tfarrell 13 Posted May 3 Share Posted May 3 In my music collection I very frequently see multiple albums that should be the same album. It's clear to a human because they have the same album title and artwork. However, the different tracks are listed with different artists so they are all listed as different albums. This is very common with compilations or with Broadway cast recordings, where each track is listed with the artist that sang it.At the moment, I am looking at one album ("Autoharp Legacy") that Emby has separated into 28 different albums. This makes listening to an album with tracks in order (which is sometimes important, for example with Broadway cast recordings) pretty much impossible. Consequently, I don't feel like I can use Emby to play my music, even though doing so would be really convenient. I don't expect Emby to auto-detect this, although I could suggest ways of doing so. (You could compare the album cover file size and like six random pixels to make sure the album cover is the same, and check that the album title is the same, and if so you could make it one album.) I am willing to put in some work to select all the parts that should be one album and select a menu item to join them into one album, but the problem is that there isn't any option for this - if I select several albums, there is no way to combine them into one album. I would like that either Emby could recognize that albums with the same album title and cover are the same album and show them as one, or that I be able to use the interface to select and combine them while preserving the artist of each track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 3 Share Posted May 3 Hi there, have you checked the Album Artist and AlbumArtist embedded metadata on the problem albums? This needs to be the same, for all tracks on the Album, for Emby to recognise a complete Album. There is more info from Emby in the link below (and also elsewhere in the forums). https://emby.media/support/articles/Music-Naming.html An easy way is to use Mp3tag (or similar). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 4 Author Share Posted May 4 48 minutes ago, user24 said: Hi there, have you checked the Album Artist and AlbumArtist embedded metadata on the problem albums? This needs to be the same, for all tracks on the Album, for Emby to recognise a complete Album. There is more info from Emby in the link below (and also elsewhere in the forums). https://emby.media/support/articles/Music-Naming.html An easy way is to use Mp3tag (or similar). I understand that. My point is that it doesn't work. I have like 40 years worth of CD collecting that have been ripped into Emby, so there are VAST quantities of music - I could literally listen to music 24/7 for months and never repeat anything. The task of re-tagging everything to conform to Emby's artificial standard would take just this side of forever. Also, if I have: Track number: 1 Album name: My album Track name: My song Artist name: Sally Smith Location: d:/music/MyAlbum/01-my-song.mp3 and Track number: 2 Album name: My album Track name: Other song Artist name: John Doe Location: d:/music/MyAlbum/02-other-song.mp3 and I want to make these into one album in Emby, if I go and change all the artist names to "My album artist" to do so, then I have lost the names of the actual artists and can't search on them. It should be screamingly obvious to a human looking at the files that they belong to one album, but Emby will decide that it's two albums and there is no way to join them. I am proposing that there should be. You are telling me how it is. I understand that. I am proposing that it shouldn't be that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 The examples that you have given do not show an "Album Artist" tag, they just show "Album" and "Artist" tags. I am not suggesting that you change "my artist name" to "my album artist name" for the problem albums/tracks. Of course you should keep the correct individual Artist(s) for an individual Song. "Album Artist" is a distinct field/tag from "Artist" and "Album" - supported by Emby and most other music management platforms, for grouping an Albums tracks and keeping individual Artists for the individual Songs. You could use "Various Artists" as the "Album Artist" tag for compilation albums, E.g. Track number: 1 Album name: My album Track name: My song Artist name: Sally Smith Album Artist name: Various Artists Location: d:/music/MyAlbum/01-my-song.mp3 Track number: 2 Album name: My album Track name: Other song Artist name: John Doe Album Artist name: Various Artists Location: d:/music/MyAlbum/02-other-song.mp3 From what I understand, the folder/file structure/names don't matter greatly with the latest Emby version - it is the higher priority embedded tags that need to be correct. What are the Album Artist tags for the problem albums you have? How many albums have problems? What music tagging program do you use before importing into Emby? What does this show for Album Artist? I also have a decades-old music collection of 1000s of albums, but still learn something new about Emby and music curation every day. E.g. when I first imported music into Emby, I had circa 500 albums too many, due to 'hidden' AlbumArtist tags being different from 'visible' Album Artist tags. This was not Emby's fault, it was due to tag errors with my embedded metadata. Correcting the errors resolved most of the problems. Yes, it took a while, but was worth it - I rediscovered some old music and fixed up some other missing metadata fields while listening to it! With Mp3tag it is also possible to create auto Actions and Scripting Functions to make updating and changing tags more automatic and less manual. There's a learning curve involved, but it can be a useful method for updating tags with a bit less pain. I have updated batches of 10,000 tracks by running an Action. Set it going and then go and do something else for a few hours! If you provide some more info, with actual examples, then perhaps Emby or a community member will be able to further assist? (Apologies if I have still misunderstood the problem.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 4 Author Share Posted May 4 (edited) Quantity of albums that have the problem: hundreds. Enough that I'm not even going to go count them. Seriously, I've been collecting CDs for decades, and they weren't tagged with Emby in mind when they were ripped. What are the album artist tags for the problem albums I have? Seriously, I have hundreds, I'm not going to look them all up. What music tagging program do I use before importing into Emby? None, I ripped my CDs decades ago, it's not like I assumed that someday I'd be using them in Emby, and no previous program that I've had them in has had a problem with the albums. Emby does not seem to let me adjust the artist, either the album artist or the track artist. This tells me that Emby's metadata editor for music is inadequate, because it does not let you adjust the criteria on which it makes its decisions. BTW, thank you for recommending MP3Tag. I downloaded it, it is now looking at my library, and then I will start learning about it. Edited May 4 by tfarrell needed to add thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 4 Author Share Posted May 4 (What I am trying to say is, if you have to use a third party program to make appropriate changes, Emby's interface isn't good enough and my feature request therefore stands. A user should be able to make appropriate changes with the Emby interface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 (edited) Yes, I understand. Much of my really old music was initially ripped in WMA format (uugh!) About 10 years ago I converted it all to FLAC. I don't think the metadata will ever be fully complete and totally accurate! If your old music is mp3 and you still have the CDs, I would recommend to re-rip as lossless FLAC. It takes up more hard drive space (about half that of the original CD) but is much better sound quality than lossy mp3. You probably know this anyway. Definitely give Mp3tag a good try. I find it extremely useful. (Others will likely recommend MusicBrainz Picard, which is also very good). There are some Mp3tag 'traps' to be aware of, e.g. AlbumArtist vs Album Artist - you need to check the Extended Tags window to see both (unless you customise the default tag side panel). There are plenty of members here that can help with navigation/use of Mp3tag. While you can make some changes directly in Emby, I have found it's always best to use another program to save changes to embedded metadata. That way your music library will work in other software platforms as well. Emby changes are just stored in your Emby database, not the music files themselves. If you make changes just in Emby and then rescan your library, it will possibly revert back to what the embedded data in your files is. (Or, as you have found - Emby won't let you.) What did you use before Emby? I have tried too many to name them all... I used Asset uPnP for quite a while. Have used Plex on and off, but don't really like it, despite it having a few more useful music fields than Emby does. Emby is quite good. Roon is possibly the 'gold standard' but you have to pay 'gold prices' for it! Good luck with it all and trying Mp3tag. P.S. More tips... Just load in one problem album and experiment with that first, both in Mp3tag and Emby. Get one album fixed and then it will be easy to do the rest! You can't undo Mp3tag changes, so make a backup and 'hasten slowly' while you are learning it! Have fun! Edited May 4 by user24 Added P.S. Section Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 (edited) 13 hours ago, tfarrell said: I am looking at one album ("Autoharp Legacy") that Emby has separated into 28 different albums. Something else I just thought of that may help, based on the album that you mentioned... On Discogs (and Amazon) it is listed as a 3 CD set: Disc 1 (21 tracks) Disc 2 (22 tracks) Disc 3 (21 tracks) Depending on your metadata (even with 'correct' tagging) this album could be somewhat 'correctly' designated as: 1 album (64 tracks combined) 1 album (3 discs) (21 + 22 + 21 split) 3 albums (1 disc each) (21) + (22) + (21) depending upon how you would like to organise it for yourself. 28 albums is indeed strange and doesn't suggest a specific error with the tagging of (say) all tracks on 1 disc. A stab-in-the-dark is that both the Album Artist and AlbumArtist fields for this CD set for all tracks are blank. Hopefully Mp3tag will help with solving the issues? Edited May 4 by user24 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37250 Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 Right Artist and album Artist are things. You can change the album Artist to be consistent for all tracks while keeping separate artists for each. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 The Autoharp Legacy Album is also listed on MusicBrainz: https://musicbrainz.org/release/251d4c50-00a1-4db4-acff-56b89a047f5d You can use Tag Sources on Mp3tag (from the top menu bar) to fill in missing/incorrect metadata, as well as doing it manually. Yes, more work involved, but another option to possibly explore? Note: check that the MusicBrainz info is correct, as sometimes there are errors, or it may not have the metadata in the exact format you would like. Also, if you have enabled MusicBrainz and/or Discogs as a Metadata Downloader in your Emby Library Server Settings, this may automatically import the data for you, into your Emby library, and get many albums 'fixed' relatively quickly? (I would personally use Mp3tag and write the data into my music files themselves.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 5 Author Share Posted May 5 Quote If your old music is mp3 and you still have the CDs, I would recommend to re-rip as lossless FLAC. It takes up more hard drive space (about half that of the original CD) but is much better sound quality than lossy mp3. You probably know this anyway. There are a few problems with this. 1. I don't have the disk space. Since I bought my disks I have become very poor, and I can't afford the hard disks to do that. 2. After I ripped my disks I did a comparison of FLAC vs MP3 (with good bitrate) vs Vorbis. Vorbis won, I could get down to a very low bitrate before I actually heard degradation. Really I wish I had everything in Vorbis, not MP3 or FLAC, because it also took the least space and I could use the disk space just now. The reason I didn't do it at the time was that Vorbis wasn't playable on my iPod. Quote What did you use before Emby? I have tried too many to name them all... I used Asset uPnP for quite a while. Have used Plex on and off, but don't really like it, despite it having a few more useful music fields than Emby does. I used Plex to manage my collection. I like Plex. I have a lifetime license to it. (Don't have a license for Emby, although I did pay for the app for my Fire Stick. I don't have the money for it.) I had to stop using Plex because while I think it's superb for someone who doesn't want to spent a lot of time setting it up and has a smallish library, it couldn't at all cope with the size of my collection - for example, I have over 30,000 photos, and it would spend so much time indexing them that it wouldn't finish until after the next indexing was supposed to start. Plex didn't have a problem with my music collection. It wasn't perfect, but its default take on my collection was much better than Emby. If you mean what did I use to rip the music, the answer is iTunes because at the time I used Mac. I have since switched to PC, Android, etc. Quote Just load in one problem album and experiment with that first, both in Mp3tag and Emby. Get one album fixed and then it will be easy to do the rest! You can't undo Mp3tag changes, so make a backup and 'hasten slowly' while you are learning it! I pointed it at my music folder and let 'er rip, having gotten the program before your message. I regretted it in that it took forever to process all of my music. I am a computer programmer, so I'm good with software and used to the idea of "you changed it, you can't change it back." (about Autoharp Legacy) Quote 28 albums is indeed strange and doesn't suggest a specific error with the tagging of (say) all tracks on 1 disc. A stab-in-the-dark is that both the Album Artist and AlbumArtist fields for this CD set for all tracks are blank. I wasn't kidding when I said I have hundreds of albums with problems, so that one is a drop in the ocean for me. As a programmer I approach it as "there is a data problem." When I am trying to manually correct a data problem on that scale, I don't care about diagnosing the problem with each item (like that album), I merely observe that there is a problem and correct all data. Then if it works, I don't care what the specific problem was, whatever it was I fixed it. (Tag sources) I haven't tried to figure that out yet, thanks for pointing it out, I noticed but decided to leave it for later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8356 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 In the end everything has already been mentioned as compilation albums will have their own requirement to be merges as structure is irrelevant. Quote Tagging your albums and tracks should be straightforward with the possible exception of various artist or compilation albums. For these types of compilation albums if you want all tracks to show up as a single entity you want to make sure both the "album" and "album artist" fields are the same for all tracks. Otherwise the album will be split up for the various artists listed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37250 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 Quote Plex didn't have a problem with my music collection. It wasn't perfect, but its default take on my collection was much better than Emby. Actually, your perception of "much better" is what others would perceive as a flaw. They take the first album artist value and apply it to all songs in the same folder, thereby ignoring it for all subsequent ones. For someone with messy tags, this might make them think that Plex has great music handling, but for everyone else, it becomes a limitation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 5 Author Share Posted May 5 Quote Actually, your perception of "much better" is what others would perceive as a flaw. They take the first album artist value and apply it to all songs in the same folder, thereby ignoring it for all subsequent ones. For someone with messy tags, this might make them think that Plex has great music handling, but for everyone else, it becomes a limitation. It's a limitation for those with messy folder structure who want to dump everything in big folders and have their management program get it all right. It's a problem for those of us who have good folder structures and would like it to categorize our media well. I have all of my music in folders first by genre (like "classical" or "rock") then by album artist (like "Boston Symphony Orchestra") then by album (like "Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé") then individual files for individual tracks, named with the track number (like "01") and track name. My CDs were ripped with iTunes - if Emby can't handle files created by the single most popular CD ripping application, it has a Problem. Moreover the fact remains that the Emby UI does not allow correction of the actual data, even when we see that it's wrong. If I have to resort to use of a third party program to edit the metadata to make Emby happy with it, that is a UI failure. (I say that as someone who wrote his first computer program in 1974 on punch cards and has significant UI experience.) (I don't recommend punch cards as a UI. They kinda sucked.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 (edited) 2 hours ago, tfarrell said: I wasn't kidding when I said I have hundreds of albums with problems, so that one is a drop in the ocean for me Sure, many of us have 1000s of albums, with varying levels of metadata completeness. But repeating that you have hundreds of problem albums doesn't really help other community members with giving you some possible useful ideas of how to fix your specific problems. If it is a matter of older ripped compilation albums missing a "Various Artists" Album Artist tag, then this can be easily rectified in Mp3tag: Load in a batch of Albums (not your whole library - pick a folder from your good structure) Click on the Album Artist column to sort by Album Artist Select the blank ones as a group Add "Various Artists" to the Album Artist field in the LHS Tag Panel Save the changes Rescan the relevant folder in Emby from the folder tab (or refresh metadata - I never remember which to use!) If the problems are something else, then another solution is needed! Fixing the metadata of (say) 500 albums could be carried out in 50 days (spend 1 hour a day fixing 10 albums). Even if Emby could implement a request that would help, it might not be easy and may not be high priority, so you could be waiting for years! I don't have that much patience and will happily use third-party programs and 'workarounds' to get Emby to display my media, my way! For me, it's important to have consistency between my embedded metadata and my Emby database BUT I don't want Emby changing the metadata of my media. I would prefer to have complete control over this with third-party applications designed especially for this. Therefore, perhaps a different viewpoint on how the Emby UI should operate? Yeah, it's annoying with all the errors that need fixing, so Emby would "kinda suck" for you right now, I guess? Anyway, with your programming background, I expect you'll figure it out, one way or another! Edited May 5 by user24 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 5 Author Share Posted May 5 7 hours ago, user24 said: The Autoharp Legacy Album is also listed on MusicBrainz: https://musicbrainz.org/release/251d4c50-00a1-4db4-acff-56b89a047f5d You can use Tag Sources on Mp3tag (from the top menu bar) to fill in missing/incorrect metadata, as well as doing it manually. Yes, more work involved, but another option to possibly explore? Note: check that the MusicBrainz info is correct, as sometimes there are errors, or it may not have the metadata in the exact format you would like. Also, if you have enabled MusicBrainz and/or Discogs as a Metadata Downloader in your Emby Library Server Settings, this may automatically import the data for you, into your Emby library, and get many albums 'fixed' relatively quickly? (I would personally use Mp3tag and write the data into my music files themselves.) I checked, it's enabled in Emby already. I've figured it out for MP3Tag, and you're right, there's some work involved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37250 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 Let us know how you get on. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 12 minutes ago, tfarrell said: I've figured it out for MP3Tag, and you're right, there's some work involved. Metadata is like onion layers... You have it all working nicely and then change programs and start crying. When you have fixed up the problems, you peel back another layer of metadata and cry some more! Mp3tag is extremely powerful. I've been using it for years and likely only use it at a very basic level. Keep going... you'll get there! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 5 Author Share Posted May 5 Quote Yeah, it's annoying with all the errors that need fixing, so Emby would "kinda suck" for you right now, I guess? Yes, it does, at least for music. I love it for videos. Quote Anyway, with your programming background, I expect you'll figure it out, one way or another! The thing is, I'd just write some software to tag my files correctly (I've done similar things in the past), except that editing the tags in an mp3 file with software is a pain in the neck. I'm sure I could find a library to add to my software to do it for me, but I don't feel like bothering. Also it may cost money, which I don't have to throw at this project just now. I use a program to massage my videos into a naming scheme and file structure Emby likes because I found one that does a good job of it, but prior to that I had whipped together a little program that did some touchups to my existing naming to make it handle well by Plex (which I was using at the time) and deleted some unnecessary files I had generated when it found them. Anyway, thanks for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 6 minutes ago, tfarrell said: The thing is, I'd just write some software to tag my files correctly (I've done similar things in the past), except that editing the tags in an mp3 file with software is a pain in the neck. Perhaps check out some info here: https://docs.mp3tag.de/actions/ https://docs.mp3tag.de/format/ https://docs.mp3tag.de/scripting/ https://docs.mp3tag.de/mapping/ It may be helpful, and doesn't cost anything to use, or as you say, not worth bothering about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 123 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 (edited) Also, it could actually be a lot easier than what you may think... IF the problem with the Autoharp Legacy albums was a blank AlbumArtist field (???) AND you have many "Various Artists" albums with this same issue, THEN you could run this type of Action on all your Various Artists files (in large batches) without needing to check individual albums one-by-one. Action type: Format value Field: ALBUMARTIST Format string: $if2(%albumartist%,Various Artists) BTW - I didn't create this, I just asked Microsoft Copilot AI to create it for me. All I had to do was type it in to the appropriate boxes in Mp3tag. (It works - I tested it.) So not too painful! Edited May 6 by user24 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigga5 0 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 @tfarrellHave you tried Jellyfin, or perhaps something like Navidrome for your music management? In my experience, either one of those does a much better job of album organization regardless of whether your meta tags are perfect or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37250 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 7 hours ago, Tigga5 said: @tfarrellHave you tried Jellyfin, or perhaps something like Navidrome for your music management? In my experience, either one of those does a much better job of album organization regardless of whether your meta tags are perfect or not. The former is just our old code base from about five years ago, so I know it quite well. It's back from a time when we required a specific folder structure for music, so songs would get lumped into an album just by being in the same folder together. Now we've become fully tag driven and use all of the embedded information within your files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tfarrell 13 Posted May 6 Author Share Posted May 6 1 hour ago, Luke said: The former is just our old code base from about five years ago, so I know it quite well. It's back from a time when we required a specific folder structure for music, so songs would get lumped into an album just by being in the same folder together. Now we've become fully tag driven and use all of the embedded information within your files. So... it would work for me. Realistically, I don't want to use one program for my music and another for my videos - having one program was sorta the point of me having something like this in the first place - but it sounds like a hybrid approach - use the tags when they're there, see if anything can be deduced from the folder structure when they're not - might solve a lot of problems. And allow the metadata editor in the UI to adjust the tags in the music files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8356 Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 45 minutes ago, tfarrell said: And allow the metadata editor in the UI to adjust the tags in the music files. Personally hope this is never added. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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