Change Artist Year selectable numerical field to custom text field

[user24 313]

Hi, On the AlbumArtist/Artist/Composer detail pages it is currently possible to add a single year to the metadata (e.g. 1960).

I can’t really think of any good use for a single year for an Artist, so don’t use it. BUT the positioning of the field is perfect to potentially show other useful Artist summary/overview information, e.g.:

• Artist Type (as defined by MusicBrainz)
• Born and Died dates (for person)
• Formed and Disbanded dates (for group)
• Artist Country (and/or specific location)
• Discography Timeline (full, or based on library contents)
• Number of Albums (no need to go to Albums detail page to see)
• Record Labels (there isn't any field for this now)
• Anything really, that anyone may want? (as a short text string)

My current personal preference would be Discography Timeline based on library contents (e.g. 1963-2025 Discography).

I’m not asking/expecting anything to be automatically generated – just being able to manually add the required metadata would be sufficiently useful and very flexible. The big advantage of having a custom text field instead of a fixed numeric field, is that everyone could then set this up for their own preference.

Would this be useful for anyone else? What would you use it for?

Let me know if anything needs explaining further. Thanks for considering.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, did you enter that value into the metadata editor for the artist?

[user24 313]

Yes, for "1960". As best as I can determine, the field will only accept and display single positive and negative numbers:

With my "1963-2025 Discography" example - I made a mock-up by directly modifying the page CSS (which isn't retained).

[Luke 42077]

OK to be honest, the date fields are mainly showing by accident in the metadata editor. It's probably best that they just not be there, no?

[user24 313]

Understood - it's a carry over Year field from other pages where it makes sense to use it. Therefore, from an Emby perspective, you should probably delete it because nothing is auto-imported into the field and it adds no real value for likely anyone.

From my perspective, I'll always try to repurpose any available field for more customization, so was thinking that changing this to a text string for Artists may be relatively easy to do? But, of course it could be much more complicated than that and too much effort for no great return.

I'd love a fully automated Album Discography dates field (I don't think anyone else does this?) but guess it would be quite a low probability to implement soonish, even if the idea has any merit???

I've been experimenting with a workaround anyway, by using a Genre tag for the Artist and only displaying that one tag. I'm still playing around with the style format, but at least I can achieve an Album Discography year display, and can probably reposition it before the number of tracks, with CSS, if I want to? The downside is that it is static and needs updating when I add new albums outside of the current date range.

Thanks for the honest reply and your work is appreciated!

Edited January 3 by user24