Album descriptions are not fetched automatically — only after manual identification

[TuXFire 4]

Emby Server: 4.10.2.0
TheAudioDB plugin: 1.0.22.0
MusicBrainz / TheAudioDB metadata providers

Description

Album descriptions (wiki-style summaries) are not fetched automatically when refreshing music album metadata. They are retrieved only after manually identifying the album and selecting the correct match.

Other album metadata, such as the album title, artist, release year, track listing and track durations, is already available.

For example, the following description is missing until I manually identify the album:

Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us is the twelfth studio album by British gothic metal band Paradise Lost, released through Century Media in September 2009.

The description is present in the album's .nfo file under the <review> element, and Jellyfin reads it correctly. However, Emby does not appear to populate the description automatically in these cases.

Steps to reproduce

• Have a music album in the library with a valid MusicBrainz ID but no description.

• Select Refresh metadata / Search for missing metadata.

• Check whether the album description is populated.

• Repeat the refresh using Replace all metadata.

• If the description is still missing, open Identify, search for the album and manually select the correct result.

• Check the album description again.

Expected behaviour

Emby should automatically retrieve the available album description during a normal metadata refresh, without requiring manual identification.

Actual behaviour

Neither of the following actions populates the missing description in the tested case:

• Search for missing metadata

• Replace all metadata

However, manually identifying the album and selecting the correct result causes Emby to query TheAudioDB for the album, after which the description becomes available.

Log evidence

I tested this with the album Green Carnation – Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness.

Its MusicBrainz identifiers are:

• MusicBrainz Release ID: 7ab4a7dd-1155-427a-b01e-772697ef1945

• MusicBrainz Release Group ID: 660e8ebe-fc6e-3525-8d06-3397ab0979e7

• MusicBrainz Artist ID: 8f60a47c-015b-4b70-957c-0871347d1b1d

During both automatic refresh attempts, the logs showed successful MusicBrainz release lookups and an artist lookup against TheAudioDB, but no album lookup against TheAudioDB was visible in the supplied log excerpts.

After manually identifying the album, the logs showed the following request:

GET https://www.theaudiodb.com/api/v1/json/349707/album-mb.php?i=660e8ebe-fc6e-3525-8d06-3397ab0979e7
HTTP 200

The request uses the MusicBrainz Release Group ID. The album lookup was therefore triggered after manual identification, whereas it was not visible during the previous refresh attempts.

The logs also show successful HTTP 200 responses from MusicBrainz during all three operations.

Additional information

• The album already had a MusicBrainz ID before manual identification.

• Replacing all metadata did not resolve the issue.

• TheAudioDB plugin version 1.0.22.0 is installed.

• The issue is not simply that the album has no MusicBrainz identifier.

• The behaviour suggests that the automatic refresh path may not be triggering the album metadata lookup in the same way as manual identification.

I understand that HTTP 200 alone does not prove that TheAudioDB returned usable album data. However, the difference in the requests triggered by the two workflows seems relevant.

Questions

• Is this expected behaviour, or could it be a bug in Emby's music metadata refresh process?

• Why does manually identifying an album trigger the TheAudioDB album lookup when a normal metadata refresh does not appear to do so?

• Is there a way to make Emby automatically retrieve these descriptions for the entire music library, without manually identifying albums one by one?

Thanks.

[Luke 43491]

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[TuXFire 4]

Hi,

The log is attached

I did 3 new tests:
18:49:48: search for missing metadata >>> no new metadata downloaded (album description "wiki style")
18h51h53: replace all metadata >>> no new metadata downloaded
18h53: identify the album > select the good one in the proposed results >>> description appears (after refresh of the page) 
It was empty before. 

I don't know when this issue appeared, because in the past it worked fine.

embyserver.txt

[Luke 43491]

that description is from audiodb right?

[TuXFire 4]

Yes: https://www.theaudiodb.com/album/2199383-Metallica-Ride-the-Lightning?lan=fr

Edited Thursday at 06:36 PM by TuXFire

[Luke 43491]

Hi, please try the update to the musicbrainz plugin that just went up and let us know if that resolves the issue for you. Thanks.

[TuXFire 4]

It is fixed! Thanks for your reactivity!

Another problem i didnt mentioned: Some albums had an nfo with the description (downloaded by jellyfin) and a rescan by emby did not import the description from the nfo's.