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Duplicate music artists entries, how to get rid of them?


M Smith

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I found no way to search this forum, so a new post. Sorry if that's frowned upon. I use both Emby and Plex; one for flac and the other for mp3. What bothers me with Emby is the duplicate artist entries that show "Appears On" albums. How can I disable that? It's very annoying as I can easily just do a search if I want to know that. With Plex, I just have a single entry for an artist and would like to configure Emby the same way. As it is now, and in addition to the above issue, I have many entries for an artist when there are guest appearances by other artists on the album tracks. Grrrr...

 

 

Thanks.

 

Oh, now I see the Search at the top. Duh. Still need an answer please, as I did try searching for one.

Edited by MYGODDAMNBUSINESS
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Happy2Play

Ultimately you have to remove every item that appears for the artist then re-add. but it may be a factor of the id assigned to the item.

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Are you sure it's actually a duplicate artist, or just two links to the same artist? Can you show a screenshot to demonstrate the issue? Thanks.

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I tried to post an image but it wants a URL and I don't where I'm supposed to get that so I thought maybe I just don't rights to post images yet. It seems like it sent it to the server but it never shows up in the post. I've tried both uploading the image and pasting it. The latter seems to accept it but after I save the post, it's gone. I even tried resizing the image to make it smaller.

Edited by MYGODDAMNBUSINESS
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I tried to post an image but it wants a URL and I don't where I'm supposed to get that so I thought maybe I just don't rights to post images yet. It seems like it sent it to the server but it never shows up in the post. I've tried both uploading the image and pasting it. The latter seems to accept it but after I save the post, it's gone. I even tried resizing the image to make it smaller.

 

This will get easier when we finally upgrade this forum but there is a little picture icon in the toolbar of the editor when creating a post.  After uploading your image (on the upload tab) hit the "Send to Server" button.

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Happy2Play

5dd072ad2c86d_Screenshot20191115005439.j

This is a image from where, Album Artist?  But a wild guess would be the Musicbrainz multiple album artist issue.  Will see if I can find the topic and provide a link.

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skidmarks

I'm going to guess this is Artist?  My library is a total train wreck when it comes to Artist.  10,000+ Artists and 2000 (ish) Album Artists.  Its so bad i dont even browse by Artists currently.

 

It is definitely musicbrainz.  And musicbrainz is adding artists to your emby database.  I have spent 100's (no joke) of hours cleaning up and verifying every last album in my library (with mp3tag).  Still an on going process.  It's amazing how some of the artists tags are being provided.  I'm talking popular bands with EACH member or past members being given credit as artist on a song.  Or one album using the & symbol for artist tag.  Then a different album from the same artist spelling and for the artist tag.  Yes that means a new artist being added to the emby database.  Don't even get me started on Various Artist albums.  

 

DIscogs (a metadata provider) runs a much tighter ship in my opinion.  I am a member and contributor there.  I spend time doing analog to digital conversions of LP's and adding them to the Discogs library (personal collection).  Every album is verified for complete accuracy prior to being added to their database.  Highly doubtful you will find a song with every band member listed in the artist tag.  But i find myself using musicbrainz more often due to the convenience.   

 

So its not an issue with emby at the end of the day, its the metadata being provided from musicbrainz.

Edited by skidmarks
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I'm going to guess this is Artist?  My library is a total train wreck when it comes to Artist.  10,000+ Artists and 2000 (ish) Album Artists.  Its so bad i dont even browse by Artists currently.

 

It is definitely musicbrainz.  And musicbrainz is adding artists to your emby database.  I have spent 100's (no joke) of hours cleaning up and verifying every last album in my library (with mp3tag).  Still an on going process.  It's amazing how some of the artists tags are being provided.  I'm talking popular bands with EACH member or past members being given credit as artist on a song.  Or one album using the & symbol for artist tag.  Then a different album from the same artist spelling and for the artist tag.  Yes that means a new artist being added to the emby database.  Don't even get me started on Various Artist albums.  

 

DIscogs (a metadata provider) runs a much tighter ship in my opinion.  I am a member and contributor there.  I spend time doing analog to digital conversions of LP's and adding them to the Discogs library (personal collection).  Every album is verified for complete accuracy prior to being added to their database.  Highly doubtful you will find a song with every band member listed in the artist tag.  But i find myself using musicbrainz more often due to the convenience.   

 

So its not an issue with emby at the end of the day, its the metadata being provided from musicbrainz.

 

Yep. That's the mess I'm dealing with. 983 artists under Plex. Probably 20,000 under Emby. But I've manually condensed my Plex artists down to as small as possible. If I let Plex do it, there would be twice as many. Album Artists in Emby isn't a whole lot better for me. I don't have that problem with Musicbrainz & Plex, though. That may be because Plex only seems to use two tag fields (Artist and Album Artist) and seems to ignore whatever Musicbrainz throws in there. I'm not trashing one over the other. I use Plex for mp3 and Emby for flac. Plex has it's own issues when trying to combine both formats together so I was forced to separate them across different servers. When it comes to Various Artists, Plex sucks too. Your nym looks familiar. Usenet?

Edited by MYGODDAMNBUSINESS
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skidmarks

Yep. That's the mess I'm dealing with. 983 artists under Plex. Probably 20,000 under Emby. But I've manually condensed my Plex artists down to as small as possible. If I let Plex do it, there would be twice as many. Album Artists in Emby isn't a whole lot better for me. I don't have that problem with Musicbrainz & Plex, though. That may be because Plex only seems to use two tag fields (Artist and Album Artist) and seems to ignore whatever Musicbrainz throws in there. I'm not trashing one over the other. I use Plex for mp3 and Emby for flac. Plex has it's own issues when trying to combine both formats together so I was forced to separate them across different servers. When it comes to Various Artists, Plex sucks too. Your nym looks familiar. Usenet?

 

You might have seen my tag creeping around there...  Skidmarks has been with me since i ran a BBS in the early 90's.  It's been to the end of the interwebs and back!

 

BTW...  If you really want just a clean music library, and i have done this in the past (even when i was running plex) disable music providers remove the library, run a scan, and then add the library back.  This will make the music library rely on your locally stored metadata.  It will be much cleaner if your local meta is good.

 

And welcome to the community....

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skidmarks

There are some that are named identical but different links.  This is where i see the same artist with two separate entries in the library.  One has the actual albums the other with the appears on albums.  I believe that fix is just to remove and re-scan the library.  That is a a small issue.  Its the poorly tagged artist tag that come down to the server from musicbrainz.  Each artist is obviously going to get its own entry in the db on the server.  

 

I really have been putting hundreds of hours into my music library over the summer.  This is why i see some of the stuff that is coming from musicbrainz is way out in center field.  I use a combination of Discogs and musicbrainz within mp3tag.  I am paying very close attention to that artist tag.

 

But at the end of the day my meta can be squeaky clean, it still comes full circle to what information musicbrainz is providing to the actual server.  This would not be a significant issue to anyone that sees music as something that you get from pandora or sirius or wherever.  Or a few hundred albums stored locally.  But for us folk that have an extensive audio collection, with artists off the beaten path, these artist tags can cluster up a library pretty quickly.

 

I am not complaining at all.  To me it is a case of "it is what it is".  The end of the day i can remove musicbrainz if i choose to do so.  

Edited by skidmarks
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skidmarks

Wrong terminology (kind of).  The Musicbrainz ID's are different.  Therefore the links that show up on the server are different as well.

 

The first example i came to was AFI. 

 

ID on musicbrainz for the two duplicate entries in my emby:

 

4fc58550-637f-496f-b6bc-3a62ba7f2f7e (wrong ID for the Band)

 

1c3919b2-43ca-4a4a-935d-9d50135ec0ef (correct ID)

 

The title in emby when you go to edit the meta manually is AFI for both entries. In my library the two albums i have are within the same AFI folder and each album in its own sub-folder.  And the Artist and Album Artist tags are the same...  AFI. 

 

This is just the first example i came to this morning.  And i am a long way from wanting to tackle the "Artist tag" explosion in the database.

 

Again not a big deal to me.  I was just trying to explain why there are duplicates to others.  I just don't use Artist when i look at music.

Edited by skidmarks
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Did you check your audio files to see if those artist musicbrainz id's are embedded into the tracks? If yes, then this is expected behavior.

 

It would also be expected behavior if this type of sequence happened:

 

Tracks imported without artist mbz id -> An artist mbz id was obtained from the internet using mbz search -> Then you imported new tracks containing a different artist mbz id

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skidmarks

With all these recent posts about duplicate artist entries, which i was not ready to deal with personally.  I have decided to remove my library, delete the 6000 nfo files, remove musicbrainz and re-scan my library back into the server.

 

I check all my metadata...  Even the "hidden" metadata before anything makes it into my library. 

 

Once my scan is done.  I will see how the library looks.  Artist count / duplicate artist.  Then i will re-scan the library with the musicbrainz plug-in installed.

 

This will take a day or two to finalize the results.

Edited by skidmarks
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I'm considering just creating html pages, linked to FTP directories, the way I want them and stop messing with media servers. I don't need all the bells, whistles, and kitchen sink in my collection. Media servers are very limited  in download ability. Downloads are stuck inside the apps which make them not at all portable for my users whom are just a handful of family/friends. I don't listen to music through my TV, either. I'm usually not anywhere near the TV. If I were into video, I suppose media servers would be much more useful to me.

 

I apologize for starting a post that has become a monster.

Edited by M Smith
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skidmarks

I'm considering just creating html pages, linked to FTP directories, the way I want them and stop messing with media servers. I don't need all the bells, whistles, and kitchen sink in my collection. Media servers are very limited  in download ability. Downloads are stuck inside the apps which make them not at all portable for my users whom are just a handful of family/friends. I don't listen to music through my TV, either. I'm usually not anywhere near the TV. If I were into video, I suppose media servers would be much more useful to me.

 

I apologize for starting a post that has become a monster.

 

I think what i am currently rebuilding is what you might be looking for.  A music library that solely relies on your locally stored metadata.  Don't give up hope just yet!  See if my assumption is correct...  Gonna take a "few" more hours (like tomorrow)

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skidmarks

I'm considering just creating html pages, linked to FTP directories, the way I want them and stop messing with media servers. I don't need all the bells, whistles, and kitchen sink in my collection. Media servers are very limited  in download ability. Downloads are stuck inside the apps which make them not at all portable for my users whom are just a handful of family/friends. I don't listen to music through my TV, either. I'm usually not anywhere near the TV. If I were into video, I suppose media servers would be much more useful to me.

 

I apologize for starting a post that has become a monster.

 

So about half of my music library has been scraped and added back to the server...  My thought about musicbrainz was in fact correct.  It is the culprit!  What i did has removed all doubt.  There may be some issue with how emby interprets the Artist Tag with musicbrainz.  Thats above my knowledge and pay grade.  But my Artist library has NO duplicates and no rouge artist so far.

 

Thankfully the only thing that is messed up is the database that emby created.  Until i read in the forum, at some point down the road, that the musicbrainz issues have been resolved i wont be using that for the foreseeable future.

 

Remove musicbrainz plug in

 

Restart server

 

Remove music library

 

Delete all nfo files in the music library

 

Do a full library scan

 

Restart server just to make sure

 

Add music library back

 

It appears that the audiodb fetcher is not creating havoc in my new music library.

 

Now i would assume that results may vary.  All comes down to the locally stored tags.  But so far i am thrilled with my results.

 

This wasn't something i wanted to do, i conceded to the fact to just not use the artist option to view my music library.  But after reading many recent posts on this very subject i wanted to finally say, with no doubt in my mind, it IS musicbrainz and possibly the way emby retrieves data from them.  Nothing to do with my library and the many many hours i put into it.

Edited by skidmarks
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So about half of my music library has been scraped and added back to the server...  My thought about musicbrainz was in fact correct.  It is the culprit!  What i did has removed all doubt.  There may be some issue with how emby interprets the Artist Tag with musicbrainz.  Thats above my knowledge and pay grade.  But my Artist library has NO duplicates and no rouge artist so far.

 

Thankfully the only thing that is messed up is the database that emby created.  Until i read in the forum, at some point down the road, that the musicbrainz issues have been resolved i wont be using that for the foreseeable future.

 

Remove musicbrainz plug in

 

Restart server

 

Remove music library

 

Delete all nfo files in the music library

 

Do a full library scan

 

Restart server just to make sure

 

Add music library back

 

It appears that the audiodb fetcher is not creating havoc in my new music library.

 

Now i would assume that results may vary.  All comes down to the locally stored tags.  But so far i am thrilled with my results.

 

This wasn't something i wanted to do, i conceded to the fact to just not use the artist option to view my music library.  But after reading many recent posts on this very subject i wanted to finally say, with no doubt in my mind, it IS musicbrainz and possibly the way emby retrieves data from them.  Nothing to do with my library and the many many hours i put into it.

 

Thanks for your hard work. I'm going to give it a try today. As for musicbrainz, it occurred to me that I may be causing it to give me some of the headaches. When I tag an album, if an exact entry is not in the musicbrainz catalog, I usually select one that's close and manually edit it. But that leaves the musicbrainz ID fields in the tag which point to the wrong album. Emby must rely upon those fiields when the plugin is used. Plex relies on Artist and AlbumArtist only.

 

I would make one minor change to your steps. Delete all album.nfo --- not all nfo. I save the nfo that come with posts.

Edited by M Smith
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If you don't have duplicates after rebuilding your library, then it's also possible the duplicates came from older versions of the server which may not have handled certain things as well as newer versions.

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skidmarks

If you don't have duplicates after rebuilding your library, then it's also possible the duplicates came from older versions of the server which may not have handled certain things as well as newer versions.

 

Noted!  And i would think some of what i was seeing was from the different server versions.  But that pesky Artist tag and pulling from musicbrainz was a much bigger issue.  Think my library finished rebuilding about an hour ago.  Its clean.  With the other active threads ongoing i hope a solution is found between our servers and musicbrainz.  They do provide a lot of useful meta.

 

I just don't want my library repopulated with rogue artist.  I'm sure it will be figured out.

 

Thanks! 

Edited by skidmarks
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jlambie

This has been a helpful thread for me, thanks everybody. I have been trying to sort out the same issue. So far things working - however having removed Music Brainz and reset my library as per the recommendations here, my artists are certainly fewer - but absolutely bare.

 

I can fix artist pics manually over time, but there is no metadata for them (bios, links and the like) - is there any other way of scraping some data for them?

 

I also removed NFO metadata as I couldn’t see the option to only keep album NFO metadata.

 

Apologies if the answers to these are around elsewhere - I have looked, but am drawing a blank.

 

Thanks!

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I can fix artist pics manually over time, but there is no metadata for them (bios, links and the like) - is there any other way of scraping some data for them?

 

The musicbrainz, lastfm and fanart plugins all have artist images.

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