Music library pulling from several folders regardless of setup

[AlPilon 4]

Sorry if this has been covered previously. I installed Emby two days ago, intending to replace my Plex, which I've used for years. Everything looks good so far, except for one thing. I've made two music libraries, one called Music and the other one called Joyce's Music (wife's music). The music folder is e:\Music and the other is e:\Joyce's Music. All the files in Joyce's Music is duplicated from the Music folder (which I use as a library). My problem is that the Joyce's Music folder has a single directory assigned (e:\Joyce's Music)(and I've also set the Shared Network Folder to \\AMD\Joyce's Music - the share). However when I click on (example) Chloe Agnew after I open Joyce's Music, all the info is correct, but it shows two identical albums there. The only difference is that, looking at identify, one of the albums is from e:\Music and the other is from e:\Joyce's Music. I have no idea why it would be looking at e:\Music - it was never set up that way. I realize I could fix this by deleting the duplicate directories from e:\Music, but I don't want to do that, and from everything I see, I shouldn't have to. I did try to move the entire Joyce's Music Folder to my G: drive, but it still picked up the same folders in E:\Music. To be clear, it's not just this artist, but every one that has identical folders in both e:\Music and e:\Joyce's Music. And to add to the fun, it's also doing the same thing when I look at the artist in Music - it shows both.I hope I'm just making a mistake, or someone could provide some sort of explanation. Thanks.

[Abobader 3464]

Hello AlPilon,

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

How to Report a Problem

Thank you.

Emby Team

[Carlo 4561]

Hi, can you show a screen shot of the Joyce Music Library where you have your folders entered?

[AlPilon 4]

First image is Joyce's Music, second is Music, third is Joyce's Music\Chloe Agnew, fourth is Music\Chloe Agnew. Internals are identical for both folders - Fifth screenshot

 

[Carlo 4561]

Nice,

Can you also show the path setup for both libraries in Emby itself?

[AlPilon 4]

The first screenshots were made from my main computer using the share names. The folders and files actually exist on the AMD box, along with the Emby server

[Carlo 4561]

Last thing I think.  Can you show a screen shot of the dupes as mentioned in the first post?

That should then give us all the info to try and duplicate what you see.

Thanks!

[AlPilon 4]

Second pic is from the left hand album, third is from the right hand album. Originally, I didn't have the share name for Joyce's Music and it acted the same way, and only added the share to see if that would fix the problem

[Carlo 4561]

Is that from a search?  Or is this a view you get in one particular library when you drill down to that artist?

[AlPilon 4]

Just drilling down from the library

[AlPilon 4]

Just one more thing I saw that might help. On some of the Artists, there is a subset of the albums in Music that is in Joyce's Music. When I go to that Artist in Joyce's Music, I can see duplicates of the ones that are in both folders, but I can also see single instances of the ones that are only in the Music library. So it appears that you are searching using wildcards or regex statements (I'm a professional programmer), because it seems that the problem lies in distinguishing the higher level folders. Just my five cents thoughts.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

yep this is to be expected with two Music Libraries

its been reported a month or so ago by me in the beta section as not ideal to have duplicate albums assigned to an artist "just" because you have it in two libraries they should stay separate

the reason is Artists etc are global and not tied to a library like movies or series are

one work around is make the second library an Audiobook library - internally audiobooks and music are the same but you do get the separation - until you add a second audiobook library.....

[AlPilon 4]

OK, super. I was going to add an audiobook library, but I only have 5 or 6 of them, so I can live without that, or add them into my main Music folder. Thanks for your help.

[AlPilon 4]

OK, sorry. I made this change, but the same thing is happening. I removed the old Joyce's Music, and made a new one with the type of Audio Books, scanned library files, refreshed metadata, but no change - the exact same problem.

[AlPilon 4]

OK, figured out a workaround. I just set the display to folders, which is appropriate for my directory structure anyway, and that works fine. Thanks for all your help.

[Carlo 4561]

I was just thinking there is a better way to do this for you built right into Emby!

Setup your music using 3 folders similar to this:
C:\Music\Husband
C:\Music\Wife
C:\Music\Everyone

The last one is a joint folder where you put your music that both of you want to see.
Now you setup ONE music library but add all three of those folders and not the c:\music.

Then use folder based access control which is easy and described here:
https://emby.media/support/articles/Folder-based-Access-Control.html

That should solve this cleanly for you!

You could also get fancy and do this:

C:\Music\Christmas
Now you could have a few Christmas albums available and grant/remove access depending on the time of the year.

You would still have Folder view access to be able to see what's in the joint/everyone vs husband/wife folders as well.

Edited November 6, 2025 by GrimReaper

[AlPilon 4]

Thanks, I'll give this a try. It looks like it should be able to work with Plex also (which I'm going to keep for the time being until I'm sure about Emby). Appreciate your help.

[Carlo 4561]

The only thing you want to do is remove the dupes you both had as you only need one copy which goes in the everyone/joint folder.

In Plex you can setup 2 library each with 2 map points and in Emby 1 Music library with all 3 map points then use the folder access.

You'll be set.