includes Kanji rather than English, etc.

Musicbrainz may also have other matches that include English, etc. so try using Fix Match to see if you can correct that.

If not, you can always correct it manually in Plex, then make sure the lock icon is orange and then click on Save Changes.

[PunkleJones]

@trumpy81

You show that your tracks do not contain the artist name anywhere (in the image you posted above). You should always include the artist name in your track titles so that Plex has the option to use that instead of the Artist tag, assuming your tag was empty or misspelled etc.

Assume you refer to the CyberPunk album, since it say CyberPunk 2077 as Artist? Those are original tags from the album.

[trumpy81]

@trumpy81

You should always include the artist name in your track titles

I was NOT talking about the tags. I was talking about your file names / track titles. You should include the artist name there and not just in the tags.

It seems that I did mistake the Track Title tag for the file names though.