Music compilations - 2 issues

[Nabukodonosor 13]

Hey guys. So I'm trying to make a music compilation from bunch of songs by various artists, to play it with the Symphonium app. With albums it works great, but not that ideal with compilations. So, the manual says:

"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."

I did that, using a tagging software, for both album and album artist I put "My compilation", and it works...but the thing I really don't like is the field below the song name where for the album says "My compilation". Is there a way to fix this because I would really like to know from which album is the song?

 

And the 2nd issue...I tag my songs, but Emby server pulls external IDs, like on my screenshot below, and ruins everything, because after that, every song is presented like a single album. Also, for some songs, my album and album artist fields get changed too. I tried checking "Lock this item to prevent future changes" but that gets unchecked after the next server syncing.

 

Any ideas how to fix these issues?

[user24 245]

Hi, for your first question here are a few thoughts...

The Album field in Emby will accept multiple values/tags. Therefore you could potentially tag a compiled group of Songs as (e.g.):

• Song 1 Album: My Compilation ; Original Album 1
• Song 2 Album: My Compilation ; Original Album 2

I did a very quick test (importing from Mp3tag) with these Emby results:

Sorry, I can't check Symphonium as I don't use it (and I don't have time for extensive testing right now). Therefore you may need to test this out yourself to see how it impacts on the rest of your Emby library with Albums, etc. but you should be able to retain your Compilation as a whole Album.

Does Symphonium read Emby Playlists?

If you have these songs on the original albums within Emby already, have you thought about creating compilation playlists rather than the compilation album approach? Even if they are just individual songs you have in a folder, you could still possibly create a Playlist rather than an Album???

Also, have you investigated Collections at all?

There may be a good combination of Album tagging, Playlists and/or Collections that could give the result you are after? Sometimes it takes a bit of experimenting... Cheers!

Edited December 31, 2024 by user24

[Nabukodonosor 13]

[quote]Does Symphonium read Emby Playlists?[/quote]

I think so. There is official Emby support for Symphonium.

I did read about Collections, but something was off for me, I can't remember what. I'll give it a shot once more. But I like your idea for multiple tags for Albums. Thanks.

[Neminem 893]

Why not just ask here ?

 

[user24 245]

1 hour ago, Nabukodonosor said:

I did read about Collections, but something was off for me, I can't remember what. I'll give it a shot once more. But I like your idea for multiple tags for Albums.

For a situation where you are compiling at least 73 Various Artist tracks into a group selection (based on your screenshot) to playback on a mobile device I would be looking at the following priority if I was doing something similar for myself:

1. Playlist
2. Collection
3. Custom Album (perhaps with dual tagging?)
4. Creative combination approach - any of the above, or something else???

BTW - I don't really use multiple Album tags (as yet), but I do make extensive use of multiple Album Artist tags to cross-reference Albums - but that's getting off your topic!!! Multiple tagging can be very effective, but you need to have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve and a good action plan - otherwise it's very easy to get messed up very quickly!!! 

I'll be interested to know what method ends up working for you...

[Nabukodonosor 13]

Playlists option didn't work put for me. Main reason: I couldn't find the way to refresh it when I add a new song.

Edited January 1 by Nabukodonosor

[Nabukodonosor 13]

Also, that multiple tag with ; didn't work, because Emby doesn't support multiple tags for album...only album artists. In your case, it just named the album "My Compilation ; Original Album 1"

[Nabukodonosor 13]

Is it possible that new songs can't be added to a created playlist?!

[user24 245]

Sorry to hear that the dual tagging didn't work out.

If you make a new playlist within Emby it should (hopefully) be easy to keep adding to it. If you have imported an m3u playlist this could be problematic?

There's a recent topic here that may be relevant:

If this doesn't help, then perhaps searching the forum for "add" AND "playlist" and you may find something to help?

Good luck!

[Luke 40114]

@Nabukodonosorhas this helped?

[Nabukodonosor 13]

No, actually nothing helped. I had to follow the manual and make sure that both the "album" and "album artist" fields are the same for all tracks. I have to live with the fact that I will not have the real album name displayed.

If I just placed all songs in one folder and tag them all properly how they should be tagged, Emby will display each song as a separate album, which is really badly designed if you ask me. So playlist is not an option because of that.

[Luke 40114]

On 1/6/2025 at 11:00 AM, Nabukodonosor said:

No, actually nothing helped. I had to follow the manual and make sure that both the "album" and "album artist" fields are the same for all tracks. I have to live with the fact that I will not have the real album name displayed.

If I just placed all songs in one folder and tag them all properly how they should be tagged, Emby will display each song as a separate album, which is really badly designed if you ask me. So playlist is not an option because of that.

@NabukodonosorYou can have the real artist name displayed by using the artist tag. That's what this is for. The albumartist and artist tags are two different things that have separate meaning. Have you tried this?

[Nabukodonosor 13]

Yes, but if I want to have multiple artists in one folder (for example a compilation of 100 songs, different artists, some artist have 1 song, some 3, some 4), and I want it displayed as a single album (I don't want each song to be presented as a separate album, which Emby does btw) I have to put the same name in album and album artist tag. That what Emby manual says:

"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."

[Luke 40114]

3 hours ago, Nabukodonosor said:

Yes, but if I want to have multiple artists in one folder (for example a compilation of 100 songs, different artists, some artist have 1 song, some 3, some 4), and I want it displayed as a single album (I don't want each song to be presented as a separate album, which Emby does btw) I have to put the same name in album and album artist tag. That what Emby manual says:

"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."

Ok so why not just do that then?  And if you follow my advice about the artist tag, then you’ll still be able to see the original artist next to each track, while also keeping them in one album.

[Nabukodonosor 13]

I did that. But as I said earlier, I lost the album name info when I play a song from that compilation. Which is, in my opinion, bad design. Maybe the same could be accomplished just by assigning the same name for album artist, not both album artist AND album.

[Luke 40114]

1 hour ago, Nabukodonosor said:

I did that. But as I said earlier, I lost the album name info when I play a song from that compilation. Which is, in my opinion, bad design. Maybe the same could be accomplished just by assigning the same name for album artist, not both album artist AND album.

If only the album tag is incorporated, then you'd end up with multiple albums of the same name all combined together (e.g. Greatest Hits).