Custom Album Tag

[r5yk5 11]

I like to tag albums in Emby so I can group and browse albums outside the tags that Emby provides in the interface. For example I have a High Res tag for all albums that are above 16\44 Flac or I have a tag for all albums that were released by the Blue Note label.

I've noticed that if I add the "GROUPING" tag to the metadata of music outside of Emby then these tags appear in the tags section in Emby. But every song is listed within them. I was wondering if there was a tag I could add to the metadata of all the songs in an album that would just show the albums in the tags section.

[user24 313]

Hi, I also like to browse by custom Album groupings but (AFAIK) there isn't currently any easy way to do this with importing embedded tags at an Album level. Here is what I've found over the last couple of years. Nothing is a direct solution but may give you some ideas to perhaps try..?

• Emby will import ROONTRACK tags into the Emby Tag field (perhaps similar to using GROUPING).
• Emby will not import ROONALBUMTAG (there are a few older threads asking for this).
•  
• Emby will import embedded Genre tags and then groups by Artists/Composers • Albums • Songs on the Genre page.
• Albums can then be selected, to view only the Albums in the specific Genre.
•  
• Albums can be given custom Tags within Emby (is somewhat effective, but takes a while to set up).
• Albums can be added to custom Collections in Emby (perhaps a bit better than Tags, but also takes time).

If you're super-keen to set up something with a large library, that has the embedded tags already, you could try something like this:

• Use Mp3tag (custom Action) to move/copy relevant embedded tags from the Grouping field (or any field) to the Genre field.
• Or just add your custom Tags directly into the Genre field (bulk edit etc. in Mp3tag for efficiency).
• Refresh Metadata on the Albums in Emby (from the Folder tab in 4.8.11.0).
• Use (or mis-use!) the Genres field to view the custom Genres at an Album level.
•  
• Multi-select all of the Albums in the custom Genre and add to a new custom Collection.
• The custom Collection page then becomes the main browsing method for your custom Album Collections.
• Perhaps rename the custom Genres with special prefix characters so they are grouped together at the end of the Genes page?
• The Genres can also be reordered (on say Artist pages) so the custom ones do not appear at the top of the page.

The upside is you get useful custom Album Collections. The downside is it takes a while to initially setup and new Albums have to be continually manually added to the relevant Collections. Possibly the forthcoming Smart Playlists/Collections may streamline processes a lot more???

Perhaps some, or all, of the above may help. Others may be able to suggest alternative methods??? Cheers!

Edited September 16, 2025 by user24

[Luke 42077]

Quote

Emby will not import ROONALBUMTAG (there are a few older threads asking for this).

This is on the to do list, so yes this will be possible eventually.

[r5yk5 11]

Thanks for the replies

I like to keep my genres as they are without "misusing" them haha. Collections are great but it is tricky using them for music when they get mixed up with the video ones. I understand why it is like this and approve of collections that span different libraries. Plus you can't display collections by random which you can do with tags.

Here's what I have done so far

1. For albums that span multiple genres that I don't want a new genre for. For example I have a tag Bluesy that includes "Blues Rock" so I get a bit of Cream or ZZ Top mixed in with my Muddy Waters. I need the bulky editor plugin which is fantastic. The trouble is, I can't get it to work with albums. It will, however work with favourites, so
    a) I add all albums with the genre blues and blues rock to my favourites (I have to make sure there are no other favourites, films or songs etc).  
    b)Then get bulky to tag all my favourites with bluesy. 
Job done, pretty easy.

2. For albums that are HD (above 14/16 flac). Emby has this information but doesn't have the ability to filter by it.
    a) I got an AI bot to make me a one liner that searches emby (via the api) and returns a list songs that are above 14/16 flac as file paths, as emby sees them.
    b) I put that in a playlist HD.m3u
    c) I open up symfonium (the excellent android client) and sync with emby.
    d) I make an album smart playlist that shows all albums that contain songs in that playlist and none that don't.
    e) I select all those albums 1 by 1 (because you have to in symfonium) and add them to favourites.
    f) re-sync and go back to emby
    g) go to section 1-b
This is getting far more complicated.

3. For albums that were released under the (eg) Blue Note Label. Emby does not retrieve this information as far as I know.

    a) Install a docker (because it is easier) subsonic music server that recognises the LABEL tag and reports the path to the subsonic api, eg lms
    b) Sync with symfonium.
    c) Create as smart playlist containing only albums released by Blue Note.
    d) Export that playlist as a file
    e) use sed to alter the paths in that file from the way lms sees them because of the docker container to the way emby sees them
    f) import into emby
    g) goto section 2-c
This is getting silly now.

All this talk of containers, ai bots and apis doesn't mean I have a clue what I'm talking about, I'm a fishmonger not a computer programmer. I have learned this stuff messing about trying to organise my music in Emby. You might ask why I don't just use symfonium with lms. 
I like emby, I use it for all my media and would rather have just one server.
It's better in most respects than a subsonic server for most things too numerous to mention.
It does 4 things that no other server (I've tried Roon, Plex, Audivana Lyrion etc)that I've tried does all 4 of.
Has a nice fancy LG TV app that I can use with my remote control.
Allows me to use play my music outside the home with no messing about.
Lets me start a playlist or instant mix from my phone (web app) on one of my dlna streamers, then continue playing it whatever happens to the phone.
Displays all (or filtered) my albums in randomly giving me an ever changing list of choices.

Anyway, I digress, there has to be an easier way to organise my Music with custom tags than what I've been doing ....

...surely

[user24 313]

1 hour ago, r5yk5 said:

there has to be an easier way to organise my Music with custom tags than what I've been doing

Very interesting! Yes, I can understand exactly these type of scenarios. (You sound like me, just with different methods, that's all.) I think Emby is great for music (otherwise I wouldn’t be using it) but curating custom Album collections is not as easy as it should be. Playlists are fine for Songs, but don't really work well for Albums.

I’ve also tried the Bulky plugin, but struggled with it for Albums and also tried the Smart Playlists 2.0 plugin, but again I could never get it to work for Album collections. Hence the misappropriating of Genres to get something halfway workable for the time being.

I’m hopeful that something like ROONALBUMTAG plus Smart Playlists/Collections will lead to a simple solution:

• Custom tag relevant Albums in Mp3tag (or similar program of choice). It would need to be multi-field like Genres is now.
• Emby reads these tags and assigns to Albums (not the underlying Songs).
• The tags can then be used in Emby, as is.
• The tags can then also be used dynamically by Smart Collections (for Albums) to create many other possible Album combinations.

8 hours ago, Luke said:

This is on the to do list, so yes this will be possible eventually.

As Luke says, this is coming, so hopefully sooner rather than later! There's always plenty of music to listen to in the meantime...