After changing the genre of MP3 music album (using EasyTag), Emby keeps showing the previous genre

[fuxoft 6]

I've got an album of MP3 music which had all songs tagged as "Alternative / Indie", which was correctly displayed in Emby.

I changed the genre of all songs to "Electronic" using EasyTag. (Tag version ID3v2)

In the Library settings for my Music, all downloaders are switched off. The Music folder structure is set to "Other or unstructured".

The album directory contains only MP3 files and "cover.png", no .NFO or other files.

The server is 4.8.11.0 on XUbuntu.

Afterwards, I did all of the following things in the Emby album view (in the web interface) for this album:

1. "Remove identification"
2. "Scan library files"
3. "Refresh metadata"

But the genre of all songs is still displayed as "Alternative" and "Indie", not "Electronic".

Running "ffprobe -i [songname]" correctly displays the genre as "Electronic".

I've tried the above process at least three times.

Doing "Refresh metadata" on a single song correctly updates its genre to "Electronic" but I am not sure how to select all songs in the album and apply "Refresh metadata" to all of them. I thought this is done by selecting "Refresh metadata" in the three-dot menu under the Album name but that does NOT work (as described above).

I'd appreciate the instructions how to make all the song information to be taken from the ID3 tags and from nowhere else.

Also, I am not entirely sure what's the difference between "Scan library files" and "Refresh metadata". My music collection contains tens of thousands of songs and yet, doing "Scan library files" on the whole Music library seems to only take a few seconds. Can you please point me to the section of documentation where this is explained?

I can provide server logs after I am told what process execatly am I supposed to do to update the genre of all MP3 in the album.

Edited September 4, 2025 by fuxoft
Added server info

[user24 313]

Hi, I don't have the exact same setup as you, but just tested an Album (all Songs) Genre change with Mp3tag (FLAC files) and 4.8.11.0 on Windows PC with the web app.

Try going to the Folders tab in the Music Menu and doing "Refresh Metadata" from the parent (Album) folder. Hopefully this will work?

Generally I find that "Scan Library Files"  from the parent-level folder, even several levels above the tracks, will update nearly everything underneath. When "Scan Library Files" doesn't work, then "Refresh Metadata" usually does, but not 100% of the time. 

Whatever the scenario (with 4.8) using the Folders tab rather than the Albums tab  has always been more successful for me. 

Edited September 4, 2025 by user24

[fuxoft 6]

3 hours ago, user24 said:

Try going to the Folders tab in the Music Menu and doing "Refresh Metadata" from the parent (Album) folder. Hopefully this will work?

Oh, wow, that worked immediately! While doing the same from the "Album" page or for whole Music library did NOT work...

[nospotify 184]

9 hours ago, fuxoft said:

Oh, wow, that worked immediately! While doing the same from the "Album" page or for whole Music library did NOT work...

This is a long-standing problem which Emby hasn't yet fixed. It's clumsy, but the most reliable way to update metadata is to force refresh and scan from Folder view.

[Luke 42077]

In the upcoming 4.9 server release, when you refresh the metadata on an album it will also do the same for all of the tracks.