So many questions

[UKenGB]

First of all, I spent all day trying to figure out why although I could 'Browse' the local filesystem, nothing appeared in the MA library. Eventually I noticed by chance a comment here that the structure requires Artists to be in the ROOT of the specified media folder. I had set the media folder to be one level higher as I have NEVER come across a music system that doesn't simply scan what's there.

It matters not that I have to set it to the one level lower, but it would have saved me a wasted day due to it not actually being mentioned in the docs. At least not where I could find it.

Next.

WTF are you doing with sorting the Artist and Album lists?

I have nearly 200 GB of music and we can assume they are ALL PERFECTLY tagged. I'm a formeer database developer, worked in the music industry and have spent over 30 years building this collection and all required tags are complete and accurate. Everything sorts perfectly in iTunes and also in Plex. The tags are correct to suit my requirements. E.g. the Sort Album Artist tag is set to correctly sort the list of Artists so e.g. Eric Clapton is sorted under 'C' where he should be and not under 'E'. I thought you got this as you do mention using the Sort tags - but you don't always follow that.

So Luther ALLISON is listed next to Alan JACKSON, but their Sort (Album) Artist tags do NOT both start with 'A'. Clearly JACKSON should be sorted under 'J', not 'A' for Alan. Sheesh. What are you doing? The correct tag is there for perfect sorting, how can you get it so wrong.

I have even specified that file metadata should be used and not on-line resources.

Album sorting then also makes no sense whatsoever. I select to use the 'Sort name' as I KNOW that the Sort Album tags are constructed to sort the albums chronologically, but you are clearly using some other entirely different sort mechanism. I believe you are making up your own 'Sort' data which is basically a slightly munged Album Name when you should be using the actual tag that exists for this exact purpose and is correctly provided in all the files.

Sorting by release year works for some artists, but mostly is hopeless. Are you using the YEAR tag? That's no good as a later album release will most probably use the original YEAR for the tracks as that is when they were released. The release date for the Album is not a common tag and cannot be relied on as e.g. iTunes does not use it.

No matter, my Sort Album Name tags will put them in the correct order, but you don't use it. WTF?

Simply displaying everything in the correct order is of paramount importance and with care I have ensured that both iTunes and Plex display everything correctly. MA, not so much.

Hopefully you can put me straight and point out the simple setting I have to make that will turn MA into a usable system.

[UKenGB]

Oh and where's the MacOS Comapanion app. Offered in the docs, but doesn't seem to be available for download. :(

[UKenGB]

So, I thought maybe it was still reading the metadata and so some things were not working fully as they should. Now, 13 hours later, sorting is still a mess.

Artist sorting is a real puzzle. When sorting Alphabetically is selected, all are sorted by the Artist Name tag as they should. When 'Sort name' is selected, it's mixed up. Some are correctly sorted by the Sort Artist Name tag, while others are stuck using the basic Artist Name tag. Under no circumstances can that be correct.

So can anyone please advise how to correct this? How can I tell MA to re-read all the metadata? See if it can get it right at the second attempt.

[OzGav]

Your first post is not motivating me to help you but much of what you have written is incorrect and you need to review what is actually in the tags. If you think there is a problem then provide one specific example and show ALL of the tags in the file and a screenshot of the MA UI illustrating the problem.

[UKenGB]

So let's start at the beginning. Please explain exactly what I said that was incorrect. That would be a good place to start I think.

[OzGav]

For a start. Not true

the structure requires Artists to be in the ROOT of the specified media folder

I believe you are making up your own 'Sort' data

and I’m not going to quote your inflammatory comments

[UKenGB]

Can I remind you of your own comment (to someone else):-

"…folder structure of ROOT/ARTIST/ALBUM is perfect …"

I came across that following my own observation that when I used ROOT/MEDIATYPE/ARTIST/ALBUM, despite being able to browse the folders (in the MA web GUI), the MA library itself remained empty and nothing I did changed that.

I then reconfigured MA to see ROOT/ARTIST/ALBUM and immediately the library began populating.

How else could I have interpreted that other than the structure is critical. If it is not, then I would appreciate knowing why it was unable to use my first structure. To be clear the actual filesystem structure was not changed, just the configuration path supplied to MA.

Then, once it's all in the library, viewing Artists and selecting the menu to order by 'Sort name' produces this result:-

Every Artist who is a person has their name reversed in the Sort (Album) Artist Name tag, as can be seen here in the metadata for one of the files:-

All files have the name related tags constructed so that the Sort (Album) Artist Name places them correctly in any list ordered by that Sort (Album) Artist Name tag. Yet, MA lists e.g. Christina AGUILERA and Luther ALLISON correctly according to their Sort (Album) Album Artist Name tags, while a couple of Alberts as shown above, as well as some other artists are clearly ordered by their (Album) Artist Name tags. So the entire displayed list of Artists is using neither the (Album) Artist Name, nor the Sort (Album) Artist Name tags consistently, ergo MA is using some form of sorting algorithm of its own, which is what I said.

I am not in the habit of making things up, nor lying about stuff like this. I merely reported exactly what was occurring before my eyes and since as I said and showed, we can be sure the tagging is correct, the aberrant behaviour I reported has to be down to Music Assistant and I admit to being frustrated by yet another music app apparently unable to get sorting correct.

I did also ask if maybe there was a simple solution I was missing, some setting to change. Since none has been suggested, I guess that is not the case. So it's down to what MA is doing with the metadata. Does it use the Album Artist tags or the Artist tags? Does it import it all into a database, like iTunes? If it uses that db data when sorting, then the db is somehow incorrect. In which case, how can MA have managed to make a mistake when reading the metadata and how can it be corrected? Should I clear it out and start again? Would that produce a different result?

These are questions only MA support can answer, so I would very much appreciate some assistance with this.

[OzGav]

You don’t need to remind me of what is said but since you quoted me I said it was “perfect” not “required”. You said you read the docs and it is clear that artist/album is not mandatory

To minimise the chance of problems, folders should follow the /artist/album structure and the folder names should match the artist and album names as tagged with any illegal characters removed (e.g. AC/DC should be in a folder ACDC)
Files placed into a random structure will be imported but no other data will be able to retrieved from the folder names and other problems may occur

However, that is not the problem. The problem is the tag keys you are using are not the standard MA expects from what I can see. Your files appear to be using performer instead of artist and a different sort order tag. Also your files have none of the musicbrainz unique identifiers nor do they have an album artist. Here is a random picture that shows the expected tags (the list of tags required for optimal results is in the docs)

[OzGav]

I can see maybe whatever program you are using is displaying the tag names differently to what is actually in the file but I can’t tell.

edit: here is the complete list of internal names MA expects https://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/downloads/MusicBrainz_Picard_Tag_Map.html

[UKenGB]

I used iTunes' tag names and which are also used elsewhere. I realised that MediaInfo is using different words but thought it was obvious what was what.

If you need I'll quote the actual tag codes, but I'm sure you can figure it out.

I have never used Music Brainz, nor any other tagging service since they are not suitable for my purposes and only exist to make it easier for those too lazy to tag their media themselves

That however is irrelevant since MA is just dealing with several simple text fields and in the case of Artists, I assume it is correctly using the Album Artist Name tag (and Sort version) rather than the Artist Name tag and in database terms it should really use a 4 level sort, by Sort Album Artist Name, Album Artist Name, Sort Artist Name, Artist Name to allow for missing tag data. However, all my tracks have Sort Album Artist Name data so the multiple levels of sort should be largely irrelevant in this case.

The fact however is that some Artists are being correctly placed according to their Sort Album Artist Name, but others are incorrectly sorting by their Album Artist Name.

Since my files are correctly tagged (as I know they are and also as evidenced by the fact that they all list perfectly and correctly sorted in iTunes, Plex and others), then MA is somehow using the wrong data and I have no way of knowing how it is doing this since I don't know what tags it tries to read from a file's metadata or what it then does with that data and how it tries to use it.

Bear in mind this problem is not just the Artists list. An Artist's album list is similarly being sorted incorrectly.

The starting point is the metadata and that is correct. The end result is that the Artists (and their albums) lists are not ordered correctly. Somewhere in between something has gone wrong. Has the metadata been read correctly? Has it then been correctly saved in the db? Is the db data then being correctly used when displaying the data I.e. the list of Artists and/or their Albums?

What's the database format? SQLite? Is it worth clearing out the db and starting again? How best to do that, is there a simple command?

As I said, for this in depth information about the inner workings of MA I am reliant on others such as yourself.

[UKenGB]

Some further investigation.

Here's the whole album of the mis-sorted Albert COLLINS:-

and here is the Artist that MA added to the db:-

From which we can clearly see that MA did not import into its db what actually existed in the files' metadata. The sort field has simply been made up, created as the lower case version of the Album Artist Name (or could be from the Artist Name). At least it establishes the cause of the inconsistent sorting.

Here's another error:-

But here's something tricky it got right and so sorts correctly:-

I would like to try and set it all up again, but first need to establish why it made such errors and hopefully correct this behaviour, otherwise I see no reason why it wouldn't simply do it again.

Any clues as to why it is unable to correctly extract some metadata from some files?

[UKenGB]

Think I have the answer.

MA is unable to read the Sort Album Artist Name tags from AAC files and can only handle MP3 files with ID3 tags.

It obviously does find some AAC tags but not all and it's artists with only AAC files that are getting misread.

Can I assume you do intend MA to work with AAC files?

In which case, there seems to be a bug preventing it from doing so completely.

If you have no intention to support AAC files, well, I'd appreciate knowing that. If however you do, please let me know how I can help get this sorted.

[OzGav]

Let me look at what we are doing with AAC files.

[UKenGB]

Ok. I suspect the problem lies with the 'Sort' versions of the tags, also for Albums which have the same problem.

Look, we got off on the wrong foot. I just want MA to work and was frustrated when I thought it had a design error. However I am happier to know it's simply a coding issue as that can be fixed and meantime I can get on with integrating MA into my overall system.

Let me know if I can help with any testing etc.

[UKenGB]

As I suggested, same problem with albums. Sort Album Name is not being extracted from AAC files.

I would think Sort Track Title is the same, but I don't use that so no way of checking.

[OzGav]

The issue is we do not currently support AAC tags. I have submitted a PR to add this functionality.

[UKenGB]

I have to say I'm rather surprised that you don't support AAC files, but thanks for creating the request.

Is this something that will definitely be done and if so what might the timeframe be?

[UKenGB]

Thanks @OzGav for your work on this and great to see it being incorporated in the latest 2.8 beta. What's the timeframe for 2.8 release?

If it's imminent, I'll wait, but if it's still way off I may want to think about running the beta until then.

[OzGav]

That could be a few months

[UKenGB]

Thanks, I'll think about whether to try the beta, but I'll probably wait.

Is it possible to tell MA to reload all the local media files, without losing e.g. radio stations I've set up?

[OzGav]

Probably easiest is to remove the provider, wait until the log says the removal is complete and then add it again.

[UKenGB]

👍