Merging Artists?

[MediaAxe 1]

Hello,

 

I've recently moved from Plex to Emby for my music. One issue I'm having is I have the exact same artist twice and no matter how I change the metadata, I still cannot get it to show just one artist. Is there a merge feature like Plex or a certain way to remedy this?

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Sorry no there is no merge option for this.  Just a guess but do they have different external ids in edit metadata?

[MediaAxe 1]

1 minute ago, Happy2Play said:

Sorry no there is no merge option for this.  Just a guess but do they have different external ids in edit metadata?

I set the external IDs to be the exact same and they still are separated. If there's no merge option and no way to get the duplicate out without re-tagging my ID3s, Emby probably isn't the best solution

[Carlo 4561]

Hi MediaAxe,

Emby relies on proper tagging for good results.  It puts you in control in the sense that if you have good tagging in your files Emby will use it.  The best thing you can do for music is make sure it's proper as pretty much most software will use these tags.  So fix them at the source vs in the program used to play them.  Example if you were to fix them in Emby but also use Plex they could still be wrong there or vice versa.  Fix the source problem and things work much better.  Also important if you ever want or need to reload libraries at a later time.

[MediaAxe 1]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

Hi MediaAxe,

Emby relies on proper tagging for good results.  It puts you in control in the sense that if you have good tagging in your files Emby will use it.  The best thing you can do for music is make sure it's proper as pretty much most software will use these tags.  So fix them at the source vs in the program used to play them.  Example if you were to fix them in Emby but also use Plex they could still be wrong there or vice versa.  Fix the source problem and things work much better.  Also important if you ever want or need to reload libraries at a later time.

The MP3s are properly tagged, the issue is when there are splits it creates a new artist. Being able to roll any splits that have the artist as "Artist A feat Artist B" into "Artist A" on the server side of things was a feature I liked about Plex. If I'm reading correctly, I can't do this without changing the tags then?

[Carlo 4561]

Why would you have splits to start with if the media is correct?

[Luke 42078]

If you use the metadata editor to examine the two of them, do they both have the same set of External Id's ?

[tge101 0]

On 8/25/2020 at 1:47 PM, Luke said:

If you use the metadata editor to examine the two of them, do they both have the same set of External Id's ?

I'm having the same issue.  Musicbrainz and AudioDB metadata are exactly the same but it's split up as different artists.  They are tagged properly, I've run everything through Picard. 

[PenkethBoy 2068]

going to need a lot more information on what the problem is

MBz/Picard is not perfect occationally you can have issues with duplicate artists from their db

It will come back to a small difference that emby picked up that caused two versions to be created - or you have music videos and the two versions did not merge as they have differences etc

so screenshots / example song files (from both versions as they will list diff songs usually) - how you have things setup etc etc - more info than you think we need becasue i cant list everything needed as dont know what the issue is.

[Rumzzz 31]

I am just stumbling upon these posts after running into a similarly identical situation with my music library.

A few examples I found were Frank Ocean, and Jay-Z. When searching for Frank Ocean, 2 artists show up. Both have the same artist ID's, but the second one shows only a few tracks where Frank is a feature. I thought this was directly related to featured artists, but searching for Jay-Z says otherwise. When searching for Jay-z, two artists show up, but the second artist shows a track where Jay-z is an album artist.

All the albums/songs in this scenario are tagged by MusicBrainz Picard, and any featured/multiple artists are split by mp3tag using the "split field by separator" function.

 

Do let me know if I can provide more info...

[Guest]

Might check here...

[Luke 42078]

Hi, this should be improved in the upcoming Emby Server 4.6 release. Thanks.

[thunderclap 52]

I just bumped into this problem, but with The Beatles. It also happens in Navidrome (my dedicated music server) but not in Plex. Metadata of the files are proper.

[Luke 42078]

8 minutes ago, mbuhmann said:

I just bumped into this problem, but with The Beatles. It also happens in Navidrome (my dedicated music server) but not in Plex. Metadata of the files are proper.

Hi, looks like the artists are named differently in the embedded metadata of the tracks.

Try making them consistent across all of the tracks, then run a library scan and emby server will pick up the changes.

[thunderclap 52]

Just now, Luke said:

Hi, looks like the artists are named differently in the embedded metadata of the tracks.

Try making them consistent across all of the tracks, then run a library scan and emby server will pick up the changes.

They're actually not different. I use Mp3tag and have checked all the titles in each album and they are consistent.

[Happy2Play 9780]

9 minutes ago, mbuhmann said:

They're actually not different. I use Mp3tag and have checked all the titles in each album and they are consistent.

That looks correct, do both Artists show the same information?

[thunderclap 52]

Yes. Both are “The Beatles.” And like I said, it’s not just Emby it’s Navidrome too, however in Plex it’s fine. Is something maybe getting confused with an outside server?

[Happy2Play 9780]

8 minutes ago, mbuhmann said:

Yes. Both are “The Beatles.” And like I said, it’s not just Emby it’s Navidrome too, however in Plex it’s fine. Is something maybe getting confused with an outside server?

What files extension are these files?  

But in the end it is a matter of what ffprobe reads from each track. 

ffprobe -i "path_to_file"

There would have to be a mismatch somewhere but if entering each Artist and seeing the same info it can be hard to find.  Maybe multiple tag versions on the tracks?

[thunderclap 52]

Does Emby use Last.fm to scrub for music? Because Navidrome does and Plex doesn’t. I found two entries on Last.fm: 

https://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles

https://www.last.fm/tag/beatles

If both media players use Last.fm, I wonder if it’s getting confused somewhere on their end?

[Luke 42078]

2 minutes ago, mbuhmann said:

Does Emby use Last.fm to scrub for music? Because Navidrome does and Plex doesn’t. I found two entries on Last.fm: 

https://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles

https://www.last.fm/tag/beatles

If both media players use Last.fm, I wonder if it’s getting confused somewhere on their end?

No we don't, and even for the providers that we do have, we don't replace the list of artists per track with internet metadata. That always comes directly from your tracks.

If you click on the "Beatles" entries, what songs are assigned to that artist?

[thunderclap 52]

43 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

What files extension are these files?  

But in the end it is a matter of what ffprobe reads from each track. 

ffprobe -i "path_to_file"

There would have to be a mismatch somewhere but if entering each Artist and seeing the same info it can be hard to find.  Maybe multiple tag versions on the tracks?

They are FLAC. Here is the ffprobe results:

Metadata:
    TITLE           : No Reply
    ALBUM ARTIST    : Beatles
    ARTIST          : The Beatles
    ALBUM           : Beatles For Sale
    GENRE           : Classic Rock; Rock; Pop
    album_artist    : The Beatles
    COMPOSER        : The Beatles
    DATE            : 1964
    track           : 01

I see ARTIST is showing as Beatles yet in Mp3tag when I load up the file it lists it as:

And even in Windows properties on the file it lists it as The Beatles:

Very strange and not sure how to proceed, but obviously this isn't an Emby issue so I'll continue to research and see if I can figure out what the heck is going on.

 

[Luke 42078]

Looks like it's coming from the Album Artist, not Artist. There's probably multiple tags in the file and mp3tag isn't writing to all of them.

[Happy2Play 9780]

And the results from ffprobe?

[thunderclap 52]

8 hours ago, Luke said:

Looks like it's coming from the Album Artist, not Artist. There's probably multiple tags in the file and mp3tag isn't writing to all of them.

There's an Extended Tags window not open by default in Mp3tag. The tag was hidden in there.

1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

And the results from ffprobe?

Shared a few posts up: 

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Sorry overlooked it but there is a order of precedence when you have multiple tags for the same thing.  As you have found out AlbumArtist and Album Artist can conflict.  But believe it is from multiple id3 version tagging.

Any time I see multiple tagging I usually just clear all tags and retag.  Bur that is up to you.

Since you can see it in extended tags you can just adjust the tag and rescan the album.