Combine artists with multiple names

[Bigmack3000 84]

Since music is highly tag driven now, especially with musicbrainz tags, can we please fully use those tags to keep libraries better organized? Some artists credit themselves with multiple names over their career. for example, Fela Kuti:

https://musicbrainz.org/artist/6514cffa-fbe0-4965-ad88-e998ead8a82a

all the variations have the same mbz artist tag.  So naturally, mbz lists them all together on the same artist page.  But emby separates every spelling difference into its own unique artist page.  matching mbz tags should pool together under one page, with the unique name changes listed underneath the albums.

[Luke 37068]

Hi, if the tracks are tagged with musucbrainzalbumartistid values then this will allow that to happen.

[Bigmack3000 84]

54 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, if the tracks are tagged with musucbrainzalbumartistid values then this will allow that to happen.

Nope, unfortunately thats entirely not true:

Currently, emby does not group artists based on ids.  It groups them based on what is written in the "artist" or "album artist" tags.  Therefore any variation in spelling, punctuation, etc results in a brand new unconnected artist being added into emby.  Here are four albums all with the same artist and albumartist id tags from mbz:

All four of those show up in their own page without a connection to each other because the spellings are different for every one.  

Emby Should group based on id tags, that way all of these can be found on one page,  and then list the specific name used underneath each album.  But it currently does not do that.

[Bigmack3000 84]

Were you able to look more into this?  

[Luke 37068]

Quote

Nope, unfortunately thats entirely not true:

Yes it is true, but all the tracks need to be tagged with the same mbz artist id, not just one. Please check that this is the case.

If you still think there's an issue, then please zip up all tracks for this artist and send me a copy. I'll find the discrepancy. Thanks.

[Luke 37068]

Also it could be due to "MusicBrainz Release Artist Id". I've never heard of that one before. We'll have to add it to the list of tags that we search for when looking for artist ids.

[Bigmack3000 84]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Also it could be due to "MusicBrainz Release Artist Id". I've never heard of that one before. We'll have to add it to the list of tags that we search for when looking for artist ids.

"Release Artist" is the album artist.  Emby already recognizes it to some degree because it's how emby sorts compilations / various artist albums.  But, maybe isn't fully utilizing it the way it should be?  Any artist that appears in a "release artist" tag should have that album come up under their own albums.  Those shouldn't go to "appears on".  

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Yes it is true, but all the tracks need to be tagged with the same mbz artist id, not just one. Please check that this is the case.

If you still think there's an issue, then please zip up all tracks for this artist and send me a copy. I'll find the discrepancy. Thanks.

But, you'll notice in the screenshots i posted, all of those artists have the same artist ids.  This problem comes up a lot with hip-hop, as there are often variations on artist names throughout releases.  I did a test, by putting an album in twice under two different artist name variations, but using the Same artist and release artist id tags.

First: 

Artist Titled: Ghostface

Album: Supreme

Next:

Artist: Ghostface Killah

Album: Supreme Clientele

Neither album shows up on the other's page.  So as it stands, there is no catch all page for identical artist id tags.  Changes in the name can create a completely new artist unconnected from the main.  

Here's a one off where he goes by "Tony Starks", still the same artist id, but it is not found on either of the other pages:

Here's a second example. where an artist changed their name from their first to second album:

Rev T.L. Barrett

Pastor T.L. Barrett

You can see the mbz tags match.  

I think the tags need a slight restructuring.  The "Release Artist" should actually be the top tag.  Because that is what mbz uses for "Album Artist".  It represents the entire container of the album.  mbz more uses "artist id" tags for the specific tracks.  That's why the "artist id" can vary track to track if there are feat. guests.  

[Bigmack3000 84]

I don't know coding, so maybe I lose people sometimes because of that.  But in short:

Every artist should have a "Release Artist ID" catch-all page.  Where everything with that id can be found.  

Then separately, individual pages should be created for each "artist id" variation.  

[Luke 37068]

Quote

"MusicBrainz Release Artist Id"

This is not currently supported in any server version.

Quote

You can see the mbz tags match.  

Only for the files you're showing me, and this also doesn't show me how ffmpeg sees it, which is what it will really come down to.

[Bigmack3000 84]

I've compressed and attached the Pastor / rev t.l. barrett albums here.

 

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

This is not currently supported in any server version.

So how are "various artist" albums currently sorted?:

the "artist id" tags are all different.  Only the "release artist id" is consistent for those.  Does that mean, you are relying on the "Album Artist" tags?  Because that's probably where the problem came from.  the "Album Artist" can have spelling variations throughout releases.  The "release artist id" is what would connect all those variations together.

Archive.zip

[Bottles51 63]

If you manually change all your album artist to be the same , this will fix. I had to do this with some as well.

Also if there is more than one artist on an album and you want it to show in each of there tabs instead of one separate tab with both.Use a (/) between names and that will make album sow in each persons or album artist tab.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Bottles51

[Bigmack3000 84]

Yea, I've done that for a lot in the past.  But honestly, that's just accepting there is a problem with emby and that it won't be fixed.  I'd like to believe it will be.  

If emby is going to base music metadata on mbz tags then they need to properly utilize the tags.  Not tell all of it's users to do extra work to get around it's flaws.

[Bottles51 63]

Remember that the tagging is community based as well and are not always tagged 100%.

[Bigmack3000 84]

Finding the rare error in a tag is not the same as a program not being able to fully use the tagging system they tell you to use though.

Could there be two artists named "Prince" and one album accidentally makes it into the wrong page? Sure. But that's also why MBZ has moderators to check for those errors.  That is not on level with emby not recognizing "album artist" ids.

 

[Luke 37068]

OK, now I recall the details of this, and yes, unlike albums, the name of the artist is used as part of the grouping.

Why, because if we were to merge these then you'd lose one of the artist names. For example, whichever album gets scanned in second would end up getting the album artist name changed to match the first one if we were to group on Id. In other words, suppose "I found the answer" gets scanned in second, then that album as well as all of the tracks would end up showing an album artist of "Pastor T.L. Barrett", which doesn't match the tagging in the files.

We actually initially grouped these as part of the audio rewrite of 4.6, but this was changed based on feedback from the likes of @ginjaninjaand @Vicpa.

In order to group these into a single artist and preserve the different names we'd have to expand the system so that artists can have multiple names.

[ginjaninja 536]

Hopefully not contradicting anything i said before, but reserve the right to change opinion

Spoiler

We need to be careful between different aliases of an artist mbz id and multiple artist mbzids on a release, especially in the example given.

This artist has multiple aliases

but this artists releases have multiple mbzids where those additional  mbzids have a string text  very close to the first artists aliases

To be very specific as an example

this release https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/bbe4951b-3b18-4de8-9157-bd28b9708b1a

has two mbzids

https://musicbrainz.org/artist/6514cffa-fbe0-4965-ad88-e998ead8a82a

https://musicbrainz.org/artist/dc45f2dc-ef36-4a7a-aa52-97495fca8ced

bottom line  i support the OP feature request , more information is usually better (if it can be presented nicely without downside)

If the specific artist string for the artist MBZ id can be stored and presented' as is' for an album then all the better.

Spoiler

There probably is an MBZ api lookup to return the primary name for an artist, so emby knows what name to give the artist object in emby if multiple aliases for an MBZid were ever presented (but equally the first alias encountered would probably  suffice most of the time, and the user could perhaps change in the emby metadata manually so no big deal)

IMO in an ideal world there would be one artist page/object in Emby for the one artist MBZid (like in Musicbrainz ui) but when looking at eg the album you see the 'proper' alias. It is probably true to say that if MBZ ids are present then the artist string tag or a retrieval of artist against MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID can be 'trusted' as intended; and storing these different 'aliases' would be a nice, albeit niche, feature.

Spoiler

This reminds me of the feature request (lost the link for now) requesting  that multiple artist strings were presented as is with their connecting words eg "Artist A vs Artist B" or eg "Artist A featuring Artist B". I mention that old request because they seem somewhat related in that they call for storing additional metadata and more sophistication in the 'logic' for retrieving/extracting and presenting the metadata in the UI.

 

[Bigmack3000 84]

Has this been fixed yet? Skipping album artist ids just impractical.

[beckfield 93]

This is an issue for the Composer tag as well.  The example that prompted me to see if this had been reported is "Frédéric Chopin" and "Fryderyk Chopin," which resulted in two instances of the composer.  MusicBrainz treats composers as an artist, like any other, so I don't think there's a "MusicBrainzComposerId" that you can use to resolve this.

[sydlexius 241]

10 hours ago, beckfield said:

This is an issue for the Composer tag as well.  The example that prompted me to see if this had been reported is "Frédéric Chopin" and "Fryderyk Chopin," which resulted in two instances of the composer.  MusicBrainz treats composers as an artist, like any other, so I don't think there's a "MusicBrainzComposerId" that you can use to resolve this.

Ultimately that issue can be fixed through an external tagger though.  That's an entirely different kettle of fish compared to artists that have one or more aliases (can I coin the term Nom de Tune?)

[ginjaninja 536]

6 hours ago, sydlexius said:

Nom de Tune

[user24 85]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1993/05/31/nom-de-tune/

[sydlexius 241]

4 hours ago, user24 said:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1993/05/31/nom-de-tune/

Yeah, I found that after I typed it.  Only beaten by at least 30 years!

[Bigmack3000 84]

13 hours ago, sydlexius said:

Ultimately that issue can be fixed through an external tagger though.  That's an entirely different kettle of fish compared to artists that have one or more aliases (can I coin the term Nom de Tune?)

The issue would be fixed if Emby simply used the metadata tagger they assigned for music properly.  Mbz already accounts for "album artists" vs "artists" as well as "aliases".  It's all in the metadata that Emby already utilizes.  They just don't use it correclty.

[user24 85]

@sydlexius  Well - at least you were clever enough to think it up for yourself. I had to Google it before I figured out what you meant...