Music Library sorting is still inconsistent

[nospotify 184]

Music Library sorting is still operating inconsistently. See this screen from Album Artists, sorted by "Title" (as an aside: can't Emby devs change this to "Name"!?). You'll see there are some weird outliers, like Cissy Houston in the middle of the mostly properly alphabetized/sorted "E" entries.

So I looked at the metadata, which shows both Title (i.e. Album Artist) and Sort Title are correct, with no reason for this Album Artist to appear in the middle of the "E" section.

Then I scrolled down and thought to check the external providers:

:

Then I checked what's on Discogs, and they have her listed with birthname, which is what is obviously messing things up, and prompting Emby to sort her as "E."

When I delete the Discogs ID and hit 'save', the Cissy Houston entry instantly jumps to its proper location among the "C"s, with no changes having been made to embedded metadata. Ta da!

So to summarize, Emby is prioritizing Discogs over embedded data (although weirdly not doing the same with MusicBrainz or TheAudioDB, because I didn't delete either of those IDs, and sorting worked properly once the Discogs ID was deleted). Emby is displaying embedded Sort Title but using actually using different metadata to do its sorting on, and I don't think this isn't how Emby should operate. (Please don't suggest "uncheck Discogs" because it should be used to retrieve missing metadata.)

Emby should operate so that visible "Sort Title" is what is actually, you know, used for sorting, and sorting priority should be in descending order using actual embedded data first, and then (only if embedded metadata doesn't exist), down through the external services, in the order set up in Library settings. External providers should be used to retrieve missing embedded metadata, but not prioritized above actual embedded metadata.  

I could swear this was discussed months ago, and Luke said "good idea, Emby should operate that way" but I can't find the thread here. Regardless, can this fix be made easily?

[Luke 42080]

Hi, the names come from the embedded metadata within your files. They don't get changed based on whatever happens to be on Discogs.

[Happy2Play 9782]

Will have to look but there are topic on this where having Dicog as first provider cause all kinds of issues with as there naming is different then say Musicbrainz in many cases.

Sort sorting of goes rogue from provider data.

[Happy2Play 9782]

@Lukedon't remember if anything came of this.  But know it was Discogs with different name then other provider.

 

[nospotify 184]

32 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, the names come from the embedded metadata within your files. They don't get changed based on whatever happens to be on Discogs.

Correct - look at the screen shots I posted - the Title and Sort Title that are DISPLAYED come from embedded metadata, but the actual SORTING is done based on that Discogs metadata. Again: look at the screenshots, and try it yourself.

[nospotify 184]

Back in July 2023 @Lukesaid "I think I do have a theory on this issue though, which is that although the server does not import the title from discogs, it might be getting the sort title. So I've put in a change to resolve that."

 

[Happy2Play 9782]

2 minutes ago, wordlover said:

Back in July 2023 @Lukesaid "I think I do have a theory on this issue though, which is that although the server does not import the title from discogs, it might be getting the sort title. So I've put in a change to resolve that."

 

Might be another quirk of old vs new also.  Does it happen on your portable test system as new database will be different then migrated databases.

[nospotify 184]

It's not complicated. Emby is using Discogs data to title sort when it shouldn't be. That's it.

[Happy2Play 9782]

3 minutes ago, wordlover said:

It's not complicated. Emby is using Discogs data to title sort when it shouldn't be. That's it.

But it still come back to old broken database vs new clean databases.

I can not get T.I to come back as Discogs Clifford Harris.

So the question Luke will ask is does it do the same on your portable?  As there is really no way to fix everyone's original databases beside nuking them and forcing a new import.

See it all the time in beta testing so have a 100% backup prior to any upgrade but still does not fix issues that created rogue stuff in prior versions.

[nospotify 184]

Please stop,  @Happy2Play . Luke doesn't scroll up in these threads and you seem to constantly be muddying things. You and I both pointed to multiple prior discussions of this, and he literally said he was putting in a change, which apparently didn't get made. This is not a database problem. It gets fixed instantly when Discogs ID is removed. Emby code needs to change so it doesn't let Discogs data override embedded metadata when SORTING. That's it. Period. Simple. It's no more complicated than that.

[Happy2Play 9782]

Correct a change went into 4.8 but does not change what was already in 4.7. 

3 minutes ago, wordlover said:

This is not a database problem. It gets fixed instantly when Discogs ID is removed.

Don't see how you figure as the id still exist somewhere if the issue returns on the OLD database.

[Luke 42080]

There was an issue like this in 4.7 yes, it is corrected in 4.8 but won't repair entries that have already been impacted.

[nospotify 184]

It's not about the database. The SERVER should never sort on Discogs AlbumArtist if there is embedded AlbumArtist metadata. That's a server coding issue not a database issue.

[Happy2Play 9782]

I can say I can reproduce on 4.7 and upgrade to 4.8 does not fix it.

But have not been able to reproduce it on a 4.8 only system.

 

 

 

[nospotify 184]

In response to several of my posts about quirks in the way Emby is handling Music Library, it has been suggested that it would be best to start with a fresh database. Is that possible without losing all of one's settings? It sounds as if starting from scratch with my very large music library might resolve the issues, or at least would be a good test and provide further information to Emby developers. So would removing my music library, restarting Emby, making sure metadata folder is empty, and then creating a new Music Library pointed at the old music files be a full, clean erasure of the slate, or do I have to do a fresh install of everything to ensure a meaningfully new music library database?

[Happy2Play 9782]

7 hours ago, wordlover said:

it has been suggested that it would be best to start with a fresh database. Is that possible without losing all of one's settings?

Sounds like a job for the Legacy Backup plugin backup userdata.  Plugin on this post if don't currently have.  As the new plugin does not piece mill users only does entire databases.

Delete the database

launch Emby Restore userdata and do library scan.