I'm afraid to let Emby manage my music, talk me into it.

[Diedrich 377]

I'm pretty particular about my music library, I like how I have it set up.

 

Music>Artist>Album (year)>songs

 

I've yet to look at the Wiki for required folder structure but that's not so much of the concern as is the actual identification of my albums, their id3 tags and especially the cover art.

 

I'm concerned that the album identification is going to screw up and misidentify albums and songs.

 

I'm concerned that id3 tags are going to be messed up with incorrect information.

 

I'm concerned that my artwork is going to be overwritten with inferior quality images, wrong images or deleted.

 

Am I being overly concerned? Should I take the leap? How did it go for you? Did any of the above happen to you? How does it handle existing tags and artwork?

[Happy2Play 9780]

I processed all my music through MusicBrainz Picard and haven't really had any issues.  Overall your structure is the preferred structure.  Emby only reads the tags, it does not write them.  Anything that is written goes to nfo or database depending on your setup.

 

As for artwork that is a possibility, do to name character conflicts.  Emby will prefer the information in /metadata/artists instead of /music/artist (sometimes showing duplicate views of Artist).  I am not saying it doesn't work in /music/artist, there are just some quirks with some Artists,  primarily with special characters. 

[jordy 284]

I just recently imported my music library into Emby and there were no problems. I used Media Monkey to create / edit all the tags to my preferences etc beforehand. Emby doesn't change anything, if Artwork is embedded in the tags it will use it otherwise it will search MusicBrainz / AudioDB and as long as your Artist / Album Artists are correctly spelled it will find them and Bio information if they exist and import them into the Artist Folder. There has been no modification of the individual Music files (that I have seen). I used the same folder structure as per your post above and it worked fine.

[Diedrich 377]

Thanks for the feedback, I feel like I can give it a shot. I too have used Picard in the past but I still have artwork that is not embedded in the file but sitting within the album folder. I guess I have some work to do before I turn Emby lose on my library.

 

Thanks, again!

[Latchmor 584]

Thanks for the feedback, I feel like I can give it a shot. I too have used Picard in the past but I still have artwork that is not embedded in the file but sitting within the album folder. I guess I have some work to do before I turn Emby lose on my library.

 

Thanks, again!

 

What I have done in the past is copy a selection of media to a test folder and let Emby go and do it's thing. You can then see what you think without it affecting your 'real' media folders.

[AJNinGA 1]

I also did the test run on a small selection of folders. No problems that I could detect. In fact, iTunes has done more damage (constantly copying files and trying to reorganize every time I wipe my phone or get new one).

[Luke 42077]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Guest asrequested]

Unfortunately, my music library is a mess, and Emby can't straighten most of it out. I've manually corrected some of it. Just last night I was correcting one album (Alex Clare - The Lateness of the Hour). Even manually putting in the Musicbrainz ids, it kept re-writing them and changing them. Using identify gave me a blank selection. Entering the artist id and specific album id, saving, selecting refresh and running a library scan, reverted my changes. I eventually had to manually clean out the ids, edit the info, enter the specific ids for each song, the album and artist, and finally it stayed corrected. I have over 13,000 songs. I won't be trying to do too much, lol. I'm just picking through the folders that are simple (just one or two albums). In this case the folder structure was correct, I edited the file names and even the ID3 tags, but it just wouldn't get past the existing metadata. Is there a way to erase all the metadata, on mass?

[PenkethBoy 2068]

@

 

i would move the directory of the album out of emby's view

 

delete any nfo's

 

edit the mp3 - with musicbrainz picard as you want  (or other editor) - in the meantime run a library scan/refresh then a db clean so all references in db are gone

 

then move a copy back and see if emby see's the "new" mp3's as you want

 

reason you want to move the files out is that when you change anything emby zips in a bit too quickly and re reads the files - so turning of library monitoring would also help while you are editing updating existing content

 

I have an existing thread with Luke on this which i have not finished testing for

[Guest asrequested]

@

 

i would move the directory of the album out of emby's view

 

delete any nfo's

 

edit the mp3 - with musicbrainz picard as you want  (or other editor) - in the meantime run a library scan/refresh then a db clean so all references in db are gone

 

then move a copy back and see if emby see's the "new" mp3's as you want

 

reason you want to move the files out is that when you change anything emby zips in a bit too quickly and re reads the files - so turning of library monitoring would also help while you are editing updating existing content

 

I have an existing thread with Luke on this which i have not finished testing for

 

That's thousands of nfo files. And Picard threw a fit when I gave it the task of correcting my files. But...emby was monitoring the files when I used Picard. So maybe I'll remove the library from Emby and give it another shot.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

nfo's in the moved directory!

 

 

what have you done to your files thats so abnormal?? 

Edited January 29, 2017 by PenkethBoy

[Guest asrequested]

nfo's in the moved directory!

 

 

what have you done to your files thats so abnormal?? 

 

LOL, I knew what you meant. Just test with one folder.

 

There are so many compilations and individual songs that I've acquired over the years. They've been rearranged by other software, over the years, and now the folder structure and tags/metadata are just a mess.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Doofus

[Guest asrequested]

So I tried this with AC/DC (just one album) Removed, ran library scan, cleaned folder(s), musicbrainzed it, added it back to the library, and hey presto! AC/DC has disappeared! The album is there, but no amount of editing the info will make the band show up under Album Artist or Artist 

[Rumbaar 13]

Ha, I throw multiple music cataloging applications at my music and let them fight it out.  iTunes, Sony Media Go, Windows Media Player, Groove and my WD MyCloud.   I wasn't aware that EMBY was doing it's own cataloging too.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

So I tried this with AC/DC (just one album) Removed, ran library scan, cleaned folder(s), musicbrainzed it, added it back to the library, and hey presto! AC/DC has disappeared! The album is there, but no amount of editing the info will make the band show up under Album Artist or Artist 

lol - you had to choose AC/DC 

 

change the artist and album artist tags inside the mp3 to AC-DC - there are a couple of long threads here on the / and other non "standard" characters that emby used to have problems with

 

If it were my collection i would use something like mp3tag and remove all tags from the files so they are clean and do not have any data that could confuse emby prior to using picard - 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Yes that "/" in AC/DC is still an issue when it comes to Artists and Album Artists.  Had to manually add artist id to each album for Artists and Album Artists to show them.  Or as @@PenkethBoy said change the tag from AC/DC to AC-DC.
 

[PenkethBoy 2068]

@@Happy2Play - somebody is up early or late?

[Guest asrequested]

In the end, the solution was simply to delete all the fields and refresh. But it won't pull any cover art. It's always been blank. The name was AC-DC, I changed it to AC/DC (that's how musicbrainz names it), and still no cover art. I'll have to manually put it in.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

what id do you have for the band?

 

Mine are

 

MBz - 66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1

 

Audio DB - 119231

[Guest asrequested]

Same musicbrainz, didn't use audiodb. I used every id they had. Emby ignored it all. It wouldn't actually refresh the data, but would miscorrect it. Removing all ids and running a scan, it displayed as it should, minus the album art. Maybe fetching from musicbrainz is the issue? I'll add the audiodb and see what happens.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Same musicbrainz, didn't use audiodb. I used every id they had. Emby ignored it all. It wouldn't actually refresh the data, but would miscorrect it. Removing all ids and running a scan, it displayed as it should, minus the album art. Maybe fetching from musicbrainz is the issue? I'll add the audiodb and see what happens.

 

Look at library-metadata-media type, images don't come from musicbrainz.  And AudioDB is still down.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Unfortunately we've reached the limit our bandwidth this month after unprecedented demand on our API
 We're busy making improvements behind the scenes and hope to be back as soon as possible.
 The site will return on Feb 1st or earlier if possible. Feel free to donate, however small to keep us going in the mean time... 

Edited January 30, 2017 by Happy2Play

[Guest asrequested]

Ah! OK, only the metadata comes from musicbrainz?

[Koleckai Silvestri 1154]

I don't let Emby manage my music. I've set everything up through the ID3 tags embedded in the MP3 file and Emby reads those. My music library is a clone of the library on my main computer. So, I edit them there and then add them to Emby when that is completed. I don't store the metadata within my music folder unlike television or movies. It just gets too messy if I want to use a different server.

[Guest asrequested]

That's actually a good point. I have Musicbee pointed at the same directory. I'm gonna dig into that, tonight.