#Tracks work now in Plex?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

shy elm
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Hi! I prefer having my music in Plex, but in the past, Tracks weren't showing up. In the latest 2.7.1 update, I'm seeing all my tracks with Plex.

In fact, a lot of has changed. items aren't merged anymore between YouTube Music and Plex and Local. They're kept separate on purpose. Only local items are merged 👍.

The benefit is it doesn't play the lower-quality YouTube Music version of a track when I have a higher quality one on Plex.

Also, you don't have this in your docs, but the "Don't Stop the Music" thing doesn't work for local media. I couldn't figure out why until I realized it probably depends on a bunch of factors that Music Assistant can't support.

And the "Start Radio" thing doesn't work right with local media, but with Plex, it works correctly! This is great! Now I can get my fancy Plex-matched tracks via Music Assistant.

Weirdly though, playback doesn't show up in my Plex Dash app like it used to. I like that because it shows all the music playing and gives info on if it's being transcoded or not.

Separate question, is Music Assistant's local provider superior to Plex in any way or can I finally stick to Plex now and remove all that local media stuff?

lyric ibex
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In fact, a lot of has changed. items aren't merged anymore between YouTube Music and Plex and Local. They're kept separate on purpose.

No, we will always match things together that are exactly the same, otherwise you will get a hot mess in your MA library with everything duplicated.

The benefit is it doesn't play the lower-quality YouTube Music version of a track when I have a higher quality one on Plex.

then you don't understand how MA works as we will always pick the best option in terms of quality and local first. If you have a track that has a mapping to both Plex and e.g. YTM, it will always prefer the plex one.

Also, you don't have this in your docs, but the "Don't Stop the Music" thing doesn't work for local media. I couldn't figure out why until I realized it probably depends on a bunch of factors that Music Assistant can't support.

It will work as soon as the plex entry has a mapping to one or more streaming providers because currently we rely on those to get recommendations of similar tracks to offer the radio mode. Maybe in the future we can offer something through an AI agent or services like lastfm etc.

Weirdly though, playback doesn't show up in my Plex Dash app like it used to. I like that because it shows all the music playing and gives info on if it's being transcoded or not.

Check out the additional plugin provider "Plex Connect" which is most likely what you are after.

Separate question, is Music Assistant's local provider superior to Plex in any way or can I finally stick to Plex now and remove all that local media stuff?

Music Assistant's local file provider is superior to Plex yes for Music. Don't get me wrong, Plex is great for Movies and TV shows but for Music they miss some essential details, especially in their api towards us so we cant give you the best experience. For just a small collection, it's ok to leave Plex intact but for larger libraries you may even run into performance issues.

shy elm
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I noticed something else different. So I should keep with local then

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It the same file in both, but the Plex Provider doesn't have as high of a sample rate as it should

shy elm
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I did some more playing around.

If I use Plex or YouTube Music, the "don't stop the music" setting and "start radio" both work.

If I use my local library, that feature doesn't work.

I went ahead and removed the Plex integration because I have the local library, but I'm lacking that feature, and I really want it.

I know it requires some sort of processing, but is it not possible to do matching and figure out what the radio playlist would be like if I used my local?

Or is this something where you'll have to add your own AI for it later?

I was also wondering if I could radio between local and YouTube Music.

celest hearth
shy elm
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Radio Mode retrieves similar tracks using the track's provider mappings
This doesn't work. If I select a track or album and click "Start Radio", and it's a local track, it only plays the one track.

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Example. This plays a single track. Nothing else ever shows up in the playlist even after the song finishes. Yet this same album is up on YouTube Music, and it's shown here. I dunno if it's linked or not, but it's the same one.

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When I click on "Start Radio" for the a different song on this album in YouTube music, I get way more stuff.

Well actually.... Now that I tried again image 2 (once it loaded the album art), it's the same one-song issue as before even though it's linked to YouTube Music as you can see here. All songs play from local even if they're on the YouTube Music album.

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Interesting, if I do it from the song, I only get the song. If I do it from the album though...

With YouTube Music, it does do a radio now of random songs from the album and others.

With local, it picks 5 random songs in no particular order from that album, and that's it.

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The YouTube album now shows only YouTube songs now, not local.

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Sorry, my findings were correct, but a few things changed tonight, and that looks to be causing issues:

  1. I removed the Plex provider because someone said having too many songs in Plex would cause issues. Plus, I have the local provider, so Plex doesn't make sense.
  2. That caused all my local songs and albums to get reloaded.
  3. I updated the YouTube Music login token making sure I was logged into the correct profile for another issue I noticed. After saving it, looks like that may have messed some stuff up.

So everything was reloading just now.

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I think something's up. When I play the song from YouTube Music, it plays it from YouTube Music. It doesn't use my local copy. So now the LQ version plays rather than the HQ version of the same song.

That's probably intended, but I swear you guys said you do mapping and ensure the highest quality versions is always playing. Maybe from that one provider?

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The Don't Stop The Music (DSTM) option can be enabled if a provider is available which supports dynamic tracks (i.e. Apple, Deezer, Spotify, Subsonic, Tidal and YTM).
The setting gets enabled now, but when I hit the end of an album, nothing plays.

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Should I be clicking this item or is there a setting that does this mapping?

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I clicked this item when it showed "other verisons" on the YouTube Music one.

Now it shows up both under "Provider details", but "Start Radio" doesn't work. Same issue as before when selecting the track, but the "Start Radio" on the Album works now!

That's cool. So I guess my question is why this is so manual. Can it not do the mapping itself without my help?

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Get this, even from the same album, when playing a radio it uses the YouTube Music LQ version, not the local HQ version. So while the first song in the playlist is from my local library, the rest are all straight from YouTube Music even if the album is linked.

But even that's inconsistent. As you can see, one of the songs in the playlist did play the HQ version.

I guess my question is what I need to run to get this player-provider mapping figured out.

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shy elm
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Looking into it more, I don't see specific documentation on these settings, but is it possible that checking these boxes makes it sync the tracks in the albums such that it doesn't link them with the local library?

Should I uncheck some of these so the albums prefer local?

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celest hearth
shy elm
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But that's not what I'm seeing.

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First, it's not mapping them unless I manually click to map them.

Second, if I do manage to link them, some tracks from the album are from YouTube, some are from local.

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What do those sync/import checkboxes do? I read this docs page already, and it doesn't say.

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Well, the "Import Album Tracks" one is explained, but I don't understand what it means:

All music providers have options to control the import of media items and this is shown in the image below. Note that if an individual track is in the provider's library (but not its associated album) and, for example, all of the import settings are set to sync then the individual track will be imported and the album will be created in the database but all of the other album tracks will not be added. This behaviour can be changed by using the Import album tracks toggle.

celest hearth
shy elm
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So all the checkboxes I have should be syncing local and YouTube Music, but that's not happening.

celest hearth
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If items aren’t getting linked then there is a metadata problem. Typically the tags in your local files are lacking. Provide an example of something which is in the provider which has not been added to the MA library

shy elm
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Here's an example. It's the same album, but it shows under "other versions" instead of under "provider details" unless I click the "map this provider entry to the current item".

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celest hearth
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Show that album in your YouTube library.

shy elm
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I add everything through Picard which uses MusicBrainz to add metadata.

celest hearth
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You are just showing me the MA UI. Show me that album in your YouTube library.

shy elm
celest hearth
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That just looks like the album in YouTube. Show me that it has been added to your library (or favourite/collection/whatever they call it) IN YouTube music

shy elm
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What's that mean?

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Do I need to bookmark it or something?

celest hearth
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Forget MA exists for a minute. What functionality does YouTube provide so that you can come back to it and find all the music you like in one place. Do they call that bookmarking?

shy elm
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I think that's favoriting.

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But I don't ever favorite anything.

celest hearth
shy elm
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But why would I add favorite stuff in YouTube Music that I own locally?

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Is that something I'm supposed to do?

celest hearth
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No but you asked why the YouTube version of the album isn’t getting automatically linked. That is why.

shy elm
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That's a huge problem though right?

By buying albums, I'm losing out on "Don't stop the music" and "Start Radio" functionality because I chose to own them.

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Is there a way to go through my local library and link those to the YouTube albums so "Start Radio" will work?

celest hearth
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I wouldn’t call it a huge problem. It is on the roadmap. You have already found how to link your albums (or other items) to YouTube.

shy elm
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Ok, now that I know what my Library is, I have some stuff in here for some reason. And my local copies aren't linked.

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celest hearth
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Then as I said before there is a metadata problem somewhere which is why the functionality was added to allow you to manually link them. (Or unlink them)

shy elm
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And you're saying, on the roadmap, is the capability to auto-link them, so I don't have to manually click each one?

celest hearth
shy elm
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Yeah (highlighted), only for ones you've favorited in your streaming provider, then it can match the music up and prefer the highest quality version. But if you didn't favorite them, then this will not happen.

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celest hearth
shy elm
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Then I wouldn't need to link with YouTube music for radio functionality.

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But I would need to link with YouTube to ensure I always play the highest quality file.

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And it'd be nice to be able to do that without having to resort to favoriting all my purchased local albums on YouTube Music.

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I'm not finding that roadmap item for the local radio functionality, but I'm sure it's gonna be a huge undertaking.

I'm wondering if there's some way to add this functionality for each item automatically, the linking. If it's a local album, look on all providers (this might've already been done), and then link anything with the same track counts and times on those tracks within 1-2 seconds.

I'm assuming this would have to be done in the backend and added to the frontend as a checkbox for the local provider: "during sync, look at streaming providers and match them with your local library".

celest hearth