Emby ignoring some of my mp3 albums

[DiabboVerdde 5]

I have been experiencing a very annoying problem these days. my Emby server (4.8.11.0) Running on Synology (DSM 7.2.2-72806 on a DS1819+) is not recognizing some mp3 albums I put on the mp3 directory.

All my mp3 are well organized by directory (artist/year - album name) and these directories are not different from the others Emby can "see". I tried a lot of different things:

• Removing any hidden files (the ._ files that show up eventually, or the @eaDir directories created by Synology) and anything other than the mp3 files and the album cover
• Remove the directory, rescan, put it back, rescan.
• Removing all tags from the MP3 with mp3tag and re-adding them
• Changing directory names, file names, searching for hidden characters in the file names that could impact.
• Matching the permissions in the backend of the Synology server
• Drop the whole music library and re-add the files to force a full rescan.

Nothing seems to help.

As an example, in the directory tree below, One of the albums is solemnly ignored by Emby. They have the same tags (treated with mp3tag), they came from the same source... I checked the backed permissions on the Synology server and they are the same as well. The mp3 are downloaded from Spotify via https://spotidownloader.com/ 

Does anyone has any idea on what might be causing this and how to fix it? 

Thanks a lot!

DiabboVerdde

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what exactly makes you think that the server isn't recognizing them?

[DiabboVerdde 5]

They don't show up on the library, no matter what I do.  If the server can "see" the mp3, it's ignoring them on purpose.

if you have anything you want me to try, just say the word... or if you want a copy of these mp3. I can try anything.

 

______________________
DiabboVerdde

 

Edited May 31, 2025 by DiabboVerdde

[DiabboVerdde 5]

Three albums in the directory:

• Turkish Delight
• Turkish Delight I (Remaster 2024)
• Turkish Delight II

Only the last two are recognized by Emby and added to the library. The first one is ignored (what is shown on the screenshots in the original post). I have a few other examples of course, I only noticed this is happening yesterday.

Do you have any idea? Any information you can provide is immensely appreciated.

__________________________
DiabboVerdde

[user24 313]

Hi there, sorry to here that you are having some problems.

Troubleshooting can be difficult, especially if you're not sure what to look for. Here's something to perhaps try....

If you go to the Folders menu tab in your Emby music library can you follow your folder structure to see if the 'missing' Albums and Songs are there?

• If they do not appear as they should, then there may be a file permissions issue between Synology and Emby somewhere?
• If they do appear in the Folder view, but not the Album Artist>Album view, then there may be an embedded metadata issue?

if it's a file permissions issue, you could try putting one of the problem albums songs somewhere else in another folder to see if you can isolate the problem.

If it's metadata, and you're using Mp3tag, make sure to check the Extended Tags. Do any of the Songs show up in Emby anywhere if you do a direct search?

If you post some more details, then that may help with further investigating? Cheers!

 

[DiabboVerdde 5]

Hey @user24

Thanks a lot! I figured it out, based on what you told me to do... In fact I stumbled upon the solution

First, I checked the folder structure and the albums were not there, which pointed again to permissions. But I had checked all the permissions on the FILES over and over... but never crossed my mind to check the permissions for the DIRECTORIES. Then I did (screenshot attached)

I saw that "regular" directories had the "+", indicating extended ACLs but the directories I added didn't. So I tried the following:

1. Rename the old directory, adding an appendix, say "-a".
2. Create a new directory with the same name as the old one (minus the prefix of course). These new directories get created with the extended permissions.
3. Moving the files from old to new directory and delete the old one.

That fixed the problem. Just had to do it to the directory of every missing album.

I went on, looking for the cause. Turns out that: when the Mac's zip program decompresses the file and there's a directory inside, the directory has permissions of its own, and when I move the directory to Synology (which I access via NFS from my mac and NFS keeps permissions on copy), it keeps the original permissions, not adding the extended permissions (indicated by the + sign). Without these permissions, Emby can't see the folders. I managed to reproduce this by re-tracing my steps and decompressing the zips, moving them, etc...

Now I'm writing a script to traverse my whole directory tree, looking for directories without the proper permissions and fixing everything. I'll schedule the script to run once a day to find this sort of inconsistency.

Thanks a lot @user24!

 

Regards,

_______________________
DiabboVerdde

Edited May 31, 2025 by DiabboVerdde