Emby seems to be inconsistent in its handling of Album Artists

[gtvu 1]

I have tried to put my classical music collection in Emby. It has been a slow trial-and-error process. Emby appears not to use the artist name if the album artists data are available, which is counter-intuitive, but even stranger is that the software does not consistently pick the first name in the album artists. Sometimes it insists on picking a name regardless of order. For example, my album artists for an entire album is "Steinbacher, Arabella/Nelsons, Andris/WDR Sinfonieorchester Koln" (in every FLAC file of the album.) Emby lists Andris Nelsons as the first name regardless of where the name is in the FLAC files' metadata. I tried to put the name last. That didn't work.

I modified the FLAC files' metadata to "Steinbacher, A/Nelsons, Andris/WDR Sinfonieorchester Koln" as an experiment and refreshed. The strange result can be seen in the attached screenshot - Arabella Steinbacher is still there alongside with Steinbacher, A. WDR Sinfornieorchester Koln is pushed off the list.

It'd be nice to be able to edit and control all the metadata details directly.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

i think i know whats going on but have not had enough coffee yet

can you upload an example Album folder and files and link to it here so i can have a look at the files etc and test this end

[Vicpa 611]

Hi @gtvu,

It has been reported and acknowledged that emby will list artists alphabetically regardless of way they are listed in the metadata tags. Personally I think they should not be sorted and consider it an open issue.

Does this explain what you are seeing? If there is another issue going on, as @PenkethBoy indicates above upload an example and folks will take a look.

 

-vicpa

 

 

[Luke 42086]

Yes this is something that needs to be looked at. Thanks for reporting.

[gtvu 1]

Thanks to Vicpa and Luke for the replies,

Yes. That was what I saw (the names listed appear to be first if listed alphabetically.) I have learned to live with the behavior but would love to have a way to pick a name

Now if I can figure out how to get rid of duplicate names without junking much of the metadata that I have entered (by refreshing metadata)

gtv

[lurch9366 16]

Not sure if this belongs in this thread but I have noticed when using the album artist sort tab Emby does not honor the album artist tag. My expectation is to show what is contained in that part of the tag.  As an example I have many "Compilations" and I would like to see all albums under that main "folder" when sorting. Currently I see a various section that is not consistent with that tag but Emby still breaks out the individual artist. I only expect to see the artist broken out while browsing under the "Artist" tag

[Luke 42086]

On 10/30/2020 at 11:34 PM, lurch9366 said:

Not sure if this belongs in this thread but I have noticed when using the album artist sort tab Emby does not honor the album artist tag. My expectation is to show what is contained in that part of the tag.  As an example I have many "Compilations" and I would like to see all albums under that main "folder" when sorting. Currently I see a various section that is not consistent with that tag but Emby still breaks out the individual artist. I only expect to see the artist broken out while browsing under the "Artist" tag

Hi there, can you please show an example? Emby supports album artist tags.

[lurch9366 16]

Sorry for the late response. The issue I was having was related to id3 tags with unseen info. I am using mp3 tag with extended info and or MusicBrainz Picard and am in the process of cleaning up the last of my incorrect info. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by lurch9366