Music Tagging

[thelanranger 12]

The Picard and mp3tag software will let you write all kinds of random tags. TECHNICALLY, you can make up your OWN tags and inject them into the files. That's why I'm asking you for the exact ones that emby is using so that I know what I need to conform to in order to make it work with emby.

This is the only thing that I have a problem with these files working with. They all work file en masse with 10 other programs. Only the way that emby is reading them and organizing them is making them into a hot mess. So, if they need to be ULTRA anal-retentive just for emby then I need to know what kind of anal-retentive it wants.

[Luke 42528]

In regards to the discussion of this thread, didn't I already provide them?

[kkhan 16]

Hello, this might give some insight to all who have been similar problems to those raised in this thread.

I have a large music collection and went through much the same problems.  The issue I had was that practically no two music managers write tags consistently especially when it comes to multiple field separators and tags such as DISPLAYARTIST as opposed to ARTIST to name two examples.  I use MediaMonkey for mp3 and FLAC files as it handles multiple field separators in the most compatible way for all my music players and servers (MusicCast, Asset-PnP, Bubble-PnP). However, I have to use MusicBee or MP3Tag for DSD files as MediaMonkey4 does not handle DSD. For Classical Music; the Work, Movement Number and Movement Name tags are all handled differently by Jaikoz, MusicBee, and Helium and not at all by MediaMonkey.

What I do is to use MediaMonkey for Mp3 and FLAC AND then I use Picard to see what tags have actually been written (and how they have been written) and then do a final clean. For DSD files I use MusicBee and Picard likewise for a final clean but it can get more complicated as MusicBee supports DISPLAYARTIST, PERFORMER and various SORT tags which if written can cause some players to give odd results in collating and sorting music. Needless to say I remove these.

For classical music I use MediaMonkey, then MP3 tag to write the WORK, MOVEMENT NUMBER and MOVEMENT NAME tags and then do a final clean again with Picard.

I have found that the only programs which are completely consistent with the ID3V2.3/2.4 standard are Picard and dbPoweramp but, unfortunately, they are not music managers.

Finally, my main music server Asset-PnP supports on the fly volume levelling based on TRACK GAIN and ALBUM GAIN tags.  Again I found that different music managers calculate these in an inconsistent manager. It does really matter as long as the calculation is consistent across all types of files; however this is not the case. For example, MusicBee calculate these tags in an inconsistent manner for DSD files compared to MP3 and FLAC files.

So, I have a final step after a new album (whether DSD, Mp3 or FLAC) is placed in the library. I run dbpoweramp to write the GAIN tags.  That is the only program I have found which is entirely consistent in calculating the GAIN tags between, mp3, FLAC, DSD and multi-channel FLAC and multi-channel m4a (yes, I have these as well to play on my car 7.1 sound system).

 

 

[Luke 42528]

@kkhan thanks for sharing.

[landernd 4]

I know it's an old topic. 

I was having some issues with music with several volumes and discs.  At one point music tagged as compilation having the same exact album name and same album artist (Various Artists)  will show many songs (not all) separate,like an album for each.(of course i scanned the library many many times ).
I got the same music from a different file,re tagged everything and at the end only one song was separate. I use Tag&Rename for tagging and in it the album artist was Various Artists but when i checked the metadata in emby for that song ,album artist was the artist not VA. I fixed it and now everything shows as it should.I assume that what's happening earlier with many songs.
 

I just wanted to report it.

Edited October 11, 2022 by landernd

[Luke 42528]

19 minutes ago, landernd said:

I know it's an old topic. 

I was having some issues with music with several volumes and discs.  At one point music tagged as compilation having the same exact album name and same album artist (Various Artists)  will show many songs (not all) separate,like an album for each.(of course i scanned the library many many times ).
I got the same music from a different file,re tagged everything and at the end only one song was separate. I use Tag&Rename for tagging and in it the album artist was Various Artists but when i checked the metadata in emby for that song ,album artist was the artist not VA. I fixed it and now everything shows as it should.I assume that what's happening earlier with many songs.
 

I just wanted to report it.

Thanks for the feedback !

[thelanranger 12]

I've had this exact same issue recur again now.

It seems that this has nothing to do with the tagging of the files and it some kind of weird bug in the way that the files are being read? I have attached some screen shots of an example. The files themselves all contain tags that are inconsistent with those that have been imported into the library. If I manually edit the tags in the metadata manager then scan the library nothing changes. If I refresh the metadata then it reverts the tags back to the incorrect tags in the screenshots.

If the folder is renamed to a different name then you hit 'refresh metadata' on the parent folder then everything shows up perfectly. Then you can rename the folder back to the original name and refresh it again and everything will again be perfect.

I do not understand what is causing it to pull in the initial data incorrectly (perhaps because it is scanning the files while it is being downloaded?) but more troubling why the 'refresh metadata' actually seems to do absolutely nothing to correct the issue until the folder is renamed.

[Luke 42528]

3 hours ago, thelanranger said:

I've had this exact same issue recur again now.

It seems that this has nothing to do with the tagging of the files and it some kind of weird bug in the way that the files are being read? I have attached some screen shots of an example. The files themselves all contain tags that are inconsistent with those that have been imported into the library. If I manually edit the tags in the metadata manager then scan the library nothing changes. If I refresh the metadata then it reverts the tags back to the incorrect tags in the screenshots.

If the folder is renamed to a different name then you hit 'refresh metadata' on the parent folder then everything shows up perfectly. Then you can rename the folder back to the original name and refresh it again and everything will again be perfect.

I do not understand what is causing it to pull in the initial data incorrectly (perhaps because it is scanning the files while it is being downloaded?) but more troubling why the 'refresh metadata' actually seems to do absolutely nothing to correct the issue until the folder is renamed.

Hi, exactly what is incorrect?

[thelanranger 12]

If you look at picture 1,2,3 you can see that it took the album and broke it into two pieces. The third screen shot shows that it randomly used the folder name for the album name (even though the tag in the album name is correct. This happened consistently across 20-30 albums. Half the album would be named by the tag and half would be named by the folder name.

If you manually edit it in the metadata editor or hit refresh metadata it does nothing and always remembers that folder name for random track names as 'another album'.

If you then look at the 4th screen shot, all that was done is renaming the folder to .old then letting it refresh itself. It then put everything in one album name and read all the tags correctly. Once it does this you can then rename the folder back the way it was and hit refresh metadata and it is all perfect.

I just went through this with about 20 albums. Rename the folder, refresh the parent folder metadata, rename it back, refresh again. The only thing I can think is that when the album is initially scanned perhaps there are random tracks that are 'incomplete' (they were still being downloaded) but even if that was the case I don't understand why a manual refresh would not correct the names. It's as if the refresh metadata command never actually checks the files but rather just looks for "data that it does not have already" when it should, instead, re-read all the files entirely and change everything based upon the file data.

[Luke 42528]

Quote

If you look at picture 1,2,3 you can see that it took the album and broke it into two pieces.

@thelanrangerthis is because the files are not consistently tagged with their embedded album and albumartist values. Have you taken a look at 

Music Naming

It goes over all of this. If you ensure they are tagged the same way, then they will be grouped together into the same album.

Please let us know if this helps. Thanks !

[thelanranger 12]

I think you are misunderstanding. 

Very simply, if you copy a folder into the monitored directory and pause the copy in the middle, wait until emby detects the music and adds it to the db (automatically scan files on add feature), then let the copy finish you will see the issue.

Yes, I agree with you that at the moment of scan the files are "incorrectly tagged" because the copy is in progress but the actual issue is that once the files have been added to the db incorrectly, no amount of rescanning or editing if tags will EVER have emby update them in the Metadata db until you rename the folder that the files are in. THAT is the bug. 

[Neminem 1734]

Simple don't use you torrent download folder as your media folder in Emby.

[thelanranger 12]

On 5/11/2026 at 12:45 PM, Neminem said:

Simple don't use you torrent download folder as your media folder in Emby.

This is not a solution to the actual issue.

While this *can* cause the problem it is not the ONLY time you will see the issue. I was initially seeing this problem while organizing my music. I setup a master 'Music' folder and added that folder to emby to index. I then started going through all my music and tagging it properly and gradually adding it to the master folder. I was going nuts because I would copy a folder over, find an error in the tagging once it got indexed, then change it in the tagging program, have emby update the tags/reindex, and the error would still be there. That's why this thread has been open for so long!

The actual issue is that whenever emby runs a reindex of your music it is not checking the tags and updating those in the database unless the filenames of the files on disk have changed. While I'm sure this greatly speeds up the indexing process it is not an acceptable way to reindex the metadata! At the very least, there need to be an option that forces emby to reindex the entire library regardless of the name of the file on disk for a specific library or preferably there should be a way (for music libraries at least) to update the internal tagging while ignoring changes to name on disk.

Personally, I regard this as a blatant bug. Other media formats do not contain these internal tags (at least not in a way that is as meaningful or could be changed). Not having a mechanism to update the tagging for a song/album without doing something as janky as moving the file out of your library and adding it back is the definition of a bug.

[nospotify 194]

6 hours ago, thelanranger said:

This is not a solution to the actual issue.

While this *can* cause the problem it is not the ONLY time you will see the issue. I was initially seeing this problem while organizing my music. I setup a master 'Music' folder and added that folder to emby to index. I then started going through all my music and tagging it properly and gradually adding it to the master folder. I was going nuts because I would copy a folder over, find an error in the tagging once it got indexed, then change it in the tagging program, have emby update the tags/reindex, and the error would still be there. That's why this thread has been open for so long!

The actual issue is that whenever emby runs a reindex of your music it is not checking the tags and updating those in the database unless the filenames of the files on disk have changed. While I'm sure this greatly speeds up the indexing process it is not an acceptable way to reindex the metadata! At the very least, there need to be an option that forces emby to reindex the entire library regardless of the name of the file on disk for a specific library or preferably there should be a way (for music libraries at least) to update the internal tagging while ignoring changes to name on disk.

Personally, I regard this as a blatant bug. Other media formats do not contain these internal tags (at least not in a way that is as meaningful or could be changed). Not having a mechanism to update the tagging for a song/album without doing something as janky as moving the file out of your library and adding it back is the definition of a bug.

Although it doesn't help for a full library, I have learned from hard experience, and comments here on this board, that manually triggering a rescan of an individual music folder - you have to be in Folder view - will update the metadata. The larger issue remains, but at least for small metadata revisions in a single folder of music files, doing the Emby Scan Dance is not necessary.

[Apotropaic 74]

I’ve recently started using Emby for music so I’m literally going through all this as we speak.

I’ve come from random MP3s that I haven’t  touched in years to an old iTunes library that was reasonable organised but still has tags all over the place.

What works for me is to use MusicBrainz Picard before adding to Emby. Add your files to it, scan and hopefully select the right album version and save. This seems to produce a good consistent result for me.

If my particular album isn’t found, well I’ve created a free MusicBrainz account so I can add the release in myself and then go back to Picard to find the release version I’ve just created. Yes it’s extra work, but it’s quite satisfying giving back to the community in the hope someone else can benefit from my contributions. Whether someone has the same taste in music as me, well that’s another story..

If you have massive random compilations or maybe your own created compilation. Then I’d recommend mp3tag. I do this where I have tracks that are part of incomplete albums/singes.

If your file name contain the track number, title and artist then there is a function to extract them into tags for you. I’d manually add in a disc number and you can create a custom ‘disctotal’ tag (not sure if Emby uses this).

The important thing is to define the ‘Album Artist’ tag to something like ‘Various artists’. This way your Emby library appears cleaner in my opinion. So the artists of proper albums appear under Album Artists. Anyone in a compilation appears under the Artists menu.

Other things that I’ve found useful is configuring the music metadata providers to download multiple backgrounds for artists, as well as a logo and banner.