Add a specific content type for classical music

[FrostByte 5392]

Yes a composer field makes sense.

 

Thanks.  It would help when looking at Now Playing.  I think most people who listen to classical want to know the composer when listening

[Craftymum 0]

I am new to Emby and have been toying with this and Plex recently but the biggest drawback to both has been the lack of consideration for classical music.  when I listen to music, I want to be able to search for music by composer first Bach or Beethoven then chose the work.  So far, I cannot find any way to do this without totally reorganising my music (currently in itunes - but hey it's got to be somewhere!) 

 

I can see lots of posts asking for some changes to incorporate more tags, and a few comments from System Architect that this would be a good idea - but I need to know it is actually going to happen before I sign up as over $100 is significant for me.

 

So please - is this on the cards or not?

[Luke 42077]

Yes it is.

[chander421 15]

Yes it is.

 

Finally! Nice! Thanks!

[daedalus 434]

Finally! Nice! Thanks!

i wouldn't be too excited until you see some real progress

[Craftymum 0]

Yes it is.

Fab thanks for the prompt response!  - how long are we likely to have to wait, do I need to make myself a work around solution or is this likely to launch soon?

[llondru 3]

Second this ... I have 500+ cd's pending to rip to a NAS, and I cannot begin until I figure it if it's worth it ... I would hate not to have the music sorted by composer... this is such a basic thing 

[Luke 42077]

 Support for composers is coming in Emby Server 4.6:

 

[StewieGreen 160]

Are you going to expand title tags as well?

Also, it would be helpful to find a way to better navigate larger cd collections.  Being able to name individual discs - and search for them - would be super helpful.

Cheers

[ginjaninja 605]

This might help the discussion, Musicbrainz/Picard has a plugin for classical music.

in its default state it changes these tags

to these tags

Summary of changes

the plugin has more behaviour options than you can shake a stick at

this example may not be fully featured because it depends of the musicbrainz data for the track (and i dont understand classical to find a better example)

Perhaps one way forward quickly and effectively would be for a classical/?jazz? buff to give it a go and

• asses whether the plugin provides the granularity required for classical/?jazz?
• asses whether there is a configuration that provides the required granularity without changing tags that Emby already uses, (in a way that would require different treatment from a pop/rock library)

 

If the classical/?jazz? community can agree on a workable tag configuration (perhaps compatible with this plugin and current emby tagging*) (perhaps documented from must have to nice to have) that would help.

if a tag configuration compatible with this plugin (with an agreed config) can be found it will

• act as a standard to help people adopt/agree to a tagging standard
• allow people to tag their library very quickly

(*special consideration is required for eg. artist, artists, albumartist, albumartists, composer as emby already uses these tags to designate aspects of music already**)

the other part of the conversation which seems missing is classical buffs need to agree, based on an agreed required granularity for tagging, what views of the data is required to make a classical library effective (high priority vs lower priority).

**If the clasical tagging could be made consistent with existing 'pop/rock' tagging then i suspect you will get want you want quicker as less development will be required (guesstimate).

TLDR Anything the classical buffs can do to define/agree the granularity of tags required and the ui design to consume this will help. Conforming to the musicbrainz standard if workable might be the quickest way to gain agreement.

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by ginjaninja

[Jägs 85]

I'm relatively new to music with Emby, though I've been using it for years with films.  I'm currently using Subsonic solely for music, but want to move away to something non-Java based that either has a great mobile app or supports the Subsonic API.  That said, I welcome the addition of the Composer tag, as few media streamers support it, currently!  I'm running the beta to play around with it.

One other tag I'd love to see supported is the "Movement" tag, though I'm not sure how this would be handled in Emby "under the hood."

For those who do not listen to a lot of classical music, multi-movement pieces are somewhat of the norm, rather than the exception.  For example, 

Vivaldi's Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "Spring" (La primavera)

1. Allegro (in E major)
2. Largo e pianissimo sempre (in C♯ minor)
3. Allegro pastorale (in E major)

But this also happens in jazz and in some popular music as well.

I may be in the minority, but when I shuffle, say, a playlist of baroque music, it'd be great to have an option to shuffle the works, but not the movements.  In other, say the next shuffled piece up is the Vivaldi's concerto above.  I'd like to listen to each movement of the work in proper order (Allegro, then Largo and finally, Allegro pastorale).  This is something iTunes can currently do:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3121662/how-to-better-organize-classical-music-in-itunes.html

Assuming your music is properly tagged, of course.

It would be fantastic if this behavior could be considered for Emby.  I would then only have to worry about running one media streaming server; one that unifies all of my media. 

Edited January 16, 2021 by Jägs

[Luke 42077]

4 hours ago, Jägs said:

I'm relatively new to music with Emby, though I've been using it for years with films.  I'm currently using Subsonic solely for music, but want to move away to something non-Java based that either has a great mobile app or supports the Subsonic API.  That said, I welcome the addition of the Composer tag, as few media streamers support it, currently!  I'm running the beta to play around with it.

One other tag I'd love to see supported is the "Movement" tag, though I'm not sure how this would be handled in Emby "under the hood."

For those who do not listen to a lot of classical music, multi-movement pieces are somewhat of the norm, rather than the exception.  For example, 

Vivaldi's Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "Spring" (La primavera)

1. Allegro (in E major)
2. Largo e pianissimo sempre (in C♯ minor)
3. Allegro pastorale (in E major)

But this also happens in jazz and in some popular music as well.

I may be in the minority, but when I shuffle, say, a playlist of baroque music, it'd be great to have an option to shuffle the works, but not the movements.  In other, say the next shuffled piece up is the Vivaldi's concerto above.  I'd like to listen to each movement of the work in proper order (Allegro, then Largo and finally, Allegro pastorale).  This is something iTunes can currently do:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3121662/how-to-better-organize-classical-music-in-itunes.html

Assuming your music is properly tagged, of course.

It would be fantastic if this behavior could be considered for Emby.  I would then only have to worry about running one media streaming server; one that unifies all of my media. 

So essentially they're chunks of songs that should always stay together, in sequence, even when shuffled, right?

[ginjaninja 605]

@Luke

@Jägs

mp3tag tags point of view

Re Movement

it seems that there are movement fields built into ID3v2.3 and 2.4**

 

Picards work and movement plugin, seems to conform to mp3tag's understanding of the standard.

Spoiler

 

As an aside the plugin also conforms to apples custom TXXX_SHOWMOVEMENT Flag

Quote

SHOWMOVEMENT. if it is set to 1, it will show movement in the iTunes otherwise it will show song name.

It seems ITUNES uses this flag when set to 1 to replace? TIT2 (title in ffprobe) with MVNM

 

Re: Work

For mp3 mp3tag and picard just seems to use a custom tag TXXX_WORK (FFPROBE see as WORK)

Itunes may use TIT1 (not sure what ffprobe would see, anyone with an itunes file may be able to embed 'work' and share for analysis.)

**it seems that FFPROBE chooses not to extract the ID3v2.X movement tags.

whilst other tools do see Movement Name / MVNM id3 tag

not the first time that ffprobe has come up short for music. Given that there is a standard for movement tags, reading the standard seems like the only practical way to go, if support for movement were to be introduced.

 

 

[Jägs 85]

14 hours ago, Luke said:

So essentially they're chunks of songs that should always stay together, in sequence, even when shuffled, right?

Basically, yeah.  Movements can be quite large, though, and can stand on their own, so I hesitate to call them chunks, but the concept is sound:  stay together, in sequenced, even when shuffled.

In terms of the "always" part, though, it'd be great to have a toggle for this (e.g., "group multi-movement works") during playback, just to give users the flexibility to control this.  So, I imagine the behavior would be that if Emby detects the presence of the movement tag, and this option was selected, it would group the entire work together during playback; otherwise, it'd play them as it currently does.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Jägs
typos

[Jägs 85]

Just an addendum to my post above, here's a screenshot of how you can control shuffle playback in iTunes/Music.  So, basically, the user can choose between Songs, Albums, or Groupings (which includes movements).  It'd be fantastic if Emby could replicate this functionality.

 

[Dullard 14]

Composers is working wonderfully!  Because I am no better than anyone else, I am never satisfied.  Now i would like a tab for conductor, ensemble, and soloists too!  Although I can live with it how it is.  If these tabs are added, I would add one comment.  Please pay attention to the guide Musicbrainz uses for setting the tags for classical pieces (and not that classical musicbrainz plugin which mangles things horribly).  Then I think a music library switch would be sufficient rather than a whole new content type.  Something like:  🞕 Files are tagged using Musicbrainz Classical Guidelines.

[Luke 42077]

On 9/19/2023 at 7:14 PM, Dullard said:

Composers is working wonderfully!  Because I am no better than anyone else, I am never satisfied.  Now i would like a tab for conductor, ensemble, and soloists too!  Although I can live with it how it is.  If these tabs are added, I would add one comment.  Please pay attention to the guide Musicbrainz uses for setting the tags for classical pieces (and not that classical musicbrainz plugin which mangles things horribly).  Then I think a music library switch would be sufficient rather than a whole new content type.  Something like:  🞕 Files are tagged using Musicbrainz Classical Guidelines.

So what’s the next big one to add?  Orchestra? 

[Dullard 14]

On 9/9/2025 at 1:10 AM, Luke said:

So what’s the next big one to add?  Orchestra? 

I got to thinking about that the other day.  I thought that maybe instead of [you all] being consonantly nagged for "I want tabs for this" and "but I want tags for that!", what if there were user accessible mapping rules from tags that would control the user interface?  Something similar to the scripts Musicbrainz Picard has for file renaming.  So if I did want a tab for orchestra, I could create a tab (in my Classical library), name it "Orchestra," and then provide rules as to which tags are used to populate and format it, and under what conditions.

In that way, we could personalize our UIs to preference and developers could tackle bigger issues.

[Luke 42077]

6 minutes ago, Dullard said:

I got to thinking about that the other day.  I thought that maybe instead of [you all] being consonantly nagged for "I want tabs for this" and "but I want tags for that!", what if there were user accessible mapping rules from tags that would control the user interface?  Something similar to the scripts Musicbrainz Picard has for file renaming.  So if I did want a tab for orchestra, I could create a tab (in my Classical library), name it "Orchestra," and then provide rules as to which tags are used to populate and format it, and under what conditions.

In that way, we could personalize our UIs to preference and developers could tackle bigger issues.

The problem with that is this idea only covers the tabs. Then there is the rest of the application to think about and I don't think a generic approach like that would lead to the best possible design. That's why I think both the server and apps need to understand a little bit about this.

[beckfield 173]

On 9/8/2025 at 10:10 PM, Luke said:

So what’s the next big one to add?  Orchestra? 

Unfortunately, the defined metadata tags that would make that possible have been historically misused.  I did a whole diatribe on this a few years ago in a feature request in the Plex forums, but they never did anything about it.

The ID3 specification (which, technically, only applies to mp3 formats) has four tags that are supposed to be used for the relevant artists for any release.  They are defined like this:

  TPE1 Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)
  TPE2 Band/orchestra/accompaniment
  TPE3 Conductor/performer refinement
  TPE4 Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by

In theory, the orchestra would go in TPE2, but way back at the "beginning," the makers of the WinAmp media player decided to use TPE2 as the "Album Artist," rather than for "Band/orchestra/accompaniment," because the ID3 specification failed to include a specified tag for "Album Artist," and that failure has never been corrected.  The whole industry, with a few attempted exceptions, has basically followed suit ever since. Few are willing to buck the system and use the TPE2 tag as it was originally intended.

So in tags, orchestra is no different than the band name, and it's impossible (or logically difficult) to segregate the orchestra into its own category.  It could be done in formats that use Vorbis tags, such as flac, but that tag system is very flexible (which has both good and bad consequences), and it would depend on everybody using the same tag name.  It could even be done in mp3 files using user-defined tags, but that, again, would depend on everyone using the same custom tag name.  Most developers/product designers I've talked to are reluctant to do this because of that dependency.

Edited September 11, 2025 by beckfield

[Luke 42077]

OK, orchestra could be a mess then. What else?

[Dullard 14]

Musicbrainz appears to follow the ID3 intention with their Classical Style Guide.  I have to admit, when i saw what they put in AlbumArtist (TPE2), I was all 'Seriously?'  it makes sense now.  Here is the link to their style guide to classical album artist for those who haven't read it already:  https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Classical/Release_Artist.  There is some discussion in Musicbrainz forums about marking albums formatted to the classical style guide (https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-9020) however, it would still need to be manifest as a tag of some sort..   I might offer that if this is implemented, then Emby could use the tags as they were intended.  At least for MB Classical Style Guide followers.

Edited September 13, 2025 by Dullard

[user24 313]

While not wanting to the hijack the discussion about Classical Music tabs, etc. Perhaps a wider consideration is how Artists are generally classified in Emby. Currently they are just "Artist" and there is no way to determine the type of entity beyond that, unless they are custom tagged within Emby into required categories. However, MusicBrainz has an Artist Properties Type classification that (I think) can be extracted and added into Emby using the MusicBrainz API. I haven't tried yet for myself but will experiment with it when I get a chance...

https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Artist

As my music library is non-classical, the Types I'm interested in are: Person, Group and Other. However there is also Orchestra listed.

Therefore embedded tags may not be required to make/import an Orchestra category (if wanted) by getting the info from MusicBrainz. Perhaps there is potential here to move from a flat Artist structure by adding Artist Type somehow? I don't think all the Types could just be added to the top-level menu (unless filterable?) but perhaps Artist Type could be a possible filter on the Artists main page, or something like that???  Person and Group may also have wider appeal for all genres of music?

Thanks for considering.

[user24 313]

Also, here's a few MusicBrainz screenshots that show the Artist Type underneath the Artist name:

...and a table view with the Type and some other categories (as describes on the Artist page - link in previous post)

[user24 313]

On 9/21/2025 at 9:57 AM, user24 said:

I haven't tried yet for myself but will experiment with it when I get a chance...

To follow up on this - I did a small proof-of-concept test:

const artists = [
{name: "The Beatles", mbid: "b10bbbfc-cf9e-42e0-be17-e2c3e1d2600d"},
{name: "George Harrison", mbid: "42a8f507-8412-4611-854f-926571049fa0"},
{name: "London Philharmonic Orchestra", mbid: "fa37018e-3557-4cb7-973f-555003c30174"},
{name: "London Philharmonic Choir", mbid: "39770a16-9899-4392-808c-e39263a2caaf"},
{name: "Pink Floyd", mbid: "83d91898-7763-47d7-b03b-b92132375c47"},
{name: "David Gilmour", mbid: "1dce970e-34bc-48b2-ab51-48d87544a4c2"}, 
{name: "Dire Straits", mbid: "614e3804-7d34-41ba-857f-811bad7c2b7a"},
{name: "Boston Symphony Orchestra", mbid: "6ed6a493-0300-428d-82da-91c62b4d50aa"},
{name: "Ludwig van Beethoven", mbid: "1f9df192-a621-4f54-8850-2c5373b7eac9"},  
];

async function fetchArtistType(artist) {
  const url = `https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/${artist.mbid}?fmt=json`;

  try {
    const response = await fetch(url, {
      headers: {
        "User-Agent": "Test (test@example.com)"
      }
    });
    const data = await response.json();
    return { name: artist.name, type: data.type || "Unknown" };
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(`Error fetching ${artist.name}:`, error);
    return { name: artist.name, type: "Error" };
  }
}

async function displayArtistTypes() {
  const list = document.getElementById("type-list");
  list.innerHTML = "";

  for (const artist of artists) {
    const result = await fetchArtistType(artist);
    const li = document.createElement("li");
    li.textContent = `${result.name}: ${result.type}`;
    list.appendChild(li);
  }
}

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", displayArtistTypes);

This test code returned the following results: