Artist name differing artist folder name results in two artists listed

[elektrokokke 1]

Hi!

First of all, Emby has been a very nice experience for me so far. Never regretted purchasing premium.

I have, however, one small problem which is sometimes bothering me. I though I'd try and ask, maybe there is a fix.

I am using Emby for music exclusively. My folder structure is artist/album/track. However, special characters in artist names and album name I replace with underscores for their folder name, including spaces.

For example: "...And you will know us" results in a folder name "_And_you_will_know_us".

As a result, i have two artists in the artists list, one for the correct artist name which is in the tracks' metadata, and one for the folder name (shown in all uppercase). The folder name artist is showing the correct artist art, but the artist with the metadata tag name is not. Also, in the metadata tag name artist (i.e., the one with the correct name) does not have any albums associated, instead all albums are listed only under the "appears on" list (I use it in German, where it is called "Erscheint auf").

I would really like to see only the correct artist name, and have the albums and artwork associated correctly, and I want to avoid having to change the artist metadata to conform to valid folder names. Is there a way to achieve that?

What I find strange is that for albums, this problem does not occur, despite me using the same name to folder mapping.

Thanks for any help on this!

[user24 199]

Hi there, if you haven't yet seen the basic info Emby provides for music naming, you can find it here:

https://emby.media/support/articles/Music-Naming.html

From what you have mentioned, it seems that you could have a blank Album Artist field/tag for the problem entries?

When this is the case, Emby may revert to a parent level folder name for the info it imports.

Also, when Album Artist is blank (or something different to the individual track Artist), then the Albums (and Singles) will likely be listed under Appears On, instead of Albums, on the Artist detail pages.

If the Album Artist field/tag metadata is correct, then it should not matter what the folder is named as.

I would recommend checking and updating your tags in Mp3tag or Picard first and then rescanning your library, rather than just changing the info within Emby. (Do you use Mp3tag or Picard or another music tagging program?)

(Note: If using Mp3tag, AlbumArtist and Album Artist are different fields)

If the problem is not related to Album Artist issues, then you may need to provide more specific info of an exact example problem showing the embedded metadata (e.g. from Mp3tag) and what appears in Emby.

Let us know if this helps and how you get on. Cheers!

[elektrokokke 1]

Hi!

Thanks for the explanation, that totally makes sense now I think about it. And actually, I don't have the ALBUMARTIST tag set, because I am using lltag, which does not seem to know it.

I tried to fix this with some example album, by setting the ALBUMARTIST correctly, but now I can't figure out how to update the artist's name in Emby. I tried rescanning the library, and also update metadata on the artist, but the artist name does not change (still the same as the folder name).

Will try with setting up a new library...

[Neminem 617]

Try updating the tracks under album.

If that works, you can multi select all tracks, and update them.

[elektrokokke 1]

Thanks, I tried that, but it does not work :-(.

I also tried with creating a new library, but there everything is the same as in my previous library.

What would happen if I deleted the old library and created it new? Would I keep my favorites and playlists?

[user24 199]

31 minutes ago, elektrokokke said:

I tried to fix this with some example album

24 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Try updating the tracks under album.

Another way that works well to update an individual album (as opposed to your whole library) is to update it from the Folder menu tab. Just go down from the top level in your structure until you get to the parent folder (e.g. Artist or Album) to update accordingly, with all the underlying folders. There should be no need to delete your existing library and start over completely.

Edited September 30 by user24

[user24 199]

33 minutes ago, elektrokokke said:

I am using lltag

I am not familiar with lltag at all, so can't help you out with this.

If you are going to be using Emby extensively for music, then it might be worth learning Picard and/or Mp3tag.

Emby utilises a lot of music data from MusicBrainz. Both Picard and Mp3tag can be useful for semi-automatically adding the MusicBrainz info to your music files as embedded metadata, which Emby can then read and automatically import. 

Both programs are extremely powerful, but just learning some of the basics around MusicBrainz can help enormously with getting the best of music with Emby.

Edited September 30 by user24

[elektrokokke 1]

Thanks for the suggestions. Using MusicBrainz Picard did not make a difference, though.

This is how I was able to fix it (for one example artist):

I moved the artist's folder to some location outside my library, then rescanned the folder as proposed above. I noticed afterwards that the artist was still listed under "Artists" and "Album artists", although there were no files anymore. I manually deleted the artist, then moved the folder back to its previous location, then rescanned the folder. Now I have the correct artist name.

I cannot, however, reproduce this behaviour... If I move the folder away again and rescan, the artist is now gone. Strange.

I hope I won't need to go through that for all of my artists.

What would happen to my favorites and playlists if I deleted my library and then recreated it with the same folder structure?

UPDATE: tried it with a different artist after adding the ALBUMARTIST tag. Move the folder out of the library, rescan, manually delete the artist, move the folder back, rescan, now the artist shows the correct name.

Edited September 30 by elektrokokke

[user24 199]

28 minutes ago, elektrokokke said:

What would happen to my favorites and playlists if I deleted my library and then recreated it with the same folder structure?

Perhaps have a look at this as a starting point:

Configuration Backup | Emby Documentation

Save music favourites data - FreeBSD - Emby Community

Beyond that, someone more knowledgeable than me, in this area, may be able to give more specific advice!!!

[Luke 38508]

8 hours ago, elektrokokke said:

Thanks, I tried that, but it does not work :-(.

I also tried with creating a new library, but there everything is the same as in my previous library.

What would happen if I deleted the old library and created it new? Would I keep my favorites and playlists?

Hi, if you edited the track files, then that will work just fine, as will running a normal library scan.

[elektrokokke 1]

Thanks for all the help, this has been very useful information!