Music Library - Wrong Metadata for Album Artist and Album

[brianjohnkey 2]

I really love Emby and have been using it as a premium member for some time, and it's been invaluable for movies. But I'm really struggling with its handling of my music library. I am looking for a way to disable all metadata gathering so I can simply manually dictate to the server what files are in which folders and specify metadata on my own without automatically requesting from MusicBrainz or Discogs whenever I update my library. I still want to make individual requests to get, say' artist or album data, but I don't want the server to sort my files in its own database because it mostly gets it wrong. 

Let me explain what I've been dealing with. 

I get a lot of artists that show up like this, one is the proper artist and the other are duplicates.

So just a manual scan of those files by the same artist is generating multiple results. Often, it is coming back as 'various artists', and I am assuming that has something to do with the tags in that file, because it was maybe taken from a VA compilation. At any rate, the album artist tags are all the same across these files, so there is no reason I can see that Emby would choose more than one artist for that dataset.

Albums are the same deal.

This example is the result of a folder of subfolders representing all the singles released from this band. But they were all released on a multi-disc box set so it is lumping them all together and not getting the metadata right. The folders look like this:

This is a pretty common scenario as my music files often come from many sources withing a single 'album' or folder. 

I know this is long winded, but I need to know the easiest way to stop this from happening. I spent some time yesterday manually rearranging some songs and albums in the Emby database using the UI and making sure things were correct. I did this using MusicBrainz codes and entering them manually in the fields. It worked. But then this morning, everything reverted back to the incorrect metadata so I pretty much wasted my time.
 

• How does Emby get the musicbrainz/discogs codes? do they come from the file tags or does Emby actively search using AcoustIDs or something? Can I turn that off?
• If so, would it be helpful to remove mueiscbrainz related tags from the files to prevent Emby from getting wrong data? I would think not, since I've tried that already and the tag data remains in the Emby fields upon rescan.
• I have already turned off all metadata options in the music library, but does this affect 'scan library files' or other manual metadata collection methods?
• Can I use any text strings in those metadata fields? 

 

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. I'm not sure which logs if any would be useful here, but I can provide some if it will help.

 

Thanks. 

Edited June 18, 2024 by brianjohnkey
spelling

[user24 316]

Hi there, have you tried using a third party program such as Picard or Mp3tag to check the embedded tag/metadata in your music files? (I use Mp3tag myself.)

As well as using Musicbrainz, Discogs, - Emby will import the embedded music metadata at a song and album level directly from your files, which may be causing the issues?

Also, even if you update the Emby tags within Emby and then rescan, Emby will revert back to the embedded metadata. (Emby does not change your embedded metadata - you need to use a third-party program)

From what I understand, having the correct embedded metadata is of greater important for good results, than the folder/file structure.

[brianjohnkey 2]

I variously use a combination of Tagscanner and Picard but the issue there is that the metadata from Picard arranges albums according to releases in their database that doesn't necessarily reflect how I've arranged my files and folders into albums and tracks. (see above example of Bananarama). Like I said, I've had some success in removing within Emby all MusicBrainz metadata except the Track ID and manually arranging. That has worked, until the library was refreshed. 

But hypothetically, what would happen if I deleted the library, stripped the MusicBrainz tags on the files and then rescanned the ,ibrary from scratch? How does Emby determine how to organize the files? Based on strictly the ID3 tags? Or does it autmatically access MusicBrainz and Discogs? If so, how do I turn that off?

Edited June 18, 2024 by brianjohnkey

[Happy2Play 9781]

24 minutes ago, brianjohnkey said:

Based on strictly the ID3 tags?

Yes as you don't have to enable providers on the library.  Provider data can assist in some situations but is not required.

Compilations must have same Album Artist and Album name to be grouped.

Music Naming | #tagging-your-tracks

[user24 316]

1 hour ago, brianjohnkey said:

But hypothetically, what would happen if I deleted the library, stripped the MusicBrainz tags on the files and then rescanned the ,ibrary from scratch?

I had a somewhat similar issue with one of my albums, where all the standard Title/Artist/Album Artist/Album/Year/Genre embedded tag info was how I wanted it BUT the 'correct' MusicBrainz Album ID embedded tag was causing an 'incorrect' Album name within Emby. This was because of incorrect info entered by someone into the MusicBrainz database. I deleted the embedded MusicBrainz Album ID tag, resaved the embedded metadata (within Mp3tag) and then just rescanned the relevant folder (not my whole library) within Emby. This fixed the problem for me. So, hypothetically, there should be no need for you to delete your whole library from Emby to fix the problem albums. Perhaps just try updating one problem album and see if individual folder rescanning works for you? It's much faster to update and check results. Just go into the folder/menu tab in the music section, select the required folder and rescan/refresh from there. Good luck!

[user24 316]

1 hour ago, brianjohnkey said:

Like I said, I've had some success in removing within Emby all MusicBrainz metadata except the Track ID and manually arranging. That has worked, until the library was refreshed. 

I'd suggest trying to correct most music metadata problems in Tagscanner or Picard first, rather than within Emby. That way, whenever you rescan your library and/or refresh metadata, any standard Song/Album corrections you have made will be maintained, as well as being able to be read by other programs.

There's also a useful Emby plugin Emby Data Explorer that may help with checking/resolving things? Once it's installed it gives you a method to Explore Item Data without always needing to go 'out of' Emby and 'into' Tagscanner/Picard. You can access it from most '3 dot' button/selections. Cheers!

[Luke 42080]

On 6/18/2024 at 12:52 PM, brianjohnkey said:

 

But hypothetically, what would happen if I deleted the library, stripped the MusicBrainz tags on the files and then rescanned the ,ibrary from scratch? How does Emby determine how to organize the files? Based on strictly the ID3 tags? Or does it autmatically access MusicBrainz and Discogs? If so, how do I turn that off?

It's always based strictly on the id3 tags, whether or not you have musicbrainz info embedded as well. 

[Luke 42080]

Have your questions been answered?

[brianjohnkey 2]

Yes thank you. Stripping the tags and re-adding the library produces the desired result.