How to organize music albums with multiple artists

[cyfreezer 0]

Hi community,

 

I have one question regarding the media library structure for music. According to the wiki at the github project page the recommended way to organise music is:

 

\Music
   \Artist Name
      \Album Name
         1- Song.mp3
         2- Song.mp3

 

But what's about albums with multiple artists like compilations or original soundtracks? What is the recommended way to organize those albums? If I create a folder for soundtracks and compilations mediabrowser detects those folders as artists! 

 

Regards,

cyfreezer

[FrostByte 5257]

I use whatever musicbrainz files them under which is usually Various Artists

[swhitmore 781]

I also use the 'Album Artist' as Various Artists and the 'Artist' as the actual artist.

[Deathsquirrel 744]

Use MP3 tag or something similar to populate Artist and Album Artist values as you like.  I typically use the same format described by swhitmore above.

[FrostByte 5257]

He's talking organizing folder names I believe, not id tags.  The second tier folder typically matches the Album Artist in your id tags derived from musicbrainz or whatever you are using as your primary source for metadata (mbz is the default)

 

\Music

   \Various Artists

        \Album Name

             1-song1.mp3

             2-song2.mp3

[cyfreezer 0]

Yes my issue is about folder names. Naming the Folder "Various Artists" is a good solution for this. One drawback of this solution is that I can not organize the music my way. "Various Artists" has no meaning. It would be much better if I could use folder names like "Soundtracks" or "Compilations" to find the album quckly on disk. What I can do solve this is to create multiple music Folders like this:

 

\Soundtracks

   \Various Artists

        \Album Name

             1-song1.mp3

             2-song2.mp3

 

\Compilations

   \Various Artists

        \Album Name

             1-song1.mp3

             2-song2.mp3

 

So this could be a solution to me. Thanks for this hit!

 

But one question remains. How to organize music traks which belong to no album. Is there also a solution for this?

[swhitmore 781]

I guess you could have a folder called 'Singles'?

[cyfreezer 0]

Yes I could. But if I do this Mediabrowser detects the folder named "Singles" as the album. How to prevent this?

[Deathsquirrel 744]

I typically identify what album the song is from and create an appropriate folder structure for that album.  You end up with an album with only one or two songs but it works fine.

[FrostByte 5257]

Can they all just be placed under Various Artists with no album folder?  

[cyfreezer 0]

Can they all just be placed under Various Artists with no album folder?  

Yes but then mediabrowser detects "Various Artists" as album, which is not correct.

 

 

 

I typically identify what album the song is from and create an appropriate folder structure for that album.  You end up with an album with only one or two songs but it works fine.

Not possible, there are songs from artists with no album. That's real life. Have indie bands, etc. in mind.

[BATTLE DONKEY 98]

I find it easiest to just create a "greatest hits" album of my own for artists I only have a few songs of. So in ur case I would have a folder structure of

"Indie band" > "Indie bands greatest hits" > song 1, song 2, etc.

[cyfreezer 0]

Is this really the only way to handle songs with no album with mediabrowser? Do I really have to create an fake album to organize those songs?

[Vicpa 607]

Hi

 

Media organization is always a matter personal preference, so I am not sure there is a "correct" way.

I use the following organization, which was generated when I ran my music thru MusicBrainz's Picard tool.

Compilations, etc

 

\Various Artists

      \Album Name

            song1

            song 2

ie:   \The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur

            1-01 U2 - Instant Karma

 

MB3 does create an artist "Various Artists" but handles it well. Various artists is a standard construct. MusicBrainz uses the Wikipedia definition,

Wikipedia

Various Artists often abbreviated as VA or V/A is a term used by the music industry for releases (singles or albums) that contain collaborations. Rather than listing the many individual singers or artists being credited individually, the name Various Artists is used instead.

Aggregated compilation albums containing tracks from a number of artists can also be credited to Various Artists. Various Artists compilation albums are often compiled from a particular musical style or period to another..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Various%20Artists

 

For songs with no associated album I use the following

 

\Artist Name

   \[non-album tracks]

         song1

         song2

 

Yes an album "[non-album tracks]" is created, but I can live with that.

 

Like I said, this seems to work for me, your mileage may vary.

 

-Vicpa

 

         

[NOCHTPC 1]

How would you organize an album like Together again by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans?  Would it be under VA or Tony Bennett or Bothe Tony Bennett and Bill Evans.

[Vicpa 607]

Hi,

 

Like I said some of this is personal preference. I would create an album "Together Again" under Various Artists

 

\Various Artists

      \Together Again (album artist "Tony Bennett and Howard Evans" , Artists "Tony Bennett; Howard Evans"

         track etc

the album should show up under all three variations,

 

MB3 and/or the clients don't currently support multiple album artists.

 

Picard will tag it with both Artist id's

 

 

Hope this helps

[ginjaninja 573]

I think it would be better if MB3 understood more than just two types of folders ....album or albumartist (and also possibly CD1,CD2,etc)

I think recognising (or allowing designation of) (nested) organisation folders such as (in bold)

Soundtracks\The Jungle Book

Musicals\Les Miserables

Compilations\Now Thats what I call Music\Now Thats what i call music 01

 

would be better...than feeling the need to create folder 'various artists' with only 1 level of categorisation/organisation....ie not being allowed to nest compilation folders in last example.

 

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/8040-server-organisational-folder-type-detection-in-music-collections/?p=106778

 

strangely MB3 does seem to recognise compilations...it treats as various artists....but musicals and soundtracks are detected as artists...musicals is detected as the artist of one of the albums in one of its subfolders....soundtracks is detected as artist 'epic sound tracks'.

[Luke 40082]

there is very little done with the music file system now. pretty much everything comes from tags. the only purpose the file system serves is a) grouping songs together by album and a place to save metadata and images

[Sp3kt3r 13]

Hi Luke,

 

Would it be possible in the future to add the possibility to add a music library without metadata scanning ? Ex: home music. I have a bunch of mp3 that doesn't have any metadata and I would like to be able to browser those by file. This could also fix album with multiple artist that you don't really want to mix in your library within all the other artist etc..

Edited October 28, 2014 by Sp3kt3r

[ginjaninja 573]

there is very little done with the music file system now. pretty much everything comes from tags. the only purpose the file system serves is a) grouping songs together by album and a place to save metadata and images

 

its a minor issue no doubt,  but mb3's algorithms seem like they need a bit of re imagining to avoid the down load of metadata onto filesystem where its not warranted. eg. the soundtracks and musicals example

[cw-kid 192]

Hi

 

I am currently scanning my music library in to Emby for the first time. Looking in the Artists area in the web GUI I can see that artists who only appear on compilation albums are also appearing in the artists list and only have one song etc. I only want to see Album Artists.

 

In Kodi there is a setting to not show artists who only appear on compilation albums can this be done in Emby? If not can it be added as a feature request?

 

My compilation albums are tagged as Album Artist "Various Artist" and the Artist tag is either the name of the artist for that particular track or just "Various Artists" again.

 

I'd rather not see these:

 

 

Thank you. 

Edited May 15, 2015 by cw-kid

[Luke 40082]

In emby there is no such setting but it's easily solved just by clicking on album artists instead of artists. Most apps generally have both so you can just ignore the all artists list

[cw-kid 192]

In emby there is no such setting but it's easily solved just by clicking on album artists instead of artists. Most apps generally have both so you can just ignore the all artists list

 

OK cool I can probably live with that! 

[cw-kid 192]

Think Emby just crashed will still scanning the music content. 

 

 

I just RDP into the WHS 2011 server to do something else and saw that on the desktop. When I clicked OK the Emby icon from the system tray disappeared. 

 

 

[Luke 40082]

Think Emby just crashed will still scanning the music content. 

 

 

I just RDP into the WHS 2011 server to do something else and saw that on the desktop. When I clicked OK the Emby icon from the system tray disappeared. 

 

can you grab the server log?

 

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/790-how-to-report-a-problem/