All albums tracks are listed twice with Plex music provider

[SirJohnDoe]

What version of Music Assistant has the issue?

Stable 2.0.4, Beta 2.1.0b0

What version of the Home Assistant Integration have you got installed?

2024.5.1

Have you tried everything in the Troubleshooting FAQ and reviewed the Open and Closed Issues and Discussions to resolve this yourself?

• Yes

The problem

All albums tracks are listed twice: once with an icon of the original source, once as 'in library'. The consequence is that every album that is queued will be played twice as it also adds these duplicate tracks.

How to reproduce

Sync a Plex music library. It looks like below. When sorting by track number it will show the 'in library' tracks at the top, and the Plex tracks at the bottom.

Music Providers

Plex

Player Providers

UPnP player provider

Full log output

log.txt

Additional information

I've added the Plex music provider again in Beta, and strarted from scratch in the stable release. In both cases it happened.

Unmarking the 'In library' tracks as favourite has no effect.

What version of Home Assistant Core are your running

2024.5.3

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

On what type of hardware are you running?

Generic x86-64 (e.g. Intel NUC)

[jonrbloom]

I'm seeing this too (on HA Yellow). I am using Music Assistant for the first time and assumed I'd messed up my library while tinkering. So I did a clean reinstall of the Addon (not just the Plex component), with the same results.

[sfnis]

I had this issue as well, I removed Plex as a provider, and went to just file system.

You can see the File system provider is not picking up the metadata correctly. Plex shows it as Disc 1 - Track 08, but MA shows it as 0/0.

The response here currently seems to be "fix your metadata" but I have many albums that work fine in Plex, and are still incorrect in MA. There should be some sort of feature request to be able to disable MA Metatdata matching for a provider... but ... I am not sure how that would work.

Also, @SirJohnDoe if the file is tagged correctly, post a screen shot of that here. I use this for tagging: https://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

[SirJohnDoe]

I had this issue as well, I removed Plex as a provider, and went to just file system.

You can see the File system provider is not picking up the metadata correctly. Plex shows it as Disc 1 - Track 08, but MA shows it as 0/0.

The response here currently seems to be "fix your metadata" but I have many albums that work fine in Plex, and are still incorrect in MA. There should be some sort of feature request to be able to disable MA Metatdata matching for a provider... but ... I am not sure how that would work.

Also, @SirJohnDoe if the file is tagged correctly, post a screen shot of that here. I use this for tagging: https://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

Unfortunately that's not really a solution then, I rely on Plex for correct(ing) metadata, and don't want to start editing all the files and maintaining it with extra tools.

I got the impression that the built in music provider for some reason duplicates all tracks (and favourites them), and for some reason you're not allowed to disable it.

[OzGav]

I got the impression that the built in music provider for some reason duplicates all tracks (and favourites them), and for some reason you're not allowed to disable it

The favouriting thing is subject to a separate issue report. #2307

Marcel has worked hard to ensure MA compies with established standards. Just because something works "fine" in Plex does not mean there is a problem with MA as perhaps Plex has implemented some hack workaround.

[sfnis]

Does requiring the folder name to match exactly the album name, ignoring the id3 tag meet established standards?

[OzGav]

If you would like to contribute constructively to the project you can submit a PR

[OzGav]

You can see the File system provider is not picking up the metadata correctly. Plex shows it as Disc 1 - Track 08, but MA shows it as 0/0.

That is not what is happening based on the reporters own words.

All albums tracks are listed twice: once with an icon of the original source, once as 'in library'.

So the issue is as described by the OP that there appears to be a problem with the Plex provider duplicating the tracks (not the file system provider) but for some reason this is not widespread as this is the only report.

[jonrbloom]

Not the only report (as mentioned, I see the same thing), but it is fairly low report rate certaintly..

I will try updating to latest Plex server, but note that Bubble uPnP on Android doesn't duplicate. Not definitive proof that it's MA specific, but lends some weight.

What can we do to help isolate the cause?

[sfnis]

I experienced the duplicate file issue as well.

I’d guess that part of the low report rate is that the Plex provider is listed as not being actively developed and users being encouraged to just use the file system provider.

[OzGav]

What can we do to help isolate the cause?

I can't think of anything at this point. I don't use Plex so I can't try and reproduce. I am assuming it affects all albums? At some point this will get looked at.

[jonrbloom]

Ok, thanks. Yes, all albums that I tried exhibit the problem.

[Paul-Vdp]

I just noticed I am suffering from the same problem ...
As I guess all Plex users will (of which there must be many).