Extra artist entries

[fizzyade]

Hi,

I've just installed Subsonic, but when I use a client I get duplicate entries for artists, often with case differences.

As a test I have cleaned up the tags for a particular artist that is giving me problems, rescanned the library, hit the cleanup button but the duplicate artist entries still exist.

If I create a rest curl call to the get artists endpoint I can confirm that the artists are showing duplicates.

Inside the web client, the index option shows the correct number of artists 22, but the clients and the rest api give me 35 artists.

Any ideas?

[acroyear]

Yes, the artist stuff is case sensitive (and don't get me started on Hall & Oates, Hall and Oates, and Darryl Hall and John Oates).

One of the issues is that mix-up between Artist and "Album Artist" (the latter used for compilations) from the ID3 tagging. Subsonic's organization and API prioritizes grouping by the Album Artist...but then displays the regular Artist in the individual track.

However, if you change an artist in the UI, it only changes the Artist tag, but that Album Artist that is 'wrong' is still hidden from you. There's no way in the UI to fix that.

So you first have to clean up the files individually using an external tool like iTunes. Then you have to force a reload of the folders. This is where the timestamps on the folders gets tricky, because Subsonic's scanner won't rescan the files inside a folder it *thinks* hasn't changed, based on the date it was last modified. So to fix that you need to make the folder itself seem changed. One way, you can rename it to Album X, scan, "clean database", then rename it back to Album, scan again, "clean database". A pain, yeah.

Oh, and this also means that any playlists you have will lose those files. If you want to preserve them, you'll need to export the m3u file, then after the cleanup is done, delete the playlist and import it anew, assuming that the files are the same and in the same locations.

Also, if you bring in files that aren't tagged, Subsonic will internally tag them based on the idea that it is in the album folder and the parent of that will become the Album Artist, rather than the Artist, again causing this type of issue. (I have several "King Crimson 1969" files I wish I could fix more easily because of this - I org my KC folders by the line-ups). Best to avoid that by making sure the tagging is right in another tool before adding them to Subsonic.

[fizzyade]

Yes, the artist stuff is case sensitive (and don't get me started on Hall & Oates, Hall and Oates, and Darryl Hall and John Oates).

One of the issues is that mix-up between Artist and "Album Artist" (the latter used for compilations) from the ID3 tagging. Subsonic's organization and API prioritizes grouping by the Album Artist...but then displays the regular Artist in the individual track.

However, if you change an artist in the UI, it only changes the Artist tag, but that Album Artist that is 'wrong' is still hidden from you. There's no way in the UI to fix that.

So you first have to clean up the files individually using an external tool like iTunes. Then you have to force a reload of the folders. This is where the timestamps on the folders gets tricky, because Subsonic's scanner won't rescan the files inside a folder it *thinks* hasn't changed, based on the date it was last modified. So to fix that you need to make the folder itself seem changed. One way, you can rename it to Album X, scan, "clean database", then rename it back to Album, scan again, "clean database". A pain, yeah.

Oh, and this also means that any playlists you have will lose those files. If you want to preserve them, you'll need to export the m3u file, then after the cleanup is done, delete the playlist and import it anew, assuming that the files are the same and in the same locations.

Also, if you bring in files that aren't tagged, Subsonic will internally tag them based on the idea that it is in the album folder and the parent of that will become the Album Artist, rather than the Artist, again causing this type of issue. (I have several "King Crimson 1969" files I wish I could fix more easily because of this - I org my KC folders by the line-ups). Best to avoid that by making sure the tagging is right in another tool before adding them to Subsonic.

Thanks for the detailed response, I will obviously have to work a little harder to fix my files!

I’m actually writing an iOS client because all the ones i’ve tried feel clunky and/or have not very pretty interfaces or haven’t been updated for years. i also have a specific way i want the software to operate/behave. i have streaming working and a few other api’s implemented.

[fizzyade]

Ahh, the actual command i want is getIndexes and not getArtists.

[acroyear]

yet, getIndexes returns the actual file/folder structure, rather than the ID3 tags, and most clients actually support that one first (especially on Android, because the official Android client always did).

There's an API google group mentioned on the API page which I glance at every so often, or you can PM me any questions, as I've been working actively maintaining a suite of apps (web based Progressive Web Apps, and also deployed for Amazon's Fire platform) for 4 years now. The biggest 'gotcha' I've found is that when there's only one entry for a return value, the API may return that as is rather than embedded in an array, so you have to watch for that and handle it.

[fizzyade]

yet, getIndexes returns the actual file/folder structure, rather than the ID3 tags, and most clients actually support that one first (especially on Android, because the official Android client always did).

There's an API google group mentioned on the API page which I glance at every so often, or you can PM me any questions, as I've been working actively maintaining a suite of apps (web based Progressive Web Apps, and also deployed for Amazon's Fire platform) for 4 years now. The biggest 'gotcha' I've found is that when there's only one entry for a return value, the API may return that as is rather than embedded in an array, so you have to watch for that and handle it.

thanks for the info and offer, i’m sure if i have trouble with anything then i’ll be sure to ask.

i’m currently just getting the basics in the app, i’m about to start building some of the custom controls now. Will take a look at your stuff.

With regards to what your are saying about the return value, are you saying that for example getArtists would omit the artists tag and just return a single artist? (and so forth for other types of data)

i actually ignore the artists tag and just look for the artist tag, same for other things.

[acroyear]

ok, it looks like 6.x servers have cleaned that up, as i was hunting around my library to try to find an example.

basically, if you had only 1 index, it might show up as artists.index.artist (or the music directory index equivalent) rather than artists.index[0].artist - the interim steps would be a single object instead of an array containing a single object.

but like i said, it looks like that's all been cleaned up lately and the results are more consistent.