Don't edit tags in Plex

Don't edit your tags in Plex. I've found it to be a super unhelpful experience that never really works properly. Instead I've been using various metaflac commands to edit my FLAC collection.

First list the current tags:

❯ metaflac --list 01\ -\ Fokus\ -\ Like\ Dat.flac
METADATA block #0
  ...
METADATA block #2
  type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
  is last: false
  length: 214
  vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917
  comments: 9
    comment[0]: ARTIST=Fokus
    comment[1]: TITLE=Like Dat
    comment[2]: DATE=1996
    comment[3]: TRACKNUMBER=01
    comment[4]: GENRE=Drum & Bass
    comment[5]: COMMENT=Track 1
    comment[6]: ALBUMARTIST=Fabio
    comment[7]: DISCNUMBER=1
    comment[8]: ALBUM=Promised Land Volume 2
METADATA block #3
  type: 1 (PADDING)
  is last: true

Then from there set the ones you want to either one by one like this: metaflac --set-tag="ALBUM=Your Album"

Or you can do a loop for editing all the FLACs in the current directory at once: for file in *.flac; do metaflac --set-tag="ALBUMARTIST=Fabio" "$file"; done

Now for a few caveats:

First, I've found that in some cases metaflac will add a duplicate tag name. If this is the case then just delete it using metaflac --remove-tag="ALBUM" and then set it again.

Second, as of the time of writing Plex will absolutely not pick up new tags no matter how many times you scan the library. The only way I've found to get Plex to pick up the new tags is by moving the files out of my music directory, scanning the library, then moving the files back into the music directory, and running another Plex scan of the library. It sucks, but it's how I got it working for now.