How to manage and tag "Singles" music files without an "Album" ?

[MistD 32]

Hi there,
I am struggling to find the right approach to tackle this issue.

If there are music files with an empty "Album" tag for a particular artist, Emby creates a "virtual" album with the Artist name as "Album Name" and displays it in the "Albums" view, together wit the rest of actually complete and properly tagged albums from other artists.

This creates kind of a mess because now, in the "Albums" view .... there are the correct complete albums but ALSO the "Artist Name - Artist Name" virtual albums that contains just the "singles".

 Is there any way to approach this ? Maybe to just ignore the empty album tag for those files and don't display the "virtual album" at all within the "Albums" view ?
Just show them only as songs within the "Artist" view ....

I tried a solution: create a "singles" folder within the "artist" folder and tag all the "loose" songs with the "Singles" album tag. It work in the way that Emby recognized it as an Album the way it should but now i have a bunch of "Singles" incomplete fake albums from all the artist treated this way.

So, long story, short ... how to tackle / organize "Singles" without any album specified in the metadata tag ? For sure i don't want them displayed in the "Albums" view ...

THX !

[Abobader 3464]

Hello MistD,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[Luke 42081]

Hi, Emby doesn’t do that. Are you sure that’s not tagged into the file?

 What did you select as the music folder structure option in the library settings?

[MistD 32]

Thanks a lot for the fast response Luke. I think this might be an error on my judgement.

I had my music library setup as "Perfectly organized into artist/album folders, with tracks directly in the album folders" ... but on the filesystem the folder structured looked like:

Music (selected as music "root" in library setting) -> Genre -> Artist -> Album (YYYY - Album Name) -> Album Tracks (TrackNo. Artist - TrackName.ext)

I had "singles" aka tracks without an album tagged (100% sure ... as i manually tag files the way i want them), as files directly under "Artist" ....  thus confusing Emby i think.
Emby automatically created "virtual" albums for those, using the Album Artist  as Album Name and organizing the "singles" inside it.

I also tried to create a "Singles" folder within "Artist" and place those tracks in it - same result.

As a last resort, i kept the tracks in the "Singles" folder within "Artists" and tagged their Album name as "Singles"  ... but with the obvious result that, now, i littered my "Albums" view with incomplete "Singles" albums (some with just 1 track) for each artist. 

Now, after i posted the topic, noticing your hint ... i tried a different approach.

I deleted the library and re-create it using "Other / Unstructured" option.
Now it seems that Emby is picking up "Singles" as individual tracks (the way it should) and leave them as such and don't create "virtual" albums with those anymore.

So i think, unless we are running an "album focused" library with folders perfectly structured as Music -> Artist - > Album -> Tracks ... (without other folders in-between, like "Genre" and without "album-less" tracks  ), the best bet is to use the "Other/Unstructured" option for Music Library.

Correct me if i am doing something wrong but i think that was the culprit. 

Anyway, thank you for all your work   

Edited December 31, 2023 by MistD

[Luke 42081]

Quote

I had my music library setup as "Perfectly organized into artist/album folders, with tracks directly in the album folders" ... but on the filesystem the folder structured looked like:

Music (selected as music "root" in library setting) -> Genre -> Artist -> Album (YYYY - Album Name) -> Album Tracks (TrackNo. Artist - TrackName.ext)

OK yes if your library doesn't match what you select then you're going to see quirks. Thanks for following up.