Documentation incorrect for (audio) compilation albums

[Doskei 3]

The documentation on naming music files contains incorrect information:

https://emby.media/support/articles/Music-Naming.html

This says that the "Artist" and "Album Artist" tags need to be the same. That's not correct. The album artist needs to be the same for all tracks in an album, but the artist tag can (accurately) reflect the individual track artist.

This seems to have been true as far back as 3 years ago, with Luke providing correct information to someone in this forum...

...but you can find even newer threads where Luke is giving the incorrect answer:

Speaking from experience, this is still causing confusion. Posting just to suggest that the documentation be updated to accurately reflect that Emby can handle albums with different Artists, as long as the Album Artist is identical (and not blank) for all tracks.

[seanbuff 1316]

Thanks. @sa2000can review this.

[Happy2Play 9780]

It has always been "album" and "album artist" as yes artist/s can be anything.  Unless I am missing something somewhere?

Quote

For these types of compilation albums if you want all tracks to show up as a single entity you want to make sure both the "album" and "album artist" fields are the same for all tracks. Otherwise the album will be split up for the various artists listed.

 

[sa2000 674]

On 24/02/2025 at 21:04, seanbuff said:

Thanks. @sa2000can review this.

 

On 24/02/2025 at 16:00, Doskei said:

The documentation on naming music files contains incorrect information:

https://emby.media/support/articles/Music-Naming.html

This says that the "Artist" and "Album Artist" tags need to be the same. That's not correct. The album artist needs to be the same for all tracks in an album, but the artist tag can (accurately) reflect the individual track artist.

As @Happy2Playhas outlined, this is not the case. The documentation does not say that the "Artist" and "Album Artist" tags need to be the same. It correctly says that the "Album" and "Album Artist" are to be set the same for all the tracks in the compilation album. 

I will add a note to the article to mention use of a dummy album artist (e.g. 'Various') for compilation albums where it is not possible to set one artist as the album artist

Update: This has been done.

Edited March 11, 2025 by sa2000