Why does Plex *insist* on displaying the wrong year for some of my music? Found no solution so far. Please help!

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: PlexMediaServer-1.18.0.1944-f2cae8d6b-x86_64

I’m pulling my hair out over this. Please save me before I go running back to the rotting corpse of iTunes.

MY SETUP

Plex Pass, Plex Server (latest version) installed on a NAS. Approx 1000 albums all meticulously passed through MusicBrains Picard for great metadata accuracy.

MY PLEX MUSIC LIBRARY SETTINGS

Include in Dashboard NO
Album sorting DEFAULT
Prefer Local Metadata YES
Store track process NO
Include related content YES
Artist Bios YES
Album Reviews YES
Popular Tracks YES
Concerts YES
Genres PLEX MUSIC
Album Art LOCAL
Scanner PLEX MUSIC
Agent PLEX MUSIC

THE PROBLEM

It’s fairly widespread – I estimate the date of about 5-10% of my library is being wrongly displayed by Plex.

The following example is for the 2009 remaster of The Beatles album ‘Beatles For Sale’, which was originally released in 1964.

The folder location is Music/The Beatles/[1964] Beatles for Sale/

In MusicBrainz Picard I have a custom script that sets the year of the album to the original release date . This prevents the dates of remasters, re-releases, etc from populating the standard date field $set(date,$if2(%originaldate%,%date%))

If I drag the music into iTunes I can see that the year of the album is 1964. Cool.

However, Plex shows 2009, the date of the remaster! If I click the edit button on the album, the “Originally Available” date says 2009-09-09 – literally the date all The Beatles remasters were released!

If I try to ‘Fix Match’, all the examples say 1964, I click on one of them, the little loading icon flashes up for a second – and the ‘fixed’ album still says 2009.

I looked at the tags in Picard and iTunes and see no trace of 2009 anywhere in the tags.

TEST ONE

I created a very strict tag script in Picard using the $keep plugin which strips EVERY SINGLE TAG except the ones that I specify. By default it keeps the MusicBrainz tags, but I used $unset to remove those too.

As you can see from this screenshot, almost all tags have been removed, except for the absolute bare essentials.

[Album] Imgur

I then scanned one of these test files in exiftool and the only trace of “2009” in the metadata is the year I original ripped the CD

[Album] Imgur

I then did the Plex dance, then created a brand new music library in Plex. The album is added and it says 1964 for like one second, then the artwork spins around/updates and boom 2009. Ugh. Excuse me while I flip a desk.

I assume that Plex is insisting on pulling the date from the MusicBrainz database, despite me checking “Prefer Local Metadata”. I’ve also tried using the old Plex Music Scanner and Last.fm but see no difference.

IS PLEX RELYING TOO MUCH ON MUSICBRAINZ?

Another great example is the 2009 reissue of the 1994 album Ill Communication by Beastie Boys. The date in the tags is 1994. Plex, of course, says 2009. Once again, there is NO TRACE of 2009 in the tags OR exiftool metadata. This album was originally purchased by me from the iTunes Store and still has some iTunes metadata – none of which says 2009. It even says 1994 as the Content Create Date

[Album] Imgur

I believe Plex using is MusicBrainz to associate it with the 2009 reissue simply due to the number of tracks on the album (20+12 instead of 20). You can see here in this screenshot from Picard that I have no other option but to pick a 20+12 2009 version (either CD or Digital Media).

[Album] Imgur

TEST TWO

I created a brand new Plex test server on my Mac (my original is on a NAS) containing a few of the problem albums. The Beatles one shows as 1964 on the new server. The Beastie Boys tracks show the correct date too.

[Album] Imgur

Not only that, but if I copy over a version of that file with my preferred tags (not the stripped down version) which even has [2009 Mono Remaster] in the album title, it STILL shows as 1964 as expected! Hurray.

[Album] Imgur

So I assume that the issue is not with the files or tags, but with my original Plex NAS install?

I’ve already deleted everything in /Volumes/Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Caches/ Are there any other Cache folders I can delete or anything else I can do, short of deleting my entire server and starting over? shudder

I’ve check out Plex’s advice here for mis-matched music, and after some really basic suggestions they basically pass the buck to MusicBrainz and ask that you correct the issue with them. Thing is, these albums are like hugely popular albums, not like esoteric pan pipe music or something. There’s nothing wrong with even the suggested matches Plex throws up. Truly bizarre.

Any help would be appreciated.

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The problem is in how you are naming it.

Square brackets [1964] is ignored by the scanner.
Parenthesis (1964) is used by the scanner.

Music/The Beatles/[1964] Beatles for Sale/

should be

Music/The Beatles/ Beatles for Sale (1964)/

Year is the qualifier which comes after the name. It is the same format as used for Movies and Television.

1 Like
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The square brackets at the front of the name are simply for my benefit so that it sorts correctly in a regular file browser. But I had hope that your solution would work.

I took your advice and moved the folder out of the Plex folder, renamed it to

Beatles for Sale (1964)

I did the Plex dance, moved the folder back, re-scanned library, and once again it says 1964 for like one second until it’s able to pull the data from the internet, at which point the album artwork spins around and the date changes to 2009. :frowning:

It’s also worth repeating that the same exact folder (and indeed, one that literally has 2009 in the title…

[1964] Beatles for Sale [2009 Mono Remaster]

…both display as 1964 in a test server I created this morning on my Mac, so it seems that it doesn’t care about the year in the folder name regarding music.

4

And once again, you use the square brackets.

[1964] Beatles for Sale [2009 Mono Remaster]

This is processed as Beatles for Sale with no qualifiers.

It’s long standing rule about how [optional ignored text here] which is for your benefit but is not used by Plex at all.

This said,

[1964] Beatles for Sale (1964) would be perfectly valid if you use it to help with sorting in your file browser…

5

As I said in my reply, I tried your advice, I renamed it to…

Beatles for Sale (1964)

… and it didn’t work. Neither did naming it…

[1964] Beatles for Sale (1964)

As for…

[1964] Beatles for Sale [2009 Mono Remaster]

… I was demonstrating how that DOES work correctly on my test server, irrespective of the Plex rules for media.

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I have that album. Thanks for thrashing this with me. I appreciate it.

I now have your results and with my results, I will ferret this one out.

I see where you’re coming from and not entirely understanding how to make it right either. I think there is something amiss which needs corecting.

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Thank you, I appreciate it. Would it help if I PM you a private link to download a test audio file from this problem album to compare?

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As I said at the top, the “2009” in both The Beatles and Beastie Boys albums refer to their re-release date.

What’s weird is, I have the complete set of Beatles 2009 Reissue albums (in both mono and stereo) and the ONLY one that has this problem is Beatles For Sale. How does that album look in your Plex?

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Also, if I unmatch the album, the date corrects itself to 1964 but I lose all the additional rich Plex Music information, such as review, write ups, etc.

When I re-match with the correct album, the date changes back to 2009 even though album I picked in the match options literally says 1964 https://imgur.com/a/1o0kdfp

1 Like
11

Very likely. Since the original release doesn’t have a 2nd disc, Plex is trying to make the best match. Remove that 2nd disc and see if you get the same results.

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The result is the same I’m afraid. I expected as much because The Beatles album contains the same number of tracks as the original, yet is still matched to the reissue date.

In addition to installing a test Plex Server on my Mac and getting correct dates, I’ve now just created a test Plex server on a Raspberry Pi (pointing to the same music folder over SMB) and once again, the date is correct, 1964.

So it seems like the issue is isolated to something in my NAS library. Man, I really really really don’t want to delete my server and start over. I mean, talk about the nuclear option…

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Provide your full Plex logs so we can see what is going on.

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I assume I post the log zip, but where to? Do I just post a link here? Also do I need to be concerned about any privacy issues such as IP addresses in the logs?

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You can PM the logs to me if you don’t want to post them.

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Thanks, I’ve sent the log file from the NAS, and the log from the PI to compare. And also one of the audio files in question.

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SUCCESS! MovieFan.Plex got to the bottom of it for me. Turns out the conversion from the old Music library format to the new Plex Music format was never completed properly due to a database error. My logs kept saying…

"ERROR - Failed to begin transaction (…/Library/MetadataCollection.cpp:174) (tries=2): Cannot begin transaction. database is locked"

I rolled back to a database backup from about six weeks ago. I then re-scanned my libraries to update any new media that’s been added in the interim. Please to report that all albums now have the correct date!

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