Mysterious loss of AlbumArtist

[steamhead 10]

I've been reorganising my mp3 tags for my Audio Dramas, to try and get some value out of the Audio Books type.  Up until recently I've been using Mixed Content, but a change in the way sequencing works broke that. So I was standardizing the use of Album Artist, from an original mix of Prodction company, lead actor and Range/Character, to use Range/Character throughout, so the Album Artist view would give me a list of ranges.

It was working quite well, but I had a few items where the value was "stuck" in Emby, in that it remembered what it was when first added, and refused to pick up the new value from the file regardless of forced scans etc.  I've seen this before with Emby and the usual fix is to drop and re-add the library - which I did.

The problem is, when the library came back, nearly all the Album Artists had gone.  Where I used to have 50+ ranges showing in Album Artists, I now had 2, and all the albums just appeared to be showing as belonging to the first individual artist on the list, not the Album Artist.

Looking in Swagger, for the two Album Artists that still work, I get this -

      "AlbumArtist": "Vienna",
      "AlbumArtists": [
        {
          "Name": "Vienna",
          "Id": "89644"
        }
      ],
 

But looking at all the others, I see something like this -

      "AlbumArtist": "Bernice Summerfield",
      "AlbumArtists": [],

So Emby IS seeing the Album Artist tag has content, and reading it, but for most it doesn't store them in the list with IDs.

Just to be sure it wasn't Audio Books being weird, I copied the entire library to a second folder and added it as Music content type, and exactly the same thing happened, with the same 2 artists being the only 2 showing.

Any ideas what is going off here?

[steamhead 10]

Just in case the problem was scale related, as I did the rebuild just after adding some large ranges into the collection, I just created a mini-library of 2 albums, one that worked and one that didn't in the large library, and exactly the same occurs in the mini-library, with only the "Good" album showing in the Album Artists view.

Here's the dump from the API -

{ "Items": [ { "Name": "The Memory Box", "ServerId": "a88c627bb53e46e3b7219041c522f238", "Id": "205789", "SupportsResume": true, "RunTimeTicks": 39060506880, "IsFolder": true, "Type": "MusicAlbum", "Artists": [ "John Banks", "Chase Masterson", "Gemma Whelan", "Tom Price" ], "ArtistItems": [ { "Name": "John Banks", "Id": "89356" }, { "Name": "Chase Masterson", "Id": "89384" }, { "Name": "Gemma Whelan", "Id": "89642" }, { "Name": "Tom Price", "Id": "89643" } ], "AlbumArtist": "Vienna", "AlbumArtists": [ { "Name": "Vienna", "Id": "89644" } ], "ImageTags": { "Primary": "00c68cd4c5069a4555e01110b183a7d5" }, "BackdropImageTags": [] }, { "Name": "The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield - Vol 1", "ServerId": "a88c627bb53e46e3b7219041c522f238", "Id": "205788", "SupportsResume": true, "RunTimeTicks": 141101800630, "IsFolder": true, "Type": "MusicAlbum", "Artists": [ "Nicholas Briggs", "Sophie Aldred", "Lisa Bowerman", "Terry Molloy", "Sylvester McCoy" ], "ArtistItems": [ { "Name": "Nicholas Briggs", "Id": "88976" }, { "Name": "Sophie Aldred", "Id": "88993" }, { "Name": "Lisa Bowerman", "Id": "88997" }, { "Name": "Terry Molloy", "Id": "89036" }, { "Name": "Sylvester McCoy", "Id": "192387" } ], "AlbumArtist": "Bernice Summerfield", "AlbumArtists": [], "ImageTags": { "Primary": "84546a89bc37f8eaad82ae4808a5a7d1" }, "BackdropImageTags": [] } ], "TotalRecordCount": 2 } The same thing is happening, the Album Artist is being picked up in both cases, but only produces ID lists for one. In case it's important, I maintain my mp3 tags using Media Monkey

[steamhead 10]

Looks like a service died or got locked within Emby somehow.  I've restarted the server and it looks like Album Artists are now being picked up correctly

EDIT: I may have spoke too soon,  certainly MORE Album Artists have been spotted, but not all of them.  Things may still be ongoing, I'll keep an eye on it.

EDIT2: All good now, so unless someone wants to figure out what broke, case closed.

Edited August 20, 2020 by steamhead

[Luke 42093]

Hi, what was the solution?

[steamhead 10]

A restart of the Emby Server fixed it.

It looks like the process that catalogues the Album Artists had either died, or got locked, such that no matter what copies or subsets of my library I created and destroyed it only ever found the same 2 album artists, no matter how long I waited (overnight in one case).  After a restart of the server it all started working perfectly again, and touch wood, still is.

[Luke 42093]

Thanks for the feedback.