Problems with album release dates

[catch42 3]

I like to sort music albums by release date and have noticed that many albums are out of order.  For example, I will see albums listed in descending order like so (year only):  2018, 2018, 2017, 2014, 2016, 2018...

 

I have checked the metadata and see that they all have the release year field populated correctly, but only about half have a value for release date. But, it's not necessarily the ones without a release date that are grossly out of order.  So, I guess the 1st question is why isn't the scraper pulling the release date off of musicbrainz?  (Perhaps because there are different dates for different countries?)  And next, why aren't the albums sorting correctly, at least by year?  If the blank release date field is causing the problem, perhaps we could have an option to sort by year, since that seems to be reliably matched for each album.

 

Thanks

[Luke 37065]

Hi there, can we please look at a specific example? Does it have a music brianz Id in the emby metadata editor? Thanks !

[VaporTrail 66]

Don't mean to butt in, but I just sorted albums by release date (ascending) and noticed it's out of whack despite Musicbrainz ID's present. It appears that Emby 3.6 beta grabs the YEAR field from ID3 tag, but doesn't enter Release Date from Musicbrainz?

 

Test Example?

The Beatles - Revolver (1966) Musicbrainz ID - 9ae03d03-7898-45ab-b89d-3bd9d8135a7e

The Beatles - Rubber Soul (1965) Musicbrainz ID - ab94add5-0a4a-4bf6-843b-c0edf41eeae4

 

[d00zah 128]

I mentioned this MANY moons ago. ALL music is properly tagged via MBPicard (yes, they have MB IDs). Sort doesn't appear to be by title, or date. Happens throughout my music library.

 

Note: all examples have '9999-12-31' as a release date (not available in tags).

 

[Happy2Play 8282]

To me it looks more like a Musicbrainz issue on the release being used.
 
As shown in this example.
 
The Beatles - Revolver (1966) Musicbrainz ID - 9ae03d03-7898-45ab-b89d-3bd9d8135a7e

Well that id is for the 1982 release not the 1966 release.

 

So in this example there already is a miss match in metadata.  As year in image above is 1966 but is linked to 1982 version on musicbrainz.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Happy2Play

[d00zah 128]

Should that matter? (I'm guessing it does, as you raise the point.) I was under the impression that that detail ('year') was tag driven? Personally, I'm interested in displaying/sorting by the original album release year, rather than a particular pressing/rerelease date & tag my music accordingly, so I'm interested in the outcome of this discussion.

[VaporTrail 66]

Thanks for pointing that out @@Happy2Play.

 

The version of Revolver I have is from the Beatles Mono box set (released in 1988), which is sourced from Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (released in 1986), so while Musicbrainz chose the proper release, it's improperly dated 1982.

 

That said, in MP3tag I added 1966 for "Year" field, as I want my albums to follow chronological order of original release. If Emby could sort by ID3 tag "Year" field, that would give me the control I hope for.

[VaporTrail 66]

@@Happy2Play How about this possibility?

 

1. Get Musicbrainz to sync release date metadata as intended. Currently values scrape as mm/dd/yyyy. (meaning no actual data)

 

2. If YEAR field in ID3 tag is populated, this value overrides Musicbrainz value in Emby "release date" sort. (Emby already sees these as separate, so can be hierarchical)

 

3. If no mm/dd values in YEAR field in ID3 tag (only year), auto-populate 01/01 + the manually-entered /yyyy value (ie. 1966) from ID3 tag for NFO.

 

Same should happen for audiobooks content type.

Edited December 14, 2018 by VaporTrail

[Luke 37065]

We'll look into this, thanks. Currently musicbrainz is only used to fill in musicbrainz id's so that the other music metadata providers can utilize those Id's. Thanks.

[scotthews 1]

I'm very new to Emby as recently moved over from Plex.  All looking great so far with the exception that my music will not order properly when selecting 'Release Date' in reverse order.  I've checked the metadata and it appears to be completed with the correct dates, but the view is out of date in that albums with a release date of 01/12/2010 appear before albums with a release date of 01/10/2017.  Anyone got any idea on what I'm doing wrong?  Here's an example of the view:

 

 

[PenkethBoy 2063]

see the same with albums (not something i sort by that often)

 

 

my list restarts at 2019 part way through the list

[PenkethBoy 2063]

The release date sort works off PremiereDate from the db not the YEAR - and a reasonable chunk of my albums have a year but not a releasedate in the db - because MBz does not always have a release date 

 

So - if data is missing and thats likely in most if not all cases as nothings perfect - the sort by Release date needs to be adjusted to say year and use the Production Year from the db so at least all the albums from year x show up together

 

or something else to make the sort consistent

 

One thing if you look at the album artist home screen the albums are sorted by Production Year

[scotthews 1]

So what solved this, was to edit the meta-data for the items that were incorrectly positioned and clear the 'Release Date' field.  This then allowed the album to appear in the correct location based upon the 'Year' field.  Basically a 'release Date' on music albums screws up the ordering.

[Luke 37065]

Yea what's happening is that sort order is going by the release date field first, then the release year, and then lastly the sort title.

 

What this means is that for your albums if some have the release date but some don't, the you'll likely see unexpected results.