Sort music by composer

[timlance 10]

Nope. The below screenshot does not show two more items after Identify: Refresh Metadata & Share.

I tried Add to Collection, created a new one, but the collection just has this page.

Also tried adding to a Playlist which just created a list of all the "songs".

Edited June 4, 2022 by timlance

[Luke 36990]

1 minute ago, timlance said:

Nope. The below screenshot does not show two more items after Identify: Refresh Metadata & Share.

OK so that's your issue. In order for album to be created, your audio files need to be tagged with both album and albumartist values. Are they?

[timlance 10]

Yes. Every single track has Artist and AlbumArtist tags. Does Emby require, as does Plex, that AlbumArtist (or Artist?) be the composer name? If so, and this is why I quickly quit Plex, there is no way in Hades I'm going to edit 1 TB worth of files.

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by timlance

[Luke 36990]

32 minutes ago, timlance said:

Yes. Every single track has Artist and AlbumArtist tags. Does Emby require, as does Plex, that AlbumArtist (or Artist?) be the composer name? If so, and this is why I quickly quit Plex, there is no way in Hades I'm going to edit 1 TB worth of files.

 

album tag is likely what is missing. The artist tag is optional, but the album and albumartist tags need to be filled in order for albums to get created in Emby.

Quote

Does Emby require, as does Plex, that AlbumArtist (or Artist?) be the composer name?

No, but it has to be present, and the albumartist has to be the same for each track in the album.

[timlance 10]

Nuts. I was a little bit hoping it was the composer/albumartist thing so we would then have a solution to this mystery. Even if it sucked for me at least we could be done with this.

One of my careers was a librarian for almost 20 years. By training if not nature I can be meticulous. I was an excellent cataloger. Compared to correct/efficient cataloging, tagging is a breeze. I can assure you that each of my files has Album, Artist, AlbumArtist, and Composer tags complete and properly matching. Such is critical in classical when one might have more than one version of a work. For example, I have 13 different recordings of Beethoven's 9th symphony. Without correct Artist tags (i.e. conductor,/orchestra in the case of symphonies) the library would be a hellish impossible mess as besides the work/album being the same name the tracks all have the same name.

[Luke 36990]

13 hours ago, timlance said:

Nope. The below screenshot does not show two more items after Identify: Refresh Metadata & Share.

I tried Add to Collection, created a new one, but the collection just has this page.

Also tried adding to a Playlist which just created a list of all the "songs".

Are you sure you opened the context menu of the song? This looks like the context menu of the artist.

[Vicpa 550]

Hi,

@Luke if I understand correctly, you are trying to satisfy this request in the emby api which negatively impacts all other types of music except "Classical" (It really is a tag issue)

@timlanceDo you have a screenshot of the display you are looking for in another app?

Using emby excellent support for multiple artists and tag capture you may get close to what you are looking for. 

A simple example:  composer "Scott Joplin" 

Is this close to what you are looking for? 

Joplin shows up under all three "views" albumartist, artist ,composer

Click.

Click on the Album and the result relevant details. 

The performing artist is correctly credited, easy navigation with the links etc.

There is obviously a similar grouping by Artist "Dick Hyman"

Composer tags are at the track level.  It would be unreasonably to expect emby to group them into any king of album display. 

You can control the display via the file tags. In the above example "Scott Joplin" is tagged as an Albumartist.

-vcpa

 

 

 

[Luke 36990]

I'm just asking questions to see what his metadata looks like, but the reasons I mentioned above are the likely reasons for albums not being created.

[timlance 10]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Are you sure you opened the context menu of the song? This looks like the context menu of the artist.

It's the context menu on the composer page. I just picked one of the songs listed and then clicked its three dots - while there are more items/options listed there is no albums.

[timlance 10]

Yes, Vicpa, that first image is exactly what I was expecting.

To be clear, I do NOT have any composer name in artist or album artist tags. I have the composer name in the composer tag only.

[timlance 10]

Success, sort of.

I setup a small test library of classical and non-classical. I changed the AlbumArtist tag to composers' names. Boom! Works great: select by Composers and there are all the expected albums.

An observation: Actually wouldn't be all that hard to edit the tag as it can be done in batches. Load all classical in tagging app, sort by composer select albumartist, paste in composer name. Could probably do entire library during a baseball game.

But if I understand correctly, the above should not be necessary?

[Luke 36990]

1 hour ago, timlance said:

Success, sort of.

I setup a small test library of classical and non-classical. I changed the AlbumArtist tag to composers' names. Boom! Works great: select by Composers and there are all the expected albums.

An observation: Actually wouldn't be all that hard to edit the tag as it can be done in batches. Load all classical in tagging app, sort by composer select albumartist, paste in composer name. Could probably do entire library during a baseball game.

But if I understand correctly, the above should not be necessary?

What was in the albumartist tag before?

[timlance 10]

The actual album artist.

Most of the time the tags for album artist and artist are the same.  But there are times when the artist will be somewhat different. Beethoven’s 9th is an easy example. The conductor & orchestra would be in both tags for all four tracks. But the 4th track also has 4 singers so I would add their names to the artist tag such that the artist tag would be soloist’s names, conductor, orchestra.

[Vicpa 550]

9 hours ago, timlance said:

Success, sort of.

I setup a small test library of classical and non-classical. I changed the AlbumArtist tag to composers' names. Boom! Works great: select by Composers and there are all the expected albums.

An observation: Actually wouldn't be all that hard to edit the tag as it can be done in batches. Load all classical in tagging app, sort by composer select albumartist, paste in composer name. Could probably do entire library during a baseball game.

 

Hi @timlance

I would consider just adding the Composer to the album artist In the example I gave the album artist is "Scott Joplin, Dick Hyman". You could select then either the composers or actual album artist and have expected albums.

"But if I understand correctly, the above should not be necessary?"

My composer tags are at track/song/ level. Which provides challenges if you programmatically try to group them into albums.

1) it adds value for classical music.

2) It shouldn't negatively impact functionality for other music genres.

@Lukeand the emby team are trying to fulfill this request. 

Perhaps we could review/restate the user requirements for this request?

I see alot of value in having composers in emby. My expected results for a Jazz and Rock heavy library may be somewhat different.

@Luke does this make sense to you

-vicpa

Edited June 6, 2022 by Vicpa

[timlance 10]

@Vicpa   When you say your composer tags are at "track/song/ level" does that mean you have the composer tag filled with the composer's name for every track? I'm sorry but I don't know how/where else a composer tag would be. So, yes, each classical track has a composer tag filled in.

Edited June 6, 2022 by timlance

[Vicpa 550]

Hi

That is actually the issue. How do you determine the "Album Composer"?  

The music I listen to generally has 1-10+ different composers per album. None should be treated similar to album artist or artist. They are track relationships like performers that add a lot of supplemental value, but are not critical.

For Classical Music they are obviously are Critical.

In the perfect simple solution both you and the emby team would need to do a couple of things.

You would have to add a custom tag like "AlbumComposer" value= xyzComposerName.

emby would need to read that tag and only create a relationship between a composer and an album based on that. Ignoring the regular "Composer" tag completely in in the album artist and artist views. 

"AlbumComposer" would be Linked to the emby "AlbumArtist" you would get the result you are looking for. Other type of genres would be unaffected as they not have an "AlbumComposer" tag.

emby is currently uniformly linking Composer to emby "Artist" which is breaking base functionality.

If you want emby to try to create an "AlbumComposer" based on the track composer tags. @Luke that needs to be an optional thing most users would never use it.

I don't know how feasible it is for you to add a tag. You said it was simple to change the "AlbumArtist" hopefully it would be the same for adding a tag.

 

Just looking for something that works for everybody.

Thanks

-vicpa.

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Vicpa

[timlance 10]

Thanks for the elucidation (is that even a word?!). Rather, thanks for elucidating. But, since this thread began with the original poster in 2015 stating, "For us people who love to listen to classical music, we need to be able to sort the music by composer and not album or interpreter." and then on December 6, 2020, Luke saying, "Support for composers is coming in Emby Server 4.6" I assumed it would now be as expected. Otherwise it was already behaving as you describe.

[Luke 36990]

On 6/6/2022 at 12:37 AM, timlance said:

The actual album artist.

Most of the time the tags for album artist and artist are the same.  But there are times when the artist will be somewhat different. Beethoven’s 9th is an easy example. The conductor & orchestra would be in both tags for all four tracks. But the 4th track also has 4 singers so I would add their names to the artist tag such that the artist tag would be soloist’s names, conductor, orchestra.

Copying the composer into the albumartist tag is not necessary. Since you say there is no context menu option to view the album from the song, my guess is Emby Server currently sees the albumartist tag for those tracks as being empty. I would just make sure that it's not empty, but it does not have to be the same value as the Composer.

[timlance 10]

3 hours ago, Luke said:

Copying the composer into the albumartist tag is not necessary. Since you say there is no context menu option to view the album from the song, my guess is Emby Server currently sees the albumartist tag for those tracks as being empty. I would just make sure that it's not empty, but it does not have to be the same value as the Composer.

It appears then that I am out of luck.

[Luke 36990]

22 hours ago, timlance said:

It appears then that I am out of luck.

Hi, why would you say that?

[timlance 10]

Haha. Because I still am not seeing what I should/need to see and I've assumed we're out of ideas.

[Luke 36990]

3 minutes ago, timlance said:

Haha. Because I still am not seeing what I should/need to see and I've assumed we're out of ideas.

Can you comment on what I said previously:

Quote

Copying the composer into the albumartist tag is not necessary. Since you say there is no context menu option to view the album from the song, my guess is Emby Server currently sees the albumartist tag for those tracks as being empty. I would just make sure that it's not empty, but it does not have to be the same value as the Composer.

Is this what is happening?

[timlance 10]

You mean this when you ask me to comment? "I would just make sure that it's not empty,"

I don't know how many times I have to say this - for every classical audio file:

The composer tag has the composer's name.

The albumartist tag has the artist(s) name(s).

The artist tag has the same data as albumartist, plus any others specific to that track (eg. Beethoven's 9th symphony which has soloists' names added for the 4th movement (i.e. track/file)).

I do not have the results that I expected. Clicking Composers gives me a list of tagged composers but clicking any given one does not give albums, just 'Songs' and 'More like this'. I see no difference compared to how things were before the 4.7 update. I assumed the composer thing was updated as in September above you said, in response to my posting about this earlier, "It will be improved for the next release of the server".

Edited June 8, 2022 by timlance

[Luke 36990]

Can you provide a sample track for testing? Thanks.

[timlance 10]

Fsck me! I’m getting old. So many times I have thought that I should offer to do that.

When I get home I will add one.