Music Library Import - Emby changing Metadata & Wrong Artist/Album Artist (I've tried everything!)

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

Hi All, 

I could really do with someone help, as i think I've done everything I can think of to fix this problem, and also tested alternative solutions to eliminate the issue, my conclusion is Emby is at fault. Firstly, apologies for the long post, but I want to provide as much context as possible, in the hope that I've covered all my options.

So, heres the issue.....

To start, I'm running Emby on a QNAP TS453A, Emby Server v 4.5.4.0 (latest version).

I've spent 10's or hours over many months tagging just under 3500 MPs, so that when I import into Emby, I have a clean and correct library that will allow me to search, filter and play the music with accuracy. I imported the ~3400 MP3s over the weekend, and I let its scan and import before I started to do anything with testing etc. The first thing I noticed was under Album Artists I had Various Artists, which I tried to avoid by tagging all MP3s with the Artist and Album Artist the same, similarly, I set the Title & Album to the same, because the vast majority of my music is individual vinyl and MP3 releases, not typically from a compilation album. Ive used both TagScanner and MP3TAG to complete all of this work.

I removed the library, checked the files in MP3TAG, and I couldn't see Various Artists in ANY of the Album Artist fields. So I did some research, and found a couple of forum posts suggesting that Emby (and other players) could be reading ID3v1 tags, and not the later ID3v2.3 Tags. So i put them all back through MP3TAG, and indeed there were ID3v1 Tags, albeit mirroring the v2 Tags. To be sure it wasn't using tags I didnt want it to use, I removed ALL ID3v1 and APEv2 Tags from all ~3400 MP3s., leaving only ID3v2.3 Tags. Before re-importing the songs into Emby, I removed all reference to any cached data within the the program data folder (EmbyServer/programdata/cache/audiodb-artist etc...). I re-imported into Emby, waited for the scan to finish, and checked the Album Artist section first, and there again was an album artist called Various Artists! I removed the library again, and put the files back through MP3Tag to check again, but also this time to also use Tagscanner, in case i could see anything else obvious, I immediatelt spotted a tick box for 'Part of Compilation':

When I selected all files in Tagscanner, the 'Part of Compilation' changes to 'Various', which confirms that some files are ticked and some are not. I proceeded to untick this box on ALL files, and saved the tags again. Same process again, I removed all cached folders, and re-imported the folder again. Waited for the scan to complete, and went to Album Artists to see if Various Artists was still there, this time it was gone!! So, I thought I had found the culprit in the 'Part of Compilation' tick box, i certainly had for the 'Various Artist' issue.

I then searched for one of my favourite artists, for which I knew i had over 50+ releases, and I noticed that the artist search result has an A- in front of his name:

 

Not only that, when i click on the Artist, it returned just 1 song:

You can see from Tagscanner, i have 53 releases by Todd Edwards, where the Artist and Album Artist is the same (no A- included in the Artist Tag either):

My next step to try and fix this second issue was to try and remove any potential conflict or changing of metadata on the files when imported into Emby, by uninstalling both the Musicbrainz and Audiodb plugins, so when I import, its not picking anything up from potentially incorrectly tagged data within these online databases. 

Same process again, I removed the library, cleared all cached folders, uninstalled the 2 plugins and rebooted the Server. Re-imported the 3400 files, and again, I get A-Todd Edwards, 1 song and the other 52 missing from this Artist entry. This is not the only artist that I can see this happening to, i have found another one with a similar result, and a mix of songs under the wrong artists. To try and see if maybe the files are not actually being imported into Emby, i searched for one. Lets take one from the above screenshot, Echo of the Past, you can see from the screenshot above both the Artist and Album Artist are tagged Todd Edwards. When searching for this song, it returns:

When checking the Metadata that Emby has for this song, it appears to have changed the Artist and Album Artist to something completely different!

So it seems that Emby is changing/editting or mixing up the metadata when importing the songs into the library. This clearly ist on every song, but its certainly not a single artist, as i have found muliple with the same problem. When these latest imports were done, it has no external databases to reference, all cache had been removed and i only check the 'Extract Images' when doing the import.

I decided to do a test to confirm my tagging was not the issue, so i installed Plex (I moved from Plex to Emby last year!), and imported my music library to Plex, and searched for Todd Edwards, it returns the correct Artist (no A-), and also 53 Tracks (matching the Tagscanner screenshot above):

This test confirmed that my ID3v2.3 Tags are acurate and correct, and what i see in MP3Tag and TagScanner match with the results of a PLEX import.

This evening i decided to do another test to eliminate any potential issue with the Emby Server install on my QNAP NAS, cached folders or historical settings etc, so I installed Emby Server on my WINDOWS 10 PC, and simply imported 2 Music Folders (Todd Edwards and DJ EZ), which i copied from my NAS to my Windows 10 PC locally.

Upon importing to a FRESH install of Emby Server on a device that has NEVER has Emby Server installed (again Musicbrainz & Audiodb plugins removed), and only selecting 'Extract Images' in the add library settings, these 2 Artists where the Artist and Album Artist tags match, I get 4 Artists returned in my search, with DJ EZ twice, once with a lowercase Z. On top of that, an Artist called Modestep?????


When I go into the Artist DJ EZ, I can see a song called Shut the Door, which i know is a song by Todd Edwards:

When i check the metadata of this song, the Artist is Todd Edwards, and the Album Artist is DJ EZ?!!

When you look at this song in TagScanner, you can see that its Todd Edwards for both Tags:

All of this is happening on both the QNAP install of Emby Server and a fresh install on a Windows 10 Machine, so not specific to one or the other. There is clearly an issue with Emby's ability to import music and to keep the metadata in the file.

This is a major problem for me, and after months upon months of tagging music correctly, this is highly frustrating and a big problem, when I have over 10k songs to still tag. I have to have trust in the Media Server i am invested in. Plex has proven to me that my tags are all fine, as both Todd Edwards and DJ EZ report fine on the first import.

Hopefully someone can either make a suggestion on what to try next, or the nice people at Emby need to fix what I would class as a significant bug in the application. @Luke - Can you help?

Thanks

Darren

 

 

 

[Luke 37071]

Hi, FYI I've hidden your posting from the testing area as that is about Emby Server 4.6 and your topic here is about Emby Server 4.5. Thanks.

[PenkethBoy 2063]

Not read all of your post but with Stable its a combination of folder structure and metadata - but 99.9% of the time its metadata thats the issue as similar posts to yours pop up periodically. 

BUT

in the near future that will all change with the next Stable as its all metadata driven - being tested in beta but i would avoid it for now as its not mature and has several issues at present with .30

So correcting metadata inconsistencies will be needed to get the music loaded correctly "first" time

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

Hi 

So are you confirming this is a known issue, and it will be corrected in the next stable releases 4.6.0.0?

Thanks

 

[Luke 37071]

3 minutes ago, DarrenClimie-Newman said:

Hi 

So are you confirming this is a known issue, and it will be corrected in the next stable releases 4.6.0.0?

Thanks

 

No, I haven't gone through all of this yet, but the server isn't making up the a- prefix. It is coming from somewhere.

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

The A- prefix is the least of my worries, the fact it is changing the metadata, ignoring the embedded tags is the biggest issue, as that makes it a poor use experience and a waste of effort in accurately tagging music.

If there is a known issue with Emby not observing embedded tags, then I'm happy to wait for that update. Plex proved my tags are accurate.

[PenkethBoy 2063]

with 4.5 it will work fine if your metadata is accurate - what you are seeing is a conflict in metadata - i.e. can be just one track that has incorrect data

have you used MusicBrainz Picard app as that usually sorts out most of the metadata inconsistencies - you might still get a few edge cases

also what is your folder structure for you music?

[Happy2Play 8282]

It is really hard to say as we would need to see the output from ffprobe as that is what is use to read the embedded metadata.  Sure tagging programs will show you tags but not all tags.

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

My metadata is accurate, Plex proved that by reporting exactly what MP3Tag and TagScanner reports.

I don't use Musicbrainz, because I want my music to report the corect year of release, not 15 years later when a song was released on a compilation album.

The folder structure is:

Root/Music/Artist1/Artist1 - Title.mp3

Root/Music/Artist2/Artist2 - Title.mp3

 

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

1 minute ago, Happy2Play said:

It is really hard to say as we would need to see the output from ffprobe as that is what is use to read the embedded metadata.  Sure tagging programs will show you tags but not all tags.

I'm happy to send you a couple of files reporting incorrectly in Emby, if you want to check with ffprobe.

I don't want to go back to Plex, but my Plex test tells me enough that it would be in line with how my music is tagged. 

[PenkethBoy 2063]

so you have no album folders then?

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

Correct. That's easily changed though, I can make that:

Root/Album/Artist - Title.mp3

[Happy2Play 8282]

3 minutes ago, DarrenClimie-Newman said:

I'm happy to send you a couple of files reporting incorrectly in Emby, if you want to check with ffprobe.

I don't want to go back to Plex, but my Plex test tells me enough that it would be in line with how my music is tagged. 

If you like you can pm, but you can run ffprobe -i on the tracks.

example using Emby's ffprobe

Y:\Emby-Server\system\ffprobe.exe -i file:"Z:\ServerFolders\Music\Blake Shelton\All About Tonight (2010)\Blake Shelton - 01 - All About Tonight.flac"

 

11 minutes ago, DarrenClimie-Newman said:

The folder structure is:

Root/Music/Artist1/Artist1 - Title.mp3

Root/Music/Artist2/Artist2 - Title.mp3

in 4.5 this structure means you have no Artist as it becomes the Album.  In 4.6 it will be pure tag based.

[PenkethBoy 2063]

try \root\Albumartist\album\songs will give emby a better idea of what you have

Edited March 8, 2021 by PenkethBoy

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

2 minutes ago, PenkethBoy said:

try \root\Albumartist\album\songs will give emby a better idea of what you have

I will try this tomorrow, and report back the outcome. Sounds like 4.6 pure tag based is whats needed, and possibly how Plex handles it.

[PaulJNodine 4]

What program did you use to rip the cds into audio files?  Also have you tried loading the files into another audio player, like Mediamonkey or even VLC to see what happens with the file names? 

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

20 hours ago, PenkethBoy said:

try \root\Albumartist\album\songs will give emby a better idea of what you have

Hi,

I re-imported the library based on your above suggested folder structure, and it hasn't made any difference on the quality of the import, if anything, its made it worse, as the 2 artists I've used as a reference above doesnt even exist anymore:

If I search for a song by Todd Edwards, all the metadata has been changed (the below song in my post above only change the Album Artist, this time its changed both, and different from before?!)

TagScanner:

I downloaded the beta version to test 4.6, and i can say that its definitely better, but still shows some odd behaviour. I tested with the following configurations, and i've screenshotted the results of each.

Folder Structure: Music/Artist/Artist - Title.Mp3
Music Folder Structure: Other or Unstructured
Options Ticked: Image Extractor & Download Images in Advance (ONLY).

Under Artist, I get this (I've only imported the 2 Artists (Todd Edwards & DJ EZ)

Album Artist Shows Me:

========================================================================================================================================

Folder Structure: Music\Artist\Artist - Title.Mp3
Music Folder Structure: Perfectly organised in Artist\Album Folders. with tracks directly in Album Folders
Options Ticked: Image Extractor & Download Images in Advance (ONLY).

Under Artist, I get this (I've imported the same 2 Artists (Todd Edwards & DJ EZ)

Album Artist Shows Me:

 ===============================================================================================================================

Folder Structure: Music\Artist\Artist - Title.Mp3
Music Folder Structure: Perfectly organised in Album Folders. with tracks directly in Album Folders
Options Ticked: Image Extractor & Download Images in Advance (ONLY).

Under Artist, I get this (I've imported the same 2 Artists (Todd Edwards & DJ EZ)

Album Artists shows the same again


So regardless of the option chosen, the results are the same, duplicated artists. However, the positive part of 4.6, is that when you click on the artist (first one of the duplicates), it does show all of the expected songs (52 for Todd Edwards and 11 for DJ EZ)

Todd Edward:

DJ EZ:


And it it doesnt appear to be changing any of the metadata, that said, i have only imported 2 artists, and not 3400 songs and 100's of artists, so it does appear to be respecting the embedded ID3v2.3 Tags as expected. 

If 4.6 doesnt duplicate the artists, then it looks like it could be good.

[Luke 37071]

Can you zip up the test library and provide a copy of it? Thanks.

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

59 minutes ago, PaulJNodine said:

What program did you use to rip the cds into audio files?  Also have you tried loading the files into another audio player, like Mediamonkey or even VLC to see what happens with the file names? 

Most of my music are vinyl rips, so no tags were embedded

VLC Shows:

MediaMonkey Shows:

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

26 minutes ago, Luke said:

Can you zip up the test library and provide a copy of it? Thanks.

I've just DM'd you a link.

[Luke 37071]

Tested your files. I didn't see the A-Todd Edwards.

You have two Todd Edwards because the "You're the one" track has an albumartist of Todd Edwards but it has a different musicbrainz albumartist id than all the other tracks. Because of this, the server treats them as two unique artists. 

You have two DJ EZ's for the same reason, due to inconsistencies in the Rockin track.

Then you get an EZ artist because that's what ffprobe found in the artists (plural) tag, so I can promise you, the data is in the audio file somewhere. Although we should probably check Artist first and prefer that field as that's what most other software appears to be doing.

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

I will re-look at the tags across all my files, as I know there can be lots of hidden tags like Musicbrainz IDs, however, as you say, almost all other applications look at the Artist and AlbumArtist tags and ignore more unique tags like Musicbrainz IDs.

[Luke 37071]

The change I'm going to make will prevent the EZ entry by checking Artist before Artists. You're still going to end up with two duplicates though unless you clean up the inconsistent mbz id's.

[DarrenClimie-Newman 6]

I'm going to remove all Musicbrainz references, will let you know results when re-imported.

[PenkethBoy 2063]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

The change I'm going to make will prevent the EZ entry by checking Artist before Artists. You're still going to end up with two duplicates though unless you clean up the inconsistent mbz id's.

What will this actually mean - as Artist is usually a string of text rather than a formatted list of artists which is what Artists is used for along with the mbz_ArtistID

e.g.

"Amy Winehouse & Tony Bennett" is not an artist

Are we making a change for one user with "poor" metadata that will affect everybody???