Music not being identified properly

[RedBaron164 18]

I have a new install of Emby server and I'm seeing a lot of identification issues with my music. For example when I browse to the Artist Queen, instead of showing me all the Albums I have it shows me the album Abba's Greatest Hits and nothing else. But it under "Songs" it still lists all the songs for Queen. And this is happening with a lot of artists. Sometimes it will show one or two albums from the artist and then a random album from some other artist. Has anyone else experience this issue or found a fix?

 

My music library is pointed at a network share, in that network share I have folders for Artists and then in the Artist folder I have a folder for each album.

 

I also tested the Emby install on my older server and it is having the same issue.

Edited May 4, 2016 by RedBaron164

[ebr 16184]

What is the state of the tags inside of the songs?  We rely heavily on the tagging over any sort of file structure.

[RedBaron164 18]

Tagging is almost perfect, I'd say about 85-90% complete. I use mediamonkey to tag all my songs. I just went through some artists that aren't showing up properly and the tags all look good.

 

[RedBaron164 18]

I went into the Metadata Manager and found that things were all sorts of messed up. I found 1 Folder listed called "2004 Sampler" (which is a compilation album and the songs inside of it are tagged properly). Underneath that folder in Metadata manager were hundreds of songs, and when I would check the information of those songs it would list the proper Album, Artist etc and show that it is in a separate path. I'm removing the music library completely and then I'll re-add it to see if it scans in properly on a second attempt. I checked my other Emby server and the metadata manager does not show up exactly the same but it's close.

 

On a side note, I've started seeing .nfo files show up in my music library. If I disable the NFO savers option under Music Artists/Albums would it not create those nfo files and force it to read the ID3 tag info?

[icthusman1 23]

@@RedBaron164 I am having a similar problem. I started this thread http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/34515-artist-getting-messed-up-when-they-have-an-album-with-their-name/ to try and get help. I discovered that one Artist I was having trouble with, the issue seemed to be caused by them having a self-titled album. As soon as I pulled that album out, the rest of their albums worked perfectly.

 

I have just added that album back in and rescanned my library. So far the album is showing properly and is not breaking anything.

[RedBaron164 18]

@@RedBaron164 I am having a similar problem. I started this thread http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/34515-artist-getting-messed-up-when-they-have-an-album-with-their-name/ to try and get help. I discovered that one Artist I was having trouble with, the issue seemed to be caused by them having a self-titled album. As soon as I pulled that album out, the rest of their albums worked perfectly.

 

I have just added that album back in and rescanned my library. So far the album is showing properly and is not breaking anything.

 

Unfortunately that does not appear to be my issue. I have this issue with several artists, of which none of them have a self titled album.

[icthusman1 23]

Unfortunately that does not appear to be my issue. I have this issue with several artists, of which none of them have a self titled album.

Did you try deleting the metadata files? Do this in both the Artist and Album folders.

[RedBaron164 18]

So I removed the library from Emby, I then removed all the .nfo files in my Music directory. I Ran the Scan Media Library task. I then disabled the option to save NFO files. I then added the Music library back into the system and let it run the Library scan again. The issue is still persisting. Upon further investigation I am seeing that issue with artists who have self titled Albums but it's also effecting other artists and any single tracks I have. However it doesn't effect all the artists with self titled albums, such as AC/DC for example.

 

What I noticed is that I have some Artists separated into sub folders such as I have a folders for 80's Music, another for Classic Rock etc. Using the 80's folder as an Example, single files, and random artists with or without a self titled album get added under the first folder inside of the 80's folder with turns out to be "A Flock of Seagulls". This also happens at the root of my music folder which is why a single Album by "All Time Low" has over 300 tracks.

Edited May 4, 2016 by RedBaron164

[Tanamur 53]

Windows Server: Version 3.0.5934.0

 

I am having the same problem in a large way. I too have tagged most (not all FLAC) files with MediaMonkey 4.1.11.1783 Gold. I have run a full refresh 2-3 times. I do not store metadata locally. When I check the MusicBranz ID for the artist, it has picked up the second entry on the list for John Lee Hooker, Jr. with a score of 80 instead of John Lee Hooker with a score of 100 just above it. Subsequently, all of the CDs are unmatched.

 

There are too many instances to edit them individually so I am going to remove the music library, clean, rescan and then add them back an artist at a time and see if that finds the correct artists/albums.

 

As an example of what I am seeing, here is the folder structure:

 

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\John Lee Hooker

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\John Lee Hooker\The Healer

 

Edited May 8, 2016 by Tanamur

[Tanamur 53]

This continues to have large problems. I have deleted the music library, cleaned database, rescanned, restarted emby, rescanned, cleaned database, rescanned, and then readded one folder of 50 artists.

 

Below is an example of what results I am getting. A "fairly" popular artist with the spelling of "Adele" exists in the folder path below with 3 albums

 

 

\\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Adele

 

\\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Adele\19

\\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Adele\21

\\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Adele\Live at The Royal Albert Hall

 

The artist that emby identified is the artist "Adèle" with the 3rd highest score of artists with this name in MusicBrainz. Again, there are too many mismatches to edit manually. 

 

http://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Adele&type=artist&method=indexed

Score Name Sort Name Type Gender Area Begin Begin Area End End Area

100 `Adele (melodic hardcore band) `Adele Group

98 ``Adele (UK soul/jazz singer) ``````Adele Person Female United Kingdom 1988-05-05 Tottenham

78 ``Adèle (French artist) ``````````````Adèle Person Female France

 

Even without tagging, why would emby pick a lower ranked artist with a different spelling than the actual folder name? I have reversed the order in Metadata>Services and put AudioDB first followed by MusicBrainz and did a full refresh. There was no change.

 

 

Any suggestions?

[Deathsquirrel 745]

You said your songs aren't consistently tagged and you don't store metadata locally.  I'd reverse those positions.  I've had almost no trouble with music identification with fully tagged music and when my metadata is stored locally any stuff I manually fix sticks.

 

From your description I would also suggest making sure the path you added to the music library is \\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC rather than a bigher level folder.

Edited May 8, 2016 by Deathsquirrel

[Luke 42079]

I found some breaking changes in the music brainz api that we hadn't adjusted to so i am fixing that. i have tested the adele example and it is now pulling the first result in the search list.

 

Unfortunately though, fanart is actually using the music brainz id from the third result, which means you get no images. I am guessing that third result probably used to be the first one and that is why fanart is using that. I think audiodb is also using the third one because it also returns 0 images against the first one.

[Tanamur 53]

You said your songs aren't consistently tagged and you don't store metadata locally.  I'd reverse those positions.  I've had almost no trouble with music identification with fully tagged music and when my metadata is stored locally any stuff I manually fix sticks.

 

From your description I would also suggest making sure the path you added to the music library is \\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC rather than a bigher level folder.

Thanks @@Deathsquirrel - Let me clarify, all of the FLAC files are tagged and verified using MediaMonkey and just straight Windows Explorer. The 50 I tested are 100 per cent. The path added to the library is the upper folder containing all ARTISTS\ALBUMS so \\NUC\My_Book_01\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\.

 

I am still struggling with this and the manual process and am starting to think it is time to delete the entire database and start from scratch....

[Tanamur 53]

I found some breaking changes in the music brainz api that we hadn't adjusted to so i am fixing that. i have tested the adele example and it is now pulling the first result in the search list.

 

Unfortunately though, fanart is actually using the music brainz id from the third result, which means you get no images. I am guessing that third result probably used to be the first one and that is why fanart is using that. I think audiodb is also using the third one because it also returns 0 images against the first one.

Thanks @@Luke for checking into this and identifying some API changes. Not having any coding skills myself, is there any logic in the search that looks at the album subfolders of an artist and compares this to the MusicBrainz database? In my case couldn't it say look at the scanned albums/folders 19, 21, etc and compare that to the Adèle (French artist)  and figure out that no albums with those titles exist for that artist and to try another Adele? 

 

Anyway, I'm always grateful for the quick responses and the help!

[Tanamur 53]

Tagging is almost perfect, I'd say about 85-90% complete. I use mediamonkey to tag all my songs. I just went through some artists that aren't showing up properly and the tags all look good.

 

screenshot3.jpg

Hi @RedBaron164 - Can I ask if you use the AutoTag option in MeidaMonkey and if you embed the album coverart into each track? Previously I did not include the coverart but am having some luck doing that now.

[Tanamur 53]

Hi Forum - I am at the point of concluding my overall database is "gummed up" beyond repair the way things are working. Here is what has brought me to that conclusion:

 

Joe Jackson (4 Albums) FLAC - All fully tagged with MediaMonkey and tags visible with Explorer at the file Details level.

 

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson\Greatest Hits

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson\Look Sharp!

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson\Night And Day

\\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson\Steppin' Out-The A&M Years 1979-89

 

1) Emby Rescan and Full Refresh at the artist level results in no metadata.

2) Manually enter the artist MusicBrainzID: 07f6d469-38f3-46da-9cfa-2f532422b84e 

3) Emby Rescan (no results) and Full Refresh at the artist level DOES populate the correct metadata.

4) Rescan all of database, Full Refresh of Music Library at MetadataManager and nothing is inherited or populated into the 4 albums.

5) Manually enter MusicBrainz Group ReleaseID and AlbumID, Full Refresh and no metadata populates to the albums.

 

Out of 50 artists and approximately 100 albums, metadata has populated about 50%.

 

I realize this may be drastic but after the problems I had 4-6 weeks back after "renaming" the TV library in the Dashboard/Library Manager, I sense starting over is the way to go.

 

How do I go about deleting the entire database and starting over? I  looked through the Windows Server Wiki Tutorials but did not see instructions there. Thx.

[RedBaron164 18]

Hi @RedBaron164 - Can I ask if you use the AutoTag option in MeidaMonkey and if you embed the album coverart into each track? Previously I did not include the coverart but am having some luck doing that now.

 

For a lot of my music I will use the Autotag from web option and I always embed the album cover in each track when I go through and tag music.

[RedBaron164 18]

So I've been re-organizing my collection a bit and so far it seems to be helping. It appears that Emby gets hung up and confused on loose songs I have floating around. For Example, the Artist Rancid was all jacked up and under Album's it was showing me something from Adam Sandler. I had 6 Albums and 2 loose songs in the Rancid Artist folder. When I moved the loose songs into folders and re-scanned the library the Albums started showing up properly.

 

My guess is Emby sees those loose songs in the Artist folder first and scans those then ignores the Album Folders.

 

I also had my music separated into genre folders, been that way for years, so I'd have something like this:

 

D:\Music

80's

A Flock of Seagulls

Duran Duran

Def Leppard

*Random Single songs

 

So what I've been doing is moving all the Artist folders that were inside the Genre folders up into the root so Duran Duran was moved into the D:\Music Folder.

 

This seems to be helping. Random singles are still screwy but at least by moving Artists into the root directory it seems to be keeping the singles isolated and not screwing up the majority of my music.

 

*Dealing with almost 24k mp3's can be a real pain :-)

Edited May 10, 2016 by RedBaron164

[Vicpa 611]

Hi @Tanamur,@RedBaron164,

 

A couple of thoughts.

Tanamur - "Deleting the database" is kinda a nuclear option.  The cleanest way I have found is to do an uninstall of the server and check all the boxes to remove all traces. As I am sure you know that means you are starting from scratch. Need to setup up everything again, watched status is gone etc.

 

Others should chime in with perhaps more surgical options. deleting the library.db  and refreshinfo.db has been discussed ( ​ both are in the data directory where the server is installed) although I haven't done that personally.

The other thing is I would move your share point shortening the UNC \\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson  if cdlr_flac is the root for you albums I would make it something like \\CDLR_flac\.....  idea being artist, album names and track names can get quite long and you want to mitigate bumping up to any character number limitations in the path.

 

RedBaron164-

If you want to use an automated tool to reorganize your file structure take a look at picard or mp3tag both have move options that puts stuff in a structure that emby does a good job with.

 

Just some thoughts as always proceed with caution

 

-vicpa

[RedBaron164 18]

Hi member='RedBaron164'],

 

RedBaron164-

If you want to use an automated tool to reorganize your file structure take a look at picard or mp3tag both have move options that puts stuff in a structure that emby does a good job with.

 

Just some thoughts as always proceed with caution

 

-vicpa

 

Yeah, I've tried automated tools in the paste and I've ended up spending more time fixing things so I've been put off to the idea of letting something automate the process.

 

I think my biggest issue now is going to be what to do with all the one off tracks I have. I may try and let one of those programs take a shot at just the loose songs and see how it does.

[Vicpa 611]

Hi

 

I had a pretty good result with Picard, like you I tried once with iTunes organizing it was a disaster. But results will vary based on your preference. We music people are particular        

 

Picard  will scan the loose tracks and try to id the album or if all else fails. I threw some in a folder and just tagged the "album" as [non-album tracks] which is the convention for singles etc. emby displays it like a regular album just need to give it some art for the cover

 

 

Perhaps another option

[RedBaron164 18]

Well after spending a few days of re-organizing my music I'm in a good spot now. Cleaning up loose singles seems to have resolved the majority of my issues.

 

Tanamur: I had some issues when removing and re-adding my Music Library. What I found that seems to help is changing the path that I'm adding. So for example, originally I added \\server\Music and when I removed and re-added it I would change it so it was \\server\MusicShare. This seems to force Emby to treat it as a new location and I found its less likely to re-use old data. Just a thought, hopefully it helps.

[Tanamur 53]

Hi @Tanamur,@RedBaron164,

 

A couple of thoughts.

Tanamur - "Deleting the database" is kinda a nuclear option.  The cleanest way I have found is to do an uninstall of the server and check all the boxes to remove all traces. As I am sure you know that means you are starting from scratch. Need to setup up everything again, watched status is gone etc.

 

Others should chime in with perhaps more surgical options. deleting the library.db  and refreshinfo.db has been discussed ( ​ both are in the data directory where the server is installed) although I haven't done that personally.

The other thing is I would move your share point shortening the UNC \\NUC\ARCHIVE_Music\CDLR_FLAC\Joe Jackson  if cdlr_flac is the root for you albums I would make it something like \\CDLR_flac\.....  idea being artist, album names and track names can get quite long and you want to mitigate bumping up to any character number limitations in the path.

 

RedBaron164-

If you want to use an automated tool to reorganize your file structure take a look at picard or mp3tag both have move options that puts stuff in a structure that emby does a good job with.

 

Just some thoughts as always proceed with caution

 

-vicpa

 

Hi @@Vicpa - Many, many thanks for your input and sorry for the delay in acknowledging it. I am working through your suggestions and appreciate your comments about my suggested nuclear "scorched earth" approach of deleting the db and starting over. For now, I have access again to my 40TB NAS that had been part of my library but was offline for much of the last few months. As of now I have removed my music library altogether, uninstalled all plugins including Trailers, CoverArt, AutoBoxSets, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. After several rounds of clean/rescan/full refresh this hasn't improved things much and the first pass library scan stops at 67% after 8 hours. I further removed the NAS library for TV and only left the local 4TB "daily disks" for recent content but left the 40TB NAS for movies. I can now complete a scan in about 25-30 minutes. The performance is still not what I think it used to be, especially with my dedicated NUC i5, 16GB RAM and Win10 Pro (seems like we have similar configs). I regularly get Android.volley.error time outs when trying to display the Performers page in the movie library. So, it's 11:59 on the nuclear clock...I'll keep you posted. Thanks again for the input.

[Tanamur 53]

Well after spending a few days of re-organizing my music I'm in a good spot now. Cleaning up loose singles seems to have resolved the majority of my issues.

 

Tanamur: I had some issues when removing and re-adding my Music Library. What I found that seems to help is changing the path that I'm adding. So for example, originally I added \\server\Music and when I removed and re-added it I would change it so it was \\server\MusicShare. This seems to force Emby to treat it as a new location and I found its less likely to re-use old data. Just a thought, hopefully it helps.

 

Thanks @@RedBaron164 - I will give this a try and agree I don't need the long UNC if I just mount the external disks with a shorter name. I'll report the results back here.