Complilation albums show as numerous albums in the Music library

[markhahn7 3]

I've been using Plex for several years and giving Emby a try, I like the live guide much better but I'm having issues with music files. 

I copied FLAC and MP3 sub folders from a Plex Media folder to an Emby Media folder.

Plex had no issues recognizing a number of compilation albums as single albums with tracks, but Emby won't and displays each artist as another album with the same name and different artist.  Also, Plex shows cover art for all my albums FLAC and MP3 but Emby misses quite a few.

I don't really want to rearrange folders, naming etc. Is there a setting I'm missing when creating the library, scanning the files or creating metadata that could help?

Thanks 

[Abobader 3464]

Hello markhahn7,

** 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

[nospotify 184]

1 hour ago, markhahn7 said:

I've been using Plex for several years and giving Emby a try, I like the live guide much better but I'm having issues with music files. 

I copied FLAC and MP3 sub folders from a Plex Media folder to an Emby Media folder.

Plex had no issues recognizing a number of compilation albums as single albums with tracks, but Emby won't and displays each artist as another album with the same name and different artist.  Also, Plex shows cover art for all my albums FLAC and MP3 but Emby misses quite a few.

I don't really want to rearrange folders, naming etc. Is there a setting I'm missing when creating the library, scanning the files or creating metadata that could help?

Thanks 

Re: grouping into single albums, Emby breaks out albums by album artist. Check what your AlbumArtist and Album Artist values are for each track file in a compilation album. You might want to change all to "Various Artists," or (the kludge I use) use the name of the compilation album for the AlbumArtist and Album Artist fields.

[markhahn7 3]

3 hours ago, nospotify said:

Re: grouping into single albums, Emby breaks out albums by album artist. Check what your AlbumArtist and Album Artist values are for each track file in a compilation album. You might want to change all to "Various Artists," or (the kludge I use) use the name of the compilation album for the AlbumArtist and Album Artist fields.

Ended up using MP3Tag and set the following:  Album Artist: "Various Artists"     Artist: Actual Artist for each track and it only shows one Album now and looks fine.

Thanks for the info, Interesting that Plex didn't have this issue but I guess Emby has different criteria.    

[nospotify 184]

As a fellow Plex refugee, I think you'll find Emby is a bit more persnickety in handling music, and there is a sizeable range of requested enhancements and bug fixes scattered through these support boards related to Emby's handling of music libraries. But it doesn't seem the developers are as interested in improving the music experience as they are in video. Some people find Symfonium a useful music app, by an indie developer that plays from Emby libraries.

 

[Luke 42078]

3 hours ago, markhahn7 said:

Ended up using MP3Tag and set the following:  Album Artist: "Various Artists"     Artist: Actual Artist for each track and it only shows one Album now and looks fine.

Thanks for the info, Interesting that Plex didn't have this issue but I guess Emby has different criteria.    

I tested them a while back to see the difference. What they do is use the albumartist tag for one track in the directory and then assume that everything else in the same folder matches.

Emby is a more direct representation of how your files are tagged.

[Luke 42078]

2 hours ago, nospotify said:

As a fellow Plex refugee, I think you'll find Emby is a bit more persnickety in handling music, and there is a sizeable range of requested enhancements and bug fixes scattered through these support boards related to Emby's handling of music libraries. But it doesn't seem the developers are as interested in improving the music experience as they are in video. Some people find Symfonium a useful music app, by an indie developer that plays from Emby libraries.

 

Hi, I can assure we are just as interested in music as we are video.

[pwhodges 2012]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Emby is a more direct representation of how your files are tagged.

This is probably on balance a good thing, though maybe a touch idealistic.

I guess it fails for some people (like me) with large music libraries which predate home streaming and are not organised in a way that can be tagged from metadata sites; I also have many rare recordings which are not in the databases anyway, and even more non-commercial ones I've made myself over fifty years. 

My library was designed and assembled for use in Rockbox (for many years I used an iRiver H340 with a 240GB disk); it's just too large for me to tag manually, and so I stick to using folder view in Emby, which works well enough for me.  The main thing I miss is the memory of where I last stopped playing.

Paul

Edited April 8, 2025 by pwhodges

[markhahn7 3]

8 hours ago, Luke said:

I tested them a while back to see the difference. What they do is use the albumartist tag for one track in the directory and then assume that everything else in the same folder matches.

Emby is a more direct representation of how your files are tagged.

Other weirdness, I got everything on the albums page to display cover art and it looks great on both the Windows "Configure Emby" console and an Android phone, but both a Firestick and Google TV clients are missing quite a bit of the cover art. What would cause that?

 

[Luke 42078]

4 hours ago, markhahn7 said:

Other weirdness, I got everything on the albums page to display cover art and it looks great on both the Windows "Configure Emby" console and an Android phone, but both a Firestick and Google TV clients are missing quite a bit of the cover art. What would cause that?

 

Hi there, can you please show a screenshot example? Thanks.

[markhahn7 3]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi there, can you please show a screenshot example? Thanks.

1. Firestick  2. Google TV  3. Galaxy S20  4. Windows Configure Emby.   

Google TV and Firestick don't display some of the albums artwork in the folder, 

Windows Configure Emby and Galaxy S20 display all Album artwork in the folder.

 

Edited April 8, 2025 by markhahn7

[Luke 42078]

But what exact screen and tab are we looking at in the web app? We can't really tell.

[markhahn7 3]

2 minutes ago, Luke said:

But what exact screen and tab are we looking at in the web app? We can't really tell.

I have all four clients set to view Albums, that's the default I've set for my folder of MP3's on all of them.

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

So one client is falling back to what looks like backdrops and the other is not as there is no primary image.

[Luke 42078]

Right this needs to be added to the android tv app. But the good news is you can use our standard android app on the TV:

Can you try searching for our standard android app (Just "Emby" on Amazon and "Emby for Android on Google) on the same device's app store and see how that compares?

Thanks.

 

[markhahn7 3]

31 minutes ago, Luke said:

Right this needs to be added to the android tv app. But the good news is you can use our standard android app on the TV:

Can you try searching for our standard android app (Just "Emby" on Amazon and "Emby for Android on Google) on the same device's app store and see how that compares?

Thanks.

 

I'm using the same app on both the Firestick and the Google TV, as the one from the Amazon play store appeared to have no way to rewind and FF (10 sec and 30 sec) and that app also pointed me towards the native android app with a message saying it was more advanced.

Not being able to rewind/FF on Firestick which is my living room main client, would have been a deal breaker as my main usage is as a Live TV DVR.

Some of the folders have a cover art jpg in the folder with the music, as I've had to download them from Google image search when Plex or Emby couldn't find any through searches, the 60's, 70's and 80's compliations for sure but others as well.

Edited April 8, 2025 by markhahn7

[markhahn7 3]

The Firestick is using the App v2.1.26a and it Does Not display all my Album cover art, but RW/FF works fine on the Firestick thumbpad.

The Google TV is using App v 2.1.23g and it also Does Not display all my Album cover art, but RW/FF works fine using the Google TV thumb pad.

I reinstalled App v3.4.36 on from the Amazon play store, and it Does display all Album cover art, but RW/FF are Inoperable on the Firestick thumbpad, hope this helps.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Technically there is no album cover for those three albums as that is a that would appear to be an inherited image from Artist.  So I guess the question becomes should it inherit image from different level?  But yes uniformity across client is preferable.

Your Beatles example is Artist backdrop

But as mentioned the TV app (2.1.23g, v2.1.26a) does not get many updates now as the standard app is being pushed.

[Luke 42078]

3 hours ago, markhahn7 said:

I'm using the same app on both the Firestick and the Google TV, as the one from the Amazon play store appeared to have no way to rewind and FF (10 sec and 30 sec) and that app also pointed me towards the native android app with a message saying it was more advanced.

Not being able to rewind/FF on Firestick which is my living room main client, would have been a deal breaker as my main usage is as a Live TV DVR.

Some of the folders have a cover art jpg in the folder with the music, as I've had to download them from Google image search when Plex or Emby couldn't find any through searches, the 60's, 70's and 80's compliations for sure but others as well.

There’s a playback option you can use to force transcoding on mpegts. That will give you what you want.

[markhahn7 3]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

There’s a playback option you can use to force transcoding on mpegts. That will give you what you want.

But then there is no Direct Stream on Live TV on my home network?  Why doesn't it just cache the MPG2 video and isn't there a loss in quality even if slight?

[Luke 42078]

59 minutes ago, markhahn7 said:

But then there is no Direct Stream on Live TV on my home network?  Why doesn't it just cache the MPG2 video and isn't there a loss in quality even if slight?

If you do what I'm suggesting then it will give you the same thing that the TV app gives you out of the box. The difference between the two is just what one does by default compared to the other.

[markhahn7 3]

11 hours ago, Luke said:

If you do what I'm suggesting then it will give you the same thing that the TV app gives you out of the box. The difference between the two is just what one does by default compared to the other.

I'm not finding that option in playback settings for the app, can you point me to it please?

[markhahn7 3]

15 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Technically there is no album cover for those three albums as that is a that would appear to be an inherited image from Artist.  So I guess the question becomes should it inherit image from different level?  But yes uniformity across client is preferable.

Your Beatles example is Artist backdrop

But as mentioned the TV app (2.1.23g, v2.1.26a) does not get many updates now as the standard app is being pushed.

Thanks for clarifying the artwork, I'm surpised that the multiple sources for Emby to download it don't recognize the tracks and add it, but many of the MP3's I have were ripped long ago so maybe didn't capture what's currently needed to do so.

[Luke 42078]

4 hours ago, markhahn7 said:

I'm not finding that option in playback settings for the app, can you point me to it please?

What version number do you have? It's a fairly new addition.

[nospotify 184]

4 minutes ago, Luke said:

What version number do you have? It's a fairly new addition.

@LukeI, too, am interested in this and have all updated versions - could you please just answer the question and tell us where to find this?