music tags for featured artists (server 4.6)

[spon 26]

@cayars @Luke thank you so much for taking the time to look into this further. Your response has helped me pinpoint the exact root issue that I'm facing. 

The primary app that I use for tagging my music is MusicBee. If a song has multiple artists, it will write each artist to a separate Artist tag, so one song may have 2 or more Artist tags. In my research, other music apps read these multiple Artist tags in different ways. All of them that I've tested will correctly display the multiple artists on the song, but how they do it varies. MP3Tag, as you showed above, uses \\ as a separator. TagScanner uses a ; . Windows Explorer also uses a semicolon. None of them are altering the fact that there are multiple artist tags (vs one artist tag with multiple values), they are just displaying the multiple tags in one field with either \\ or : as the separator. 

From what I can tell ffprobe is incapable of reading multiple Artist tags. It reads the value from the first tag and then stops. So the problem isn't that my tags are incorrect (ie. the tags don't actually have an artist field with multiple artists separated by \\) but rather that there are multiple artist tags when ffprobe is only expecting one.

From what I've been able to research, there doesn't really seem to be a solution other than using a tagging software other than MusicBee.

Thanks again for your help. If anyone comes up with a workaround, please tag me as I'd love to try it. Hopefully if anyone else has this issue, they can find this tread. Also, if anyone can recommend a tagging software that can scrape data from Discogs and then write the Artists to ONE Artist tag, please ping me. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by spon

[Carlo 4560]

In mp3tag, saving unicode I use the "; " which is what I did above.  Semi colon and a space is how I entered it and it worked.
I'll be adding this type of info to the KB music section shortly (working on it now).

[spon 26]

57 minutes ago, cayars said:

In mp3tag, saving unicode I use the "; " which is what I did above.  Semi colon and a space is how I entered it and it worked.
I'll be adding this type of info to the KB music section shortly (working on it now).

Yes, thanks. That will work to display everything in Emby correctly. The problem for my particular setup is that doing so also combines the multiple tags into 1 artist tag with multiple artists, which then causes MusicBee to list the artist as, "Artist 1; Artist 2; Artist 3", etc. rather as separate artists. This is obviously not ffprobe's fault though. 

At the end of the day, all I really want to be able to do is autotag music using Discogs information in a way that will list each artist in Emby. My current workflow considering the new info you helped me with is:

1. use MediaMonkey to autotag from Discogs. None of the other apps that I've tried has a robust enough Discogs plugin to pull in all the relevant info.

2. use MusicBee to pull automatically separate out the artists. (ie. MediaMonkey lists one artist as, Artist 1 feat. Artist 2 & Artist 3). FFprobe won't separate the artists and the only way I've found so far to automatically separate the artists is using MusicBee. Maybe/hopefully there is a better solution.

3. Open the files in Mp3Tag and change the \\ to semi-colon. 

4. Move files into the final folder.

 

[Carlo 4560]

Have you tried just using Picard?

[spon 26]

8 minutes ago, cayars said:

Have you tried just using Picard?

Picard does work well for the albums that it can find. Unfortunately, I have a large amount (most likely thousands) of albums that are more obscure and not on Picard. If I had the time, I would enter them as I know there is a plugin for Picard to pull some info from Discogs. I just don't have the time to do so right now. But maybe that really is the best option in the long run. Or maybe I can just go from MediaMonkey to Picard and bypass MusicBee. I'll test that out. Thanks

 

Edited June 4, 2021 by spon

[spon 26]

Picard has issues sometimes related to the Artists tag (not Artist). There are instances where Picard shows the Artists tag as containing multiple artists, while Emby and other apps (Tag Scanner) only show the first value. As far as I can tell this is a Picard issue, possibly related to mp4 files. I can't check the Artists tag in MP3Tag b/c it doesn't appear to support it.

Notice the Artists tag in the below screenshots

Picard

 

MP3Tag

 

Tag Scanner

 

Emby

[Happy2Play 9780]

5 minutes ago, spon said:

Picard has issues sometimes related to the Artists tag (not Artist). There are instances where Picard shows the Artists tag as containing multiple artists, while Emby and other apps (Tag Scanner) only show the first value. As far as I can tell this is a Picard issue, possibly related to mp4 files. I can't check the Artists tag in MP3Tag b/c it doesn't appear to support it.

Notice the Artists tag in the below screenshots

Picard

 

MP3Tag

 

Tag Scanner

 

Emby

Here is what I have.

[spon 26]

11 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Here is what I have.

 

Thanks for this. I stripped all the tags and ran it through Picard again and it's matching what you show. So it looks like the Discogs tagger was setting Artists wrong, not Picard. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by spon

[Happy2Play 9780]

6 minutes ago, spon said:

Thanks! Would you mind pasting the MB album ID here so I can copy/paste it into my Picard? 

musicbrainz_artistid:  382f1005-e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2/405528df-2632-4730-80fc-83e775a97651/f90e8b26-9e52-4669-a5c9-e28529c47894
musicbrainz_recordingid:  9f5e5053-360b-40bb-9ffc-20dc97fbf31d
musicbrainz_albumartistid:  382f1005-e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2
musicbrainz_releasegroupid:  e2621417-9236-36b4-9f9e-376c416dc4b0
musicbrainz_albumid:  23bf456f-c05c-4738-b675-062f57396fa8
musicbrainz_trackid:  32d91ebe-7cbe-48d4-9f7c-1129519b8233

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

If you did not know there is 12 versions of that album and you would get slightly different results on each, primary difference is Year but are differences for  track artist.  As the AU version only shows 2Pac, like your example above.

[koopa8840 24]

1 hour ago, spon said:

Picard has issues sometimes related to the Artists tag (not Artist). There are instances where Picard shows the Artists tag as containing multiple artists, while Emby and other apps (Tag Scanner) only show the first value. As far as I can tell this is a Picard issue, possibly related to mp4 files. I can't check the Artists tag in MP3Tag b/c it doesn't appear to support it.

MP3Tag supports mp4 files. The problem you are having with MP3Tag not displaying ARTISTS is you have to set the column header to display for the ARTISTS field. What you are seeing is the ARTIST field. See the screenshot. Change the field from %artist% to whatever field lists the multiple artists. You can, also, right click on the file and select Extended Tags to see all the tags within the file. MP3Tag has Discogs script. What info does it not pull that you want? You can, also, setup an action to replace all // (or whatever symbols) to ; with the artist/artists fields.

Edited June 4, 2021 by koopa8840
Added screenshot

[spon 26]

I think maybe the issue with Picard and Artists is limited to m4a file types. I removed all tags, retagged using Picard and the album info from @Happy2Play and my Picard results now look identical. However, when I load up the album in Emby it doesn't display any artists other than 2Pac. Then when checking ffprobe (and Tagscanner) they both show the Artists tag to be set to 2Pac, even though in Picard the Artists tag shows all the artists.I think maybe the issue with Picard and Artists is limited to m4a file types. I removed all tags, retagged using PIcard and the album info from @Happy2Play and my Picard results now look identical. However, when I load up the album in Emby it doesn't display any artists other than 2Pac. Then when checking ffprobe (and Tagscanner) they both show the Artists tag to be set to 2Pac, even though in Picard the Artists tag shows all the artists. 

[spon 26]

13 minutes ago, koopa8840 said:

MP3Tag supports mp4 files. The problem you are having with MP3Tag not displaying ARTISTS is you have to set the column header to display for the ARTISTS field. What you are seeing is the ARTIST field. See the screenshot. Change the field from %artist% to whatever field lists the multiple artists. You can, also, right click on the file and select Extended Tags to see all the tags within the file. MP3Tag has Discogs script. What info does it not pull that you want? You can, also, setup an action to replace all // (or whatever symbols) to ; with the artist/artists fields.

Thanks for this. I didn't realize I could edit the field to pull in the Artists field. That will be helpful for troubleshooting.

As far as the mp3tag discogs script, the MediaMonkey script is just much more robust and quicker to use. It automatically matches up the tracks so you don't need to order the tracks. More importantly, it gives you flexibility to show the featured artists as part of the artist tag, versus in the song title. It also pulls in producers, involved people, release notes, etc. 

[Happy2Play 9780]

3 minutes ago, spon said:

I think maybe the issue with Picard and Artists is limited to m4a file types. I removed all tags, retagged using Picard and the album info from @Happy2Play and my Picard results now look identical. However, when I load up the album in Emby it doesn't display any artists other than 2Pac. Then when checking ffprobe (and Tagscanner) they both show the Artists tag to be set to 2Pac, even though in Picard the Artists tag shows all the artists.I think maybe the issue with Picard and Artists is limited to m4a file types. I removed all tags, retagged using PIcard and the album info from @Happy2Play and my Picard results now look identical. However, when I load up the album in Emby it doesn't display any artists other than 2Pac. Then when checking ffprobe (and Tagscanner) they both show the Artists tag to be set to 2Pac, even though in Picard the Artists tag shows all the artists. 

Are you Refreshing metadata (not scanning) when you retag the media?

I don't currently have any .m4a files so it can't be that.

ffprobe results

Spoiler

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system>ffprobe -i file:"C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos\Music - emby metadata\2Pac\All Eyez on Me\CD 1/1-02 2Pac, Nate Dogg & Snoop Dogg - All About U.mp3" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json
ffprobe version 4.3.0-emby_2021_02_27-g8f222573e9+634 Copyright (c) 2007-2021 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
  built with gcc 9.2.0 (Rev2, Built by MSYS2 project)
{
Input #0, mp3, from 'file:C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos\Music - emby metadata\2Pac\All Eyez on Me\CD 1/1-02 2Pac, Nate Dogg & Snoop Dogg - All About U.mp3':
  Metadata:
    album           : All Eyez on Me
    artist          : 2Pac, Nate Dogg & Snoop Dogg
    album_artist    : 2Pac
    MusicBrainz Release Track Id: 32d91ebe-7cbe-48d4-9f7c-1129519b8233
    disc            : 1/2
    encoder         : Lame3.97
    genre           : Rap
    TSRC            : USKO10403675
    TMED            : Digital Media
    TORY            : 1996
    publisher       : eOne
    title           : All About U
    track           : 2/14
    MusicBrainz Artist Id: 382f1005-e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2/405528df-2632-4730-80fc-83e775a97651/f90e8b26-9e52-4669-a5c9-e28529c47894
    artist-sort     : 2Pac, Nate Dogg & Snoop Dogg
    TSO2            : 2Pac
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    originalyear    : 1996
    BARCODE         : 099923580522
    MusicBrainz Album Type: album
    Artists         : 2Pac/Nate Dogg/Snoop Dogg
    MusicBrainz Album Status: official
    MusicBrainz Album Release Country: US
    Acoustid Id     : 943a262c-a14c-4f54-9c89-f06468141f0c
    MusicBrainz Album Id: 23bf456f-c05c-4738-b675-062f57396fa8
    DISPLAY ARTIST  : 2Pac, Snoop Doggy Dogg & Nate Dogg & Dru Down
    MusicBrainz Album Artist Id: 382f1005-e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2
    MusicBrainz Release Group Id: e2621417-9236-36b4-9f9e-376c416dc4b0
    date            : 2005-03-08
  Duration: 00:04:36.98, start: 0.025056, bitrate: 321 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 320 kb/s, Start-Time 0.025s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : LAME3.97
    Side data:
      replaygain: track gain - -9.599999, track peak - unknown, album gain - unknown, album peak - unknown,
    Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 500x500 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc, Start-Time 0.025s (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

}

 

[Deathsquirrel 745]

3 hours ago, spon said:

@cayars @Luke thank you so much for taking the time to look into this further. Your response has helped me pinpoint the exact root issue that I'm facing. 

The primary app that I use for tagging my music is MusicBee. If a song has multiple artists, it will write each artist to a separate Artist tag, so one song may have 2 or more Artist tags. In my research, other music apps read these multiple Artist tags in different ways. All of them that I've tested will correctly display the multiple artists on the song, but how they do it varies. MP3Tag, as you showed above, uses \\ as a separator. TagScanner uses a ; . Windows Explorer also uses a semicolon. None of them are altering the fact that there are multiple artist tags (vs one artist tag with multiple values), they are just displaying the multiple tags in one field with either \\ or : as the separator. 

From what I can tell ffprobe is incapable of reading multiple Artist tags. It reads the value from the first tag and then stops. So the problem isn't that my tags are incorrect (ie. the tags don't actually have an artist field with multiple artists separated by \\) but rather that there are multiple artist tags when ffprobe is only expecting one.

From what I've been able to research, there doesn't really seem to be a solution other than using a tagging software other than MusicBee.

Thanks again for your help. If anyone comes up with a workaround, please tag me as I'd love to try it. Hopefully if anyone else has this issue, they can find this tread. Also, if anyone can recommend a tagging software that can scrape data from Discogs and then write the Artists to ONE Artist tag, please ping me. 

This appears to be the same issue as

That user also uses MusicBee as I recall.

The short version is there are two problems.  First, the \\ sting tells MP3Tag to put in a NULL character between text blocks.  This isn't a valid separator for your IDv3 version.  That is the separator for v2.4, not 2.3.  Second, there is a FFProbe bug where it terminates reading the string when it encounters a NULL character.  That's why you don't get multiple artists showing up.

There are two fixes, both pretty simple.  Rip to FLAC, FLAC tags don't have this issue.  Switch your separator character.  For ID3v2.3 that should be / though ; also works fine.

As for tagging tools, I use picard for the basic collection and then clean it up in MP3tag.  I'm pretty sure I could do it all in MP3tag, but I'm used to the two steps I run now.

[spon 26]

4 minutes ago, Deathsquirrel said:

This appears to be the same issue as

That user also uses MusicBee as I recall.

The short version is there are two problems.  First, the \\ sting tells MP3Tag to put in a NULL character between text blocks.  This isn't a valid separator for your IDv3 version.  That is the separator for v2.4, not 2.3.  Second, there is a FFProbe bug where it terminates reading the string when it encounters a NULL character.  That's why you don't get multiple artists showing up.

There are two fixes, both pretty simple.  Rip to FLAC, FLAC tags don't have this issue.  Switch your separator character.  For ID3v2.3 that should be / though ; also works fine.

As for tagging tools, I use picard for the basic collection and then clean it up in MP3tag.  I'm pretty sure I could do it all in MP3tag, but I'm used to the two steps I run now.

Thanks, this mirror my experience and oddly makes me happy that I'm not crazy. lol. In terms of the solutions, how certain are you that MusicBee is writing \\ as the separator? I ask because when I tag a song with multiple artists in MusicBee, it shows in their "Tag Inspector" as 2 (or more) separate Artist tags with one artist per tag. If I then open that file in Mp3Tag it does show one Artist tag with \\ as the separator. However if I open the same file in TagScanner, it also shows one Artist tag but with semicolon as the separator. So at that point I'm not sure which is true:

1. MusicBee is writing 2 Artist tags, each with a unique artist

2. MusicBee is writing 1 Artist tag using \\ as a separator but visually showing them as separate tags in their UI. Mp3Tag is correctly showing the one tag with \\ separator. TagScanner is incorrectly showing one tag with semi colon.

3. MusicBee is writing 1 Artist tag using semicolon as a separator but visually showing them as separate tags in their UI. Mp3Tag is incorrectly showing the one tag with \\ separator. TagScanner is correctly showing one tag with semi colon.

To make things even more complicated, even when I only use Picard, I still have issues with some albums, as described on 2Pac's, All Eyez On Me album in an earlier post. Screenshots below to show that Picard has tagged Artists correctly, but ffprobe/Emby is only reading the first value. 

When testing these changes, I'm completely removing the album from the Emby watched folder and making the changes on another drive entirely. Then I'll move it back over to the emby music folder. Rescan to catch the album. I'll then refresh metadata if something is off, just to be sure.

[Happy2Play 9780]

@spon Per this image that is the correct info for that MB Album id.

The AU album only has 2Pac as Artist per MusicBrainz.

Recording “All Bout U” by 2Pac feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg, Nate Dogg & Dru Down - MusicBrainz

Do you mind posting or pm'ing that track to test with.

 

Hmm the page did not update properly as I see this is the first option not the AU option.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Happy2Play

[Deathsquirrel 745]

30 minutes ago, spon said:

Thanks, this mirror my experience and oddly makes me happy that I'm not crazy. lol. In terms of the solutions, how certain are you that MusicBee is writing \\ as the separator? I ask because when I tag a song with multiple artists in MusicBee, it shows in their "Tag Inspector" as 2 (or more) separate Artist tags with one artist per tag. If I then open that file in Mp3Tag it does show one Artist tag with \\ as the separator. However if I open the same file in TagScanner, it also shows one Artist tag but with semicolon as the separator. So at that point I'm not sure which is true:

1. MusicBee is writing 2 Artist tags, each with a unique artist

2. MusicBee is writing 1 Artist tag using \\ as a separator but visually showing them as separate tags in their UI. Mp3Tag is correctly showing the one tag with \\ separator. TagScanner is incorrectly showing one tag with semi colon.

3. MusicBee is writing 1 Artist tag using semicolon as a separator but visually showing them as separate tags in their UI. Mp3Tag is incorrectly showing the one tag with \\ separator. TagScanner is correctly showing one tag with semi colon.

To make things even more complicated, even when I only use Picard, I still have issues with some albums, as described on 2Pac's, All Eyez On Me album in an earlier post. Screenshots below to show that Picard has tagged Artists correctly, but ffprobe/Emby is only reading the first value. 

When testing these changes, I'm completely removing the album from the Emby watched folder and making the changes on another drive entirely. Then I'll move it back over to the emby music folder. Rescan to catch the album. I'll then refresh metadata if something is off, just to be sure.

MusicBee is presumably writing a NULL character.  The \\ string is just how MP3Tag displays that.  You can also use \\ to have MP3Tag insert a NULL as well.  MP3Tag will also split the multiple Artist values separated by \\ up into multiple Artist tags in the Extended Tag display under some circumstances though I haven't investigated that closely.  It's just a display issue though, there really is just the one Artist tag with multiple values separated by a NULL separator.

Honestly it's easy to overthink.  A quick google suggests MusicBee only does null separators regardless of what's displayed.  This is, bluntly, wrong and out of spec for all ID3 versions other than 2.4.  I'd stop using it for tagging.  Use another tagging tool like MP3Tag or MediaMonkey and only use / or ; in MP3 files.  You won't have any problems then.

[koopa8840 24]

14 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

@spon Per this image that is the correct info for that MB Album id.

The AU album only has 2Pac as Artist per MusicBrainz.

Recording “All Bout U” by 2Pac feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg, Nate Dogg & Dru Down - MusicBrainz

Do you mind posting or pm'ing that track to test with.

I'm confused. Why it would it display AU info, when the CatalogNumber matches the US track and MusicBrainz Album Release Country is US?

[Happy2Play 9780]

Just now, koopa8840 said:

I'm confused. Why it would it display AU info, when the CatalogNumber matches the US track and MusicBrainz Album Release Country is US?

Updated post as MusicBrainz is not load that id properly via the web.

[spon 26]

36 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

 

Recording “All Bout U” by 2Pac feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg, Nate Dogg & Dru Down - MusicBrainz

Do you mind posting or pm'ing that track to test with.

 

Hmm the page did not update properly as I see this is the first option not the AU option.

Sure, here you go. https://we.tl/t-uEaI0jDoDE for testing. Thanks!

When I tagged it with MB, I did change the version to the US Disc version. I think the default is the digital version.

 

[spon 26]

21 minutes ago, Deathsquirrel said:

MusicBee is presumably writing a NULL character.  The \\ string is just how MP3Tag displays that.  You can also use \\ to have MP3Tag insert a NULL as well.  MP3Tag will also split the multiple Artist values separated by \\ up into multiple Artist tags in the Extended Tag display under some circumstances though I haven't investigated that closely.  It's just a display issue though, there really is just the one Artist tag with multiple values separated by a NULL separator.

Honestly it's easy to overthink.  A quick google suggests MusicBee only does null separators regardless of what's displayed.  This is, bluntly, wrong and out of spec for all ID3 versions other than 2.4.  I'd stop using it for tagging.  Use another tagging tool like MP3Tag or MediaMonkey and only use / or ; in MP3 files.  You won't have any problems then.

Thanks for this. Really the only reason I was using MusicBee, besides the UI which is nice, is that they have an Advanced Search and Replace function that you can use to parse the additional artists. Without that function, MediaMonkey and Mp3Tag (I believe) will simply show the Artist as "Artist 1 feat. Artist 2 & Artist 3" as one artist, which is what I'm trying to avoid. I'd like for the end result to be 3 different artists via whatever method will get me there in Emby. But there are probably scripts or something similar in mp3tag that would do the same. 

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 hour ago, spon said:

Sure, here you go. https://we.tl/t-uEaI0jDoDE for testing. Thanks!

When I tagged it with MB, I did change the version to the US Disc version. I think the default is the digital version.

 

Hmm MBZ Picard, mp3tag, and ffprobe all show different results for m4a files.

I copied Artists and MB Artist Id from Picard to those fields in mp3tag, saved and they appeared properly.  So this does appear to be something in Picard and m4a files.  

This appears to create issue looking at this again in Picard after saving with mp3tag.

@cayars Have you done any testing with m4a music files?

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Happy2Play

[Carlo 4560]

1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

@cayars Have you done any testing with m4a music files?

No I haven't as I have no m4a files.

[spon 26]

Just to wrap this up after some additional research, including speaking to the developer for MusicBee, their stance is that the deficiencies in id3v2.3 regarding null separators and general issues with multiple artists was corrected years ago by the development of id3v2.4, which has better support for multiple values in tags. It appears there are numerous requests for ffprobe to support id3v2.4 but many of them are years old and it does not appear to be something that's going to happen. So as long as Emby relies on ffprobe some people will continue to have issues with artist tags. I completely understand that music isn't Emby's main focus and I'm sure changing way from ffprobe would be a huge undertaking, so I'm not expecting a change. Just want anyone else having the same issue to understand the problem.

Thanks to everyone that helped me out in diagnosing the issue.

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by spon