Add a specific content type for classical music

[FrostByte 5049]

Yes a composer field makes sense.

 

Thanks.  It would help when looking at Now Playing.  I think most people who listen to classical want to know the composer when listening

[Craftymum 0]

I am new to Emby and have been toying with this and Plex recently but the biggest drawback to both has been the lack of consideration for classical music.  when I listen to music, I want to be able to search for music by composer first Bach or Beethoven then chose the work.  So far, I cannot find any way to do this without totally reorganising my music (currently in itunes - but hey it's got to be somewhere!) 

 

I can see lots of posts asking for some changes to incorporate more tags, and a few comments from System Architect that this would be a good idea - but I need to know it is actually going to happen before I sign up as over $100 is significant for me.

 

So please - is this on the cards or not?

[Luke 37049]

Yes it is.

[chander421 10]

Yes it is.

 

Finally! Nice! Thanks!

[daedalus 430]

Finally! Nice! Thanks!

i wouldn't be too excited until you see some real progress

[Craftymum 0]

Yes it is.

Fab thanks for the prompt response!  - how long are we likely to have to wait, do I need to make myself a work around solution or is this likely to launch soon?

[llondru 3]

Second this ... I have 500+ cd's pending to rip to a NAS, and I cannot begin until I figure it if it's worth it ... I would hate not to have the music sorted by composer... this is such a basic thing 

[Luke 37049]

 Support for composers is coming in Emby Server 4.6:

 

[adamstewiegreen 147]

Are you going to expand title tags as well?

Also, it would be helpful to find a way to better navigate larger cd collections.  Being able to name individual discs - and search for them - would be super helpful.

Cheers

[ginjaninja 533]

This might help the discussion, Musicbrainz/Picard has a plugin for classical music.

in its default state it changes these tags

to these tags

Summary of changes

the plugin has more behaviour options than you can shake a stick at

this example may not be fully featured because it depends of the musicbrainz data for the track (and i dont understand classical to find a better example)

Perhaps one way forward quickly and effectively would be for a classical/?jazz? buff to give it a go and

• asses whether the plugin provides the granularity required for classical/?jazz?
• asses whether there is a configuration that provides the required granularity without changing tags that Emby already uses, (in a way that would require different treatment from a pop/rock library)

 

If the classical/?jazz? community can agree on a workable tag configuration (perhaps compatible with this plugin and current emby tagging*) (perhaps documented from must have to nice to have) that would help.

if a tag configuration compatible with this plugin (with an agreed config) can be found it will

• act as a standard to help people adopt/agree to a tagging standard
• allow people to tag their library very quickly

(*special consideration is required for eg. artist, artists, albumartist, albumartists, composer as emby already uses these tags to designate aspects of music already**)

the other part of the conversation which seems missing is classical buffs need to agree, based on an agreed required granularity for tagging, what views of the data is required to make a classical library effective (high priority vs lower priority).

**If the clasical tagging could be made consistent with existing 'pop/rock' tagging then i suspect you will get want you want quicker as less development will be required (guesstimate).

TLDR Anything the classical buffs can do to define/agree the granularity of tags required and the ui design to consume this will help. Conforming to the musicbrainz standard if workable might be the quickest way to gain agreement.

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by ginjaninja

[Jägs 72]

I'm relatively new to music with Emby, though I've been using it for years with films.  I'm currently using Subsonic solely for music, but want to move away to something non-Java based that either has a great mobile app or supports the Subsonic API.  That said, I welcome the addition of the Composer tag, as few media streamers support it, currently!  I'm running the beta to play around with it.

One other tag I'd love to see supported is the "Movement" tag, though I'm not sure how this would be handled in Emby "under the hood."

For those who do not listen to a lot of classical music, multi-movement pieces are somewhat of the norm, rather than the exception.  For example, 

Vivaldi's Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "Spring" (La primavera)

1. Allegro (in E major)
2. Largo e pianissimo sempre (in C♯ minor)
3. Allegro pastorale (in E major)

But this also happens in jazz and in some popular music as well.

I may be in the minority, but when I shuffle, say, a playlist of baroque music, it'd be great to have an option to shuffle the works, but not the movements.  In other, say the next shuffled piece up is the Vivaldi's concerto above.  I'd like to listen to each movement of the work in proper order (Allegro, then Largo and finally, Allegro pastorale).  This is something iTunes can currently do:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3121662/how-to-better-organize-classical-music-in-itunes.html

Assuming your music is properly tagged, of course.

It would be fantastic if this behavior could be considered for Emby.  I would then only have to worry about running one media streaming server; one that unifies all of my media. 

Edited January 16, 2021 by Jägs

[Luke 37049]

4 hours ago, Jägs said:

I'm relatively new to music with Emby, though I've been using it for years with films.  I'm currently using Subsonic solely for music, but want to move away to something non-Java based that either has a great mobile app or supports the Subsonic API.  That said, I welcome the addition of the Composer tag, as few media streamers support it, currently!  I'm running the beta to play around with it.

One other tag I'd love to see supported is the "Movement" tag, though I'm not sure how this would be handled in Emby "under the hood."

For those who do not listen to a lot of classical music, multi-movement pieces are somewhat of the norm, rather than the exception.  For example, 

Vivaldi's Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "Spring" (La primavera)

1. Allegro (in E major)
2. Largo e pianissimo sempre (in C♯ minor)
3. Allegro pastorale (in E major)

But this also happens in jazz and in some popular music as well.

I may be in the minority, but when I shuffle, say, a playlist of baroque music, it'd be great to have an option to shuffle the works, but not the movements.  In other, say the next shuffled piece up is the Vivaldi's concerto above.  I'd like to listen to each movement of the work in proper order (Allegro, then Largo and finally, Allegro pastorale).  This is something iTunes can currently do:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3121662/how-to-better-organize-classical-music-in-itunes.html

Assuming your music is properly tagged, of course.

It would be fantastic if this behavior could be considered for Emby.  I would then only have to worry about running one media streaming server; one that unifies all of my media. 

So essentially they're chunks of songs that should always stay together, in sequence, even when shuffled, right?

[ginjaninja 533]

@Luke

@Jägs

mp3tag tags point of view

Re Movement

it seems that there are movement fields built into ID3v2.3 and 2.4**

 

Picards work and movement plugin, seems to conform to mp3tag's understanding of the standard.

Spoiler

 

As an aside the plugin also conforms to apples custom TXXX_SHOWMOVEMENT Flag

Quote

SHOWMOVEMENT. if it is set to 1, it will show movement in the iTunes otherwise it will show song name.

It seems ITUNES uses this flag when set to 1 to replace? TIT2 (title in ffprobe) with MVNM

 

Re: Work

For mp3 mp3tag and picard just seems to use a custom tag TXXX_WORK (FFPROBE see as WORK)

Itunes may use TIT1 (not sure what ffprobe would see, anyone with an itunes file may be able to embed 'work' and share for analysis.)

**it seems that FFPROBE chooses not to extract the ID3v2.X movement tags.

whilst other tools do see Movement Name / MVNM id3 tag

not the first time that ffprobe has come up short for music. Given that there is a standard for movement tags, reading the standard seems like the only practical way to go, if support for movement were to be introduced.

 

 

[Jägs 72]

14 hours ago, Luke said:

So essentially they're chunks of songs that should always stay together, in sequence, even when shuffled, right?

Basically, yeah.  Movements can be quite large, though, and can stand on their own, so I hesitate to call them chunks, but the concept is sound:  stay together, in sequenced, even when shuffled.

In terms of the "always" part, though, it'd be great to have a toggle for this (e.g., "group multi-movement works") during playback, just to give users the flexibility to control this.  So, I imagine the behavior would be that if Emby detects the presence of the movement tag, and this option was selected, it would group the entire work together during playback; otherwise, it'd play them as it currently does.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Jägs
typos

[Jägs 72]

Just an addendum to my post above, here's a screenshot of how you can control shuffle playback in iTunes/Music.  So, basically, the user can choose between Songs, Albums, or Groupings (which includes movements).  It'd be fantastic if Emby could replicate this functionality.

 

[Dullard 4]

Composers is working wonderfully!  Because I am no better than anyone else, I am never satisfied.  Now i would like a tab for conductor, ensemble, and soloists too!  Although I can live with it how it is.  If these tabs are added, I would add one comment.  Please pay attention to the guide Musicbrainz uses for setting the tags for classical pieces (and not that classical musicbrainz plugin which mangles things horribly).  Then I think a music library switch would be sufficient rather than a whole new content type.  Something like:  🞕 Files are tagged using Musicbrainz Classical Guidelines.