Delete album in Emby that doesn't exist in my music library

[Luke 37260]

1 minute ago, ramseyn said:

Ha ha!

I have While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which I think of as George Harrison of course, but it is actually a various artists album. Now to look at the tracks in there and see what  the tags are.

 

If they are somehow wrong and I fix them, I don't see how tat can correct tags in other completely standalone albums though. Nor indeed how it could have made those albums get incorrect tags in the first place.

A mystery to me, but a place to start for sure.

I believe I've given you the answer. If you ignore looking into that, then that is likely going to cause you problems.

In addition, it appears nmkaufman has made a good catch and spotted something that I missed, which is the incorrect albumartist value of Various Artists. So to recap, this is what you want to review and fix in the embedded information in your audio files:

• album tag
• artist tag
• albumartist tag
• musicbrainz id junk values

[ramseyn 11]

All the tags in that George Harrison album appear to be devoid of MusicBrainz tag information...but the album itself does have MusicBrainz tags. 

Following the Album tag to MusicBrainz it shows the correct album. Following the artist tag of course leads to Various Artists which has pages of associated entries!

 

Perhaps I should delete the artist tag from the album but leave the album tag?

 

[ebr 14959]

HI.  Focus on the tags actually in your music files with a program like mp3tag or Picard instead of the Emby metadata manager as, any changes you make in Emby are just going to get overwritten by the information in the files on the next scan.

[ramseyn 11]

MP3Tag doesn't let me filter easily. If I open extended tags for a various artists album like My Guitar Gently Weeps, should I just change the MusicBrainz Album Artist tag for all tracks on the album (otherwise I have to do them one by one)? It won't let me set it to blank either so what value can I put in.

I can't use Picard. Apart from being completely unusable, it will no longer install on my computer (tried to install an upgrade and it removed the old version but couldn't install the new.)

[ramseyn 11]

4 minutes ago, ebr said:

HI.  Focus on the tags actually in your music files with a program like mp3tag or Picard instead of the Emby metadata manager as, any changes you make in Emby are just going to get overwritten by the information in the files on the next scan.

See this is what I don't like. WHy allow metadata editing/saving if it's just going to be overwritten. That confirms to me that it was Emby that put all this junk in the tags in the first place.

[ebr 14959]

Just now, ramseyn said:

That confirms to me that it was Emby that put all this junk in the tags in the first place.

How so?  Since I just told you we do not write tags to your music files.  Ever.

[Carlo 4331]

You have to actually edit the music files themselves to fix this

If you need assistance I can do a remote session with you this afternoon or evening or whenever is convenient for you and go over what's been said in this thread and help you resolve this.  Just let me know if you want a bit of help via PM.

[ramseyn 11]

Just now, ebr said:

How so?  Since I just told you we do not write tags to your music files.  Ever.

And then you tell me the metadata will get overwritten. I didn't put those MusicBrainz tags in my music files. I don't use Picard and nothing else is going to put MusicBrainz tags in, only Emby going out to search for metadata.

In MP3Tag which is all I use, it cannot connect to MusicBrainz for tags (greyed out) and even if it could, I wouldn't use it. I used freedb for all these tags (and a mirror when freedb closed up shop). But freedb doesn't contain MusicBrainz tags as far as I know. Or does it, and I just never saw them because MP3tag doesn't show them in the main window?

[nmkaufman 49]

10 minutes ago, Luke said:

• album tag
• artist tag
• albumartist tag
• musicbrainz id junk values

I'm in total agreement with you it, and it seems like the musicbrainz id's are the culprit.

All of the plaintext values in OP's screenshots looked immaculate.

Does ID3Tag have a 'clear existing tags' feature?

Musicbrainz-picard has this feature, in order to absolutely nuke any existing metadata that you didn't explicitly provide.

Even when I tag my music with ID3Tag, I run it through picard aftwards to clear all of the 'extended' tags.

[ramseyn 11]

11 minutes ago, nmkaufman said:

I'm in total agreement with you it, and it seems like the musicbrainz id's are the culprit.

All of the plaintext values in OP's screenshots looked immaculate.

Does ID3Tag have a 'clear existing tags' feature?

Musicbrainz-picard has this feature, in order to absolutely nuke any existing metadata that you didn't explicitly provide.

Even when I tag my music with ID3Tag, I run it through picard aftwards to clear all of the 'extended' tags.

MP3Tag can remove all tags, but then I have to get them all back again from somewhere, minus the MusicBrainz tags. And still nobody seems to know where those came from in the first place, I don't use Picard, and Emby say they don't write MusicBrainz tags, but they came from somewhere and the only software I have that uses Musicbrainz tags is Emby as far as I know. Unless freedb has them as I mentioned above.

I can't use Picard, as I mentioned above.

 

.... Just had a horrible thought. I once evaluated Plex as an alternative to Emby - I suppose Plex doesn't use MusicBrainz tags and actually write them? I don't use it any more but maybe tat could be the source of all this? Shall have to google Plex and MusicBrainz.

...well Plex appears to use it but, like Emby, doesn't say whether it writes the extended MusicBrainz tags on the files themselves.

Edited June 24, 2021 by ramseyn

[Deathsquirrel 741]

The fix for this is actually really easy.  You just need to do some bulk editing in MP3tag.

1. Open MP3tag and load all your albums into it at once.  It may take a long time to read through all the tags but it's worth it.
2. Right click the tag panel, the block on the left, and select customize.
3. Make sure the following tags are displayed: Album, Album Artist, MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID, MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID
   
   You can have any other albums you want shown in the tag panel but you need those 4.
4. Select all your tracks > press Alt-T to open the extended tag display.
5. Select any tags you don't care about and just delete them.  If you don't use musicbrainz data for anything you can simply delete all the musicbrainz tags and hit OK, for example.  Everyone's needs are different but here are the only tags I use, as an example:
   
   ALBUM
   ALBUMARTIST
   ALBUMARTISTSORT
   ARTIST
   ARTISTSORT
   DISCNUMBER
   GENRE
   MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID
   MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID
   MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID
   MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID
   MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASETRACKID
   ORIGINALDATE
   SCRIPT
   TITLE
   TOTALDISCS
   TOTALTRACKS
   TRACK
   YEAR
    
6. Sort your tracks so all your tracks by album or path
7. Make sure all tracks have an Album tag value
8. Select all the albums for a single band and make sure they all have the same Album Artist and, if you use it, MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID.  Repeat for the next band until you run out of bands.  Compilation albums generally use the Album Artist 'Various Artists' but as long as they all have the same text it doesn't actually matter what you call it.
9. Scan your music library in Emby.

That will purge all the unused tags and allow you to quickly set correct Album Artist tags for your tracks.  Once scanned it should clean up the VAST majority of your music issues.  After doing that work I still had 3 songs Emby couldn't process correctly due to insanely long text in the track title but those were easily corrected in MP3tag as one-offs.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Deathsquirrel

[nmkaufman 49]

16 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

17 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

MP3Tag can remove all tags...

 

I think that George Harrison album was a red herring.

Is 'usicBrainz Album ID' etc. literally tagged into your files? The problem could be as simple as that, right there.

[ramseyn 11]

5 minutes ago, nmkaufman said:

I think that George Harrison album was a red herring.

Is 'usicBrainz Album ID' etc. literally tagged into your files? The problem could be as simple as that, right there.

Yes, MP3Tag extended tags show this.

 

However I cannot just delete MusicBrainz tags in MP3Tag Extended Tags, as I said above. If I delete the value, the OK button greys out and I cannot save that change.

I looked for a way to display MusicBrainz in the main panel but could not find it in options. I didn't try right-clicking the panel but will try it when it has loaded the 11000 tracks it is currently loading as part of Step 1 in your list

 

OK, right click does nothing at all

Edited June 24, 2021 by ramseyn

[ramseyn 11]

Google tells me I can add field in the panel through OPtions.

It also says that MusicBrainz Artist Id will work for MP3 but not for FLAC. I have a mix of MP3 and FLAC.

It reckons I can map them both into a sort of MetaTag in MP3Tag that will write the correct tag depending whether the file is FLAC or MP3 but I'm not entirely clear what needs to be mapped. I tried selecting MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID as the field, changing it to MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID with the name MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID, which I take to be the field name displayed in MP3Tag's tag pane. I only seemed to get one error on a FLAC file on a subset of 3500 files. So far so good I guess.

I can't follow your suggestion of deleting the tag contents in Extended Tags - as I said, it just greys the OK button. However I can select <blank> in the tag panel.

MUSICBRAINZ Is it only the ALBUMID tag that causes issues, or do I need to delete ALL musicbrainz tags from all files. Will Emby work without them - it seems heavily reliant.

[Happy2Play 8356]

18 minutes ago, nmkaufman said:

I think that George Harrison album was a red herring.

Is 'usicBrainz Album ID' etc. literally tagged into your files? The problem could be as simple as that, right there.

This means there are Corrupt embedded tags on the track.  There are a few topics on the forum with this.  You have to remove all tags and retag.

19 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

I looked for a way to display MusicBrainz in the main panel but could not find it in options.

Right click Column headers and select Customize Columns and create new column.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

5 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

I can't follow your suggestion of deleting the tag contents in Extended Tags - as I said, it just greys the OK button. However I can select <blank> in the tag panel.

MUSICBRAINZ Is it only the ALBUMID tag that causes issues, or do I need to delete ALL musicbrainz tags from all files. Will Emby work without them - it seems heavily reliant.

You may wish to look into why you can't delete the tags or not, blank is fine too if you don't use them.

MUSICBRAINZ tags will be used if they are present.  They aren't required.  For tracks to show in a common album they need the Album and Album Artist tags populated correctly.  If you have MUSICBRAINZ tags then their album and album artist tags also need to match.

As others have said, if you have a 'USICBRAINZ' tag your tags are hosed up.  Delete them and retag the file.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Deathsquirrel

[Happy2Play 8356]

3 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

MUSICBRAINZ Is it only the ALBUMID tag that causes issues, or do I need to delete ALL musicbrainz tags from all files. Will Emby work without them - it seems heavily reliant.

You do not need MBZ tags at all.

Album Artist

Artist

Album

More tags that better in the database tag linking

[ramseyn 11]

@deathsquirrel - I said from the very start that I suspected these tags were the issue. This is not news. Column visibility did not give the option of showing MusicBrainz tags. Now I have added them to the panel I will see if I can add them to the columns (when finished loading 11000 tracks).

Id MBZ (that's easier to type!) tags aren't needed at all I'll just delete the lot. I believe the rest of my tags are ok, but deleting all the MBZ tags will surely highlight any normal tags that are erroneous, so I can fix them?

[ramseyn 11]

writing 11000 tags with blank MBZ tags, let's see what happens (assuming the mapping I used to add the field to the panel was correct)

Well, that didn't remove MusicBrainz tags...

Try unmapped tags next and if it causes  errors on FLAC files, address that afterwards

Edited June 24, 2021 by ramseyn

[Deathsquirrel 741]

25 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

writing 11000 tags with blank MBZ tags, let's see what happens (assuming the mapping I used to add the field to the panel was correct)

Well, that didn't remove MusicBrainz tags...

Try unmapped tags next and if it causes  errors on FLAC files, address that afterwards

FYI the directions I provided apply to MP3, FLAC, and MP4/M4A files equally.  My collection is almost exclusively flac with a handful of itunes files and some MP3s from an old online store I tried that sold that format.

[ramseyn 11]

OK, but it doesn't quite show for me the way it does for you. If I open column visibility, the MusicBrainz tags are not in the list. 

THey appear on the tag panel if I go into options->Tag Panel. However that only allows them to be created as field with a name.

Your image shws associating those fields with tag placeholders ("SICBRAINZ_ARTISTID% in your screenshot, which I assume to be %MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID% if shown in full).

I don't get the option to associate that placeholder in my MP3TAG Column Visibility dialog. I have "musicbrainz artist id" in the list and if I select it I get %musicbrainz artist id% as I might expect.

However there is no %MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID% option. (And there are two %musicbrainz artist id% entries).

Note the difference here - the field MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID has an underscore, whereas %musicbrainz artist id% has two spaces.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

8 minutes ago, ramseyn said:

OK, but it doesn't quite show for me the way it does for you. If I open column visibility, the MusicBrainz tags are not in the list. 

THey appear on the tag panel if I go into options->Tag Panel. However that only allows them to be created as field with a name.

Your image shws associating those fields with tag placeholders ("SICBRAINZ_ARTISTID% in your screenshot, which I assume to be %MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID% if shown in full).

I don't get the option to associate that placeholder in my MP3TAG Column Visibility dialog. I have "musicbrainz artist id" in the list and if I select it I get %musicbrainz artist id% as I might expect.

However there is no %MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID% option. (And there are two %musicbrainz artist id% entries).

Note the difference here - the field MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID has an underscore, whereas %musicbrainz artist id% has two spaces.

My directions didn't include making changes to the columns displayed in MP3tag as I don't believe you can add the musicbrainz tags as a column.  It would be cool if you can, but I didn't see a way to do that.

I'm very confused about what you're even trying to do at this point.  No one is telling you to add placeholders or anything like that.

If you have corrupted tags, delete all the tags in those files and start over.  The easiest way to do that is likely to run them through musicbrainz picard and save the tags in that tool.  With default settings that did it for me when I had a few tracks like this.

When you have eliminated any corrupted tags, use MP3Tag to delete tags you don't plan to use.  If you don't use the tags you aren't going to want to maintain them so just delete them.  It's one less thing to worry about.  I get that you are having trouble doing that so figure THAT out as it's a problem you shouldn't have and it's holding you back.

Finally, when all that's left is tags you care about, make sure they are right.  For tracks to show together in the same album they must have the same Album and Album Artist tags.  if you use MBZ tags they also must have the same MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID and MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID tags.  It's also very helpful to ensure the track number, disc number, track titles, and genres are populated.

[Happy2Play 8356]

Not sure I follow.  

 

 

But yes if you have corrupt tags the only way to truly fix is remove all tags and start over.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

25 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Not sure I follow.  

 

 

But yes if you have corrupt tags the only way to truly fix is remove all tags and start over.

That is way, way more complicated than doing the exact same thing in the tag panel but it works.  Thanks!

[ramseyn 11]

But I can't do it in the panel. The tags don't show without adding them in the Options->Tags dialog. If I don't do that they don't appear in the Columns dialog to add to the panel. And without selecting what I am calling placeholders (the final drop-down in Happy's shot above) putting values in them doesn't tell MP3Tag to relate them to any actual tag anywhere at all.