Music library compatibility with DLNA

[steve1977 67]

This will be a rather long and complicated post, but quite important as the current implementation of the music library is not compatible with DLNA. I have tried three different DLAN clients now and all face the same issue with MBS. One example of a DLNA client that is not working is the de-facto industry standards VLC player.

 

The issue is a about how MBS dis-aggregates albums with multiple album artists into several artists. Eliminating this feature should immediately solve the DLNA issue.

 

It is a bit difficult to explain, but let me give it a try:

 

1) Dis-aggregation of albums with multiple album artists within MBS

* MBS currently identifies if a "feat." is included in the albumartist tag. An example of such an album would be "Zodiak" by "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" (http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/7cea1d63-79a7-4620-b2b1-9d44a9e618b3)

* MBS displays two album artists for this album: "Chakuza & RAF Camora" and separately "Joshi Mizu"

* This is per-se not bad, but creates incompatibility with DLNA clients. That's why I am suggesting to remove this feature for album artists. Let me elaborate more though

 

2) MBS display of "album artists"

* When clicking "album artists" in MBS, it displays all albums where the albumartist is included either as an albumartist or even as one track as an artist

* For the specific example above, clicking album artist "Joshi Mizu" displays the album by "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" and also clicking album artists "Chakuza & RAF Camora" displays the same album. There is no album artist "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu"

* Yet again, this is actually how it is supposed to be. But now let me get to how this leads to incompatibility

 

3) DLNA client of "album artists" (MBS acts as DLNA server)

* When using a DLNA client such as VLC, I can greatly access MBS as DLNA server

* When going to the folder "album artists", I can see both "Chakuza & RAF Camora" and "Joshi Mizu" as separate album artists (same as it is shown when clicking "album artists" within MBS

* HOWEVER, after clicking one of these two album artists, nothing happens. The DLNA client only displays albums that include the same album artist. Given the album artist is actually still "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu", clicking on "Joshi Mizu" does not give any results. Given no artist called "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" is displayed under album artists, there is no way for me to access this album.

* I tried with three different DLNA clients and are not compatible with MBS with this regard

 

 

Proposed solution:

A- Remove the "disaggregation logic" for the albumartist tag. In easy words, the album artist of the album above should be "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" as this is the way that DLNA clients expect it

B- Also remove the "disaggregation logic" for the artist tag. Both artist tag and albumartist tag are actually what is being displayed when selecting the album and/or playing songs. That's how itunes work and also what DLNA clients would expect

 

The two points above should solve the compatibility issue with DLNA quite easily. In the longer-term, it would be great if MBS could support "artists" (with an "S") and "albumartists" (with an "S) to allow greater flexibility for archiving. I am not sure though what it would take to make this work over DLNA? Would the clients also need to implement this?

 

As expected, this was a very long post, but hope that this brings some clarity and also shows a way for a solution!

Edited March 7, 2015 by steve1977

[kkhan 16]

I have Mediabrowser as a DLNA server with multiple DLNA clients (Samsung TV, Bubble PNP on Android, WMP on Windows 8.1) and I do not see this behaviour - I have a library of 50,000+ songs.  Removing the ability to have multiple AlbumArtists is a retrograde step as most DLNA servers support this.

 

It is also fundamental to navigating music collections especially classical music where the AlbumArtist tags can be used to include the orchestra and conductor.

 

In my case if this functionality were to be removed, I would be forced to stop using Mediabrowser as a DLNA server.

 

They way my library is setup using your example is to use both the Artist and AlbumArtist tags (see MediaMonkey forum for details).

 

AlbumArtist = "Chakuza & RAF Camora"

 

Artist = Chakuza; RAF Camora; Joshi Mizu

 

If I navigate via AlbumArtist, I would get a list of all Albums by "Chakuza & RAF Camora".

 

If i navigate via Artist, I would select either Chakuza; RAF Camora or Joshi Muzi.  This would give me a list of all Albums or Tracks where any of these Artists was a primary or contributing Artist.

 

[steve1977 67]

I understand the issue from an artist perspective, but not from an albumartist perspective. Can you give me an example from your library where the albumartist is "disaggregated" by MBS into two separate albumartists? I will the try to reproduce.

 

This case is rare and that's why I gave the specific example of "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" (http://musicbrainz.o...b1-9d44a9e618b3). Typically, albumartists do not include a "feat." and DLNA compatibility breaks for these rare cases.

 

I also tried with Bubble UPNP and it does not work either.

[steve1977 67]

I tried to replicate what you shared above, but it is becoming more and more clear that this is an issue that needs to be resolved. The issue is around the very rare case of having a "feat." artists as part of the albumartist.See more detailed explanation below based on what you wrote:

 

*** They way my library is setup using your example is to use both the Artist and AlbumArtist tags (see MediaMonkey forum for details).

*** AlbumArtist = "Chakuza & RAF Camora"

*** Artist = Chakuza; RAF Camora; Joshi Mizu

 

I am doing exactly the same thing when tagging my music.

 

The issue is that the albumartist is not as you describe it above. The albumartist on Musicbrainz is "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu", which causes the whole problem. MBS then separates this one "albumartist" into "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu". The artist tag is fine, but different for each track. Take a look at http://musicbrainz.org/release/3b44628d-4b64-4ef6-844a-ed6e17801b7b and you will know what I mean. Joshi Mizu is part of albumartist, but not part of every track.

 

*** If I navigate via AlbumArtist, I would get a list of all Albums by "Chakuza & RAF Camora".

 

Under albumartists, it shows "Chakuza & RAF Camora" and "Joshi Mizu". Both lead to the album and all tracks of the album.

 

*** If i navigate via Artist, I would select either Chakuza; RAF Camora or Joshi Muzi.  This would give me a list of all Albums or Tracks where

*** any of these Artists was a primary or contributing Artist.

 

Unfortunately, 4 different artists show up:

"Chakuza" - no album, all 12 songs from the album

"Chakuza & RAF Camora" - one album, all 12 songs from the album

"RAF Camora" - no album, all 12 songs from the album

"Joshi Muzi" - one album, all 12 songs from the album

 

I think it is now becoming more clear why the current implication does not work. Above info is taken from MBS directly and not via DLNA. As said, via DLNA it does work at all.

 

All is ok for "artists" though, it just requires a fix for albumartits treatment

Edited March 7, 2015 by steve1977

[steve1977 67]

Above is what I am seeing in MBS. While it is not ideal, it is somewhat acceptable. It becomes a real issue once accessing thins over DLNA though (consistent with Bubble, VLC, Sony Bravia):

 

1) Albumartist view

* "Chakuza & RAF Camora" and "Joshi Mizu" both show up in the list

* However, both cannot be selected and no albums are being displayed

 

2) Artist view

 * "Chakuza", "RAF Camora" and "Joshi Mizu" all three show up in the list (but NOT "Chakuza & RAF Camora")

* However, none can be selected

 

 

My conclusion is that a fix is required how albumartist is treated (my 1st point in the opening post). The 2nd point may not be required though as the application for artists is working.

[Vicpa 552]

Hi,

I think it has been well documented by myself and others that a lot of the views for music are "broken" or best case still a work in progress. Unfortunately it seems some of the "DLNA" views are also being used by Real MB clients like MBC and the Win 8  app.

 

There are lots of challenges with DLNA mostly varying levels of conformity to the standards. That makes it a tough target and low common denominator.

 

That being said there are no excuses for there to be inconsistencies between actual MB clients, Web, MBC and Win8. The days of "well it works in the web" are rapidly a thing of the past.

 

I agree with kkhan things need to be fixed. rather than regressed.

[steve1977 67]

I don't think there is so much "fixing" necessary and I don't agree that "a lot of the views are broken".

Actually, what kkhan is describing is exactly the wanted behavior and basically working like this in 99.9% of the cases. What requires fixing:

 

1) No separation based on "feat." as part of the "albumartist" tag, but only based on the artist tag. Given that there are very very few albums that including a "feat." artist in the albumartist tag, this is a very tiny change. This change results in the behaviour described by kkhan and will also get dlna working.

 

2) Optionally, it could be considered whether the artist view should be based only artist tag (not the albumartist tag). With this change, what kkhan describes above would happen. I am indifferent on this point.

 

 

Hope the developers will have a chance to make the first minor change and also consider the 2nd one.

[ginjaninja 533]

It sounds like you expect MB3 to intelligently split the albumartist tag "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" into (what mbz understands as) Chakuza/RAF Camora/Joshi Mizu

 

currently, (i understand) mb3 splits albumartist on string matches such as 'feat.'  ...but not & (there are too many real albumartists with &)

 

how did your feature request go whereby you requested MB3 use a special mbz inspired tag to explain in no uncertain terms what the artist split was?

How did it work - does the special tag's existence overwrite standard splitting rules? Could a similar sister tag be used to split albumartists? would that fit into the same mbz and mb3 philosophies?

 

Currently i split all tags myself before library ingestion using   ';' for artist and mp3tag's '\\' for album artist (lowest common denominator compatibility for wmp and mb3, albeit i loose 2nd album artist)

so i have reduced functionality, but a highly consistent ui (in and out of dlna).

 

is the dlna issue? just a stick to beat the drum of the feature request that MB3 introduce a fetch/split method for both artist and albumartist tags that keen users can use (not to the detriment of casual users) to ensure 100% accuracy to mbz (or some other standard but why not mbz)?

[steve1977 67]

*** It sounds like you expect MB3 to intelligently split the albumartist tag "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" into (what mbz understands as) Chakuza/RAF

*** Camora/Joshi Mizu

*** currently, (i understand) mb3 splits albumartist on string matches such as 'feat.'  ...but not & (there are too many real albumartists with &)

 

Not at all. No expectations at all to split them. For albumartist, I would want no split at all by any means. The current split by "feat." breaks DLNA support and I don't find it helpful anyways. So, why try to any splits for albumartists. My suggestion is that the "albumartist" tag is "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" and this is exactly how it should show up in MBS. Then, DLNA support will work!

 

*** how did your feature request go whereby you requested MB3 use a special mbz inspired tag to explain in no uncertain terms what the artist split was?

 

The MBZ tag "artists" (with an "s") has been implemented- big thanks again!!! So this works well now. No issues with artist/artists tag. Only issue is "albumartist" treatment that breaks DLNA support for albums, where the "albumartist" tag includes a "feat.". I admit, this is a rare case, but why not fix it?

 

*** How did it work - does the special tag's existence overwrite standard splitting rules? Could a similar sister tag be used to split albumartists? would that fit into

*** the same mbz and mb3 philosophies?

 

If MBZ/Picard introduces an "albumartists" (with an "S") tag, this could yet again be a solution. If you can help me lobby the Picard/MBZ guys, this could further bring tagging heaven. Not needed for this specific request here.

 

*** Currently i split all tags myself before library ingestion using   ';' for artist and mp3tag's '\\' for album artist (lowest common denominator compatibility for wmp

*** and mb3, albeit i loose 2nd album artist)

*** have reduced functionality, but a highly consistent ui (in and out of dlna).

 

This works, but as you said you limit the functionality. For "artist" you no longer have to do this since MBS and MBZ introduced "artists" tag. Good to read that your manual "albumartist" hack also works with DLNA if I read your post right?

 

*** is the dlna issue? just a stick to beat the drum of the feature request that MB3 introduce a fetch/split method for both artist and albumartist tags that keen users

*** can use (not to the detriment of casual users) to ensure 100% accuracy to mbz (or some other standard but why not mbz)?

 

Not sure whether I understand?

[steve1977 67]

@@ginjaninja - what DLNA client are you using? I tried your manual "hack", which works beautifully within MBS, but my DLNA clients do not find the album under "Chakuza".

[Vicpa 552]

Hi,

Personally I could care less about splitting out "automatically" featured artists. Maybe important to some. 

 

@ @steve1977

Perhaps I am doing something wrong or my expectations are different than others I don't see these things as working "well".

 

 

Album Artist web

 

 

Album Artist in Win8

 

In MBC

 

 

 

Artists Web

 

 

 

Have had varying success with separators.

 

 

 

-vicpa

Edited March 7, 2015 by Vicpa

[steve1977 67]

Ah, I got it. You are referring to MBC and the mobile clients. Music is indeed experimental with these. My "working well" was referring to MBS, which I would consider as working well. Also, DLNA is working reasonably well. What this thread is solving for is actually a rather small issue, but still hope it can be fixed.

[Vicpa 552]

Hi,

Not quite, what I am pointing out is that MBC and Win8 are using something similar if not the dlna views and not what the web uses. @@ebr, @@7illusions might take issue with "You are referring to MBC and the mobile clients. Music is indeed experimental with these"

By far they are the best two windows clients for music.

 

For shits & grins, See

 

DLNA, Win 8 view. Carol and JT are not even shown. some dlna clients don't display info when the folder is empty. My Yamaha receiver on the other hand shows the folder, put won't let you open it cause it is empty. Hence my comments about the varying "standards" of DLNA.

 

 

Thanks

Hope this clarifies why I used MBC and Win8 samples, they suffer a similar fate as dlna. so it is kinda a big deal

 

-vicpa

[steve1977 67]

Fair point. The experimental ones are the IOS mobile clients (ipad does not have it implemented at all, iphone has it, but it broken some months ago). I am sure you will be right about the Windows clients and glad you corrected it.

 

I am surprised that "artists web" does not list the album under James Taylor. Any idea why this is not the case? Also, does "Carole King & James Taylor" show up under "artist web view? What tagger are you using and editing anything directly?

 

Also, any idea why Win8 DLNA is not listing "Carole King & James Taylor"?

[steve1977 67]

Also, you are pointing to a broader topic, which I am not experiencing. When I manually remove "feat. Joshi Mizu" from the albumartist tag, it works pretty much I would expect it to (and basically how kkhan describes it). "Chakuza & RAF Camora" is shown in "album artist" view in MBS and also over DLNA. And selecting it brings the album up. No idea, why it does not work in your case.

[Tester 45]

#3 in the original post has been brought up many times in the past.

[steve1977 67]

#3 is the issue description of my original post. But I thought it only is an issue when there is a "feat." in the "albumartists". What other issue are folks experiencing?

[ginjaninja 533]

Not at all. No expectations at all to split them. For albumartist, I would want no split at all by any means. The current split by "feat." breaks DLNA support and I don't find it helpful anyways. So, why try to any splits for albumartists. My suggestion is that the "albumartist" tag is "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" and this is exactly how it should show up in MBS. Then, DLNA support will work!

 

 

I dont think i could have understood...or if i have i dont agree.

 

To my mind a split in at least one sense is 100% required. We want to know what persons/groups have produced what albums. How can MBZ hope to show the albums outputted by Chakuza if it doesnt in some sense split the tag ""Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu", regardless of wether the split is achieved by internal ruleset or deference to a higher power like mbz or tags from mbz in the files a la picard...

 

I can see there is a sense in which a user might want to ask the question who ouputted the album zodiak? and doesnt want to know that it was Chakuza & RAF Camora & Joshi Mizu...but wants to appreciate it as they intended namely "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu"....but even musicbrainz appreciates the components whilst providing the overall sense namely "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu".

 

For me the album artist components are much more important than the album artist sense....(when im searching for content)..but i can appreciate that having the sense is a nice to have..

ie...it is mildly inconvenient to not know the sense...but to not be able to see albums by Chakuza wheere Chakuza is an album artist (not just an artist appearing on a track on album) would be a disaster....

I know at the moment MB3 UIs dont do very much to distingiush content as albumartist from content as artist, but i hope one day it will and if MB3 does not understand the components then imo it would be a retrograde design decision..

 

Presumably musicbrainz has the right idea by appreciating and providing both the nuance/sense and the components, and this would be the ideal goal for me...

[Vicpa 552]

Hi,

I use Picard with the ";" separator. Only thing I generally do is remove featuring ... from the tags directly. Always got an Album Artist "xyz featuring somebody", much the same as Artists being created xyz; somebody currently.

 

Portability of my media is a big concern for me so if I make any changes to anything it is directly in the tags. Which raises the question of why the tags are not always the definitive source for MBS meta data ?

 

Steve I have no idea why on the web the album doesn't show up under JT. Have plenty of other examples BB King and Eric Clapton "Riding with the King", shows under BB but not under Eric.

 

The big point is if the direction for the clients and I am including the web ui as a client is to use a standard interface to extract the same things then they all need to be using the same thing... DLNA views, MB client views or whatever.

 

Bottom line we just want it to work. As users trouble shooting well it works here not there, or mostly or sometime. Is a big moving target. For example as Steve1977 pointed out. the album doesn't show under JT on the web. so adding that we have.

1) not "working" in MBC, win8,

2) DLNA not "working" but showing different results based on client. (My thought why this is not the "test platform of choice"

3) Mostly working on the web. All but the last piece.... having the album show up under both album artists.

4) other clients? Maybe some android users can chime in.

 

Thanks as always just my two cents.

[ginjaninja 533]

as for Carole King and James Taylor example, it is a testament to MB3 tenacity that it was able to put a good image to the content..but this was a freak because "Carole King & James Taylor" was not the album artist of "live at the troubadour"...it was two album artists "Carole King" & "James Taylor".

It would be great if MB3 spread it wings and found great artwork in these instances...but not at the detriment of identifying the components when more than one exists..

If we have to do that manually to begin with ..with appropriate tagging....and later automatically via some sort appreciation of picard/mbz ....fair enough....but we dont want to ever get to the state where we dont know that "live at the troubadour" was an ALBUM by "James Taylor" (and also an album of "Carole King")

Edited March 7, 2015 by ginjaninja

[steve1977 67]

I have one thought about the CK/JT issue. Does this happen to be a MP4/M4A file? Unfortunately, "artists" tag in Picard is only supported for MP3s, but broken for MP4s et al.

[ginjaninja 533]

As for DLNA...and the clients

once we have the correct album content attributed to albumartist objects and correct track content attributable to artist objects...they can presented properly.

 

which i would imagine would be browse by Album Artist..

Chakusa

--------------->Zodiak**

--------------->Other Albums By Chakusa as album artist

--------------->Albums/Track Content by Chakusa as artist

Raf Camora

--------------->Zodiak

Joshi Mizu

--------------->Zodiak

James Taylor

--------------->Live at the troubadour

Carole King

--------------->Live at the troubadour

 

**When I chose Zodiak, it would be great if clients with the appropriate capability showed the album artist as "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" or even better "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu"

ie clients that supported hyper links eg web...could jump to these objects..

 

i would NOT expect to see (in italic)  in browse by album artist  (would you?).

Chakuza

--------------->Other Albums By Chakusa as album artist

Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu

---------------->Zodiak

---------------->Other Albums by "Chakuza & RAF Camora feat. Joshi Mizu" as album artist

Edited March 7, 2015 by ginjaninja

[steve1977 67]

I mostly agree with your last post. The issue is that this currently does not appear to work over DLNA. I just manually adjusted the albumartist to "Chakusa; RAF Camora", which I understand is what you typically do. MBS now rightfully displays both artists separately under albumartists and the same album comes up when selecting the album. However, my DLNA clients cannot access the album. Is this working for you? Is this something that could get fixed via MBS or would this require a change in all DLNA clients? If the latter, this would never be possible as I highly doubt that Sony, LG and others will adapt for us :-)

[ginjaninja 533]

I mostly agree with your last post. The issue is that this currently does not appear to work over DLNA. I just manually adjusted the albumartist to "Chakusa; RAF Camora", which I understand is what you typically do. MBS now rightfully displays both artists separately under albumartists and the same album comes up when selecting the album. However, my DLNA clients cannot access the album. Is this working for you? Is this something that could get fixed via MBS or would this require a change in all DLNA clients? If the latter, this would never be possible as I highly doubt that Sony, LG and others will adapt for us :-)

 

your doing better than me..im doing some testing of multiple albumartists separated by \\ ; / and i can only get the 1st one to show...(I have lived with this reduced functionality for a while as i didnt think i could do better)

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/10326-handling-of-music-albums-created-by-two-artists-not-various-artists/?p=130718

 

Ive found this post where luke confirms multiple album artist is supported in theory..but i couldnt find confirmation its supported in practise.

 

are you saying that if you create create a test album with albumartist = newartistdoesntexistanywhere1;newartistdoesntexistanywhere2...then

1. these two albumartists get created

2. the dlna client shows the album under each albumartist in view by albuartist

3. playing the album from either doesnt work

?

 

very surprising, but i cant confirm/deny as its not working at all for me..

It will not be a problem for mb3 to make it work..and if the albums show but dont play..then im sure luke will treat this as a bug..

 

 

looks like there is a bug in latest dev build for album artists,..cant do any testing for now..

Edited March 7, 2015 by ginjaninja

[steve1977 67]

Yes, it appears to be working a bit better for me than for you, but not to the extent yet that you are describing.

 

I just recreated an album again to be sure that it really works the way I remember. So, I took the album above and changed albumartist and albumsortartist to "Chakusa; RAF Camora; Joshi Mizu". This is a manual change I did in the tag, everything else is like Picard did it.

 

What works:

* When selecting albumartists in MBS, all three albumartists (i.e., "Chakusa" and "RAF Camora" and "Joshi Mizu") all show up as albumartists in MBS

* When selecting them, the respective albums show up and also albums that they have contributed to a song

* When selecting the albumartist and switching to songs, all songs are listed where the artist is albumartist (even if he did not contribute to the song) or songs where he is not albumartist, but he contributed to a song

-> I am quite impressed how this is handled and I assume that this is part of the use of the "artists" tag tag. Well done!

 

What does NOT work:

* DLNA clients now also identify these three albumartists (i.e., "Chakusa" and "RAF Camora" and "Joshi Mizu"). However, I cannot select them (i.e., the DLNA client cannot tell that any albums are affiliated with any of the three albums). Unfortunately, I have tested with 4 different DLNA clients and none of them get this to work. So, I would hope that this is something that can be fixed by MBS?

* Under album view in MBS, only the first artist is displayed. This may be an issue fix?

* When going to metadata manager and clicking one of the songs of this album, the artist shows properly, but the albumartist only shows the first albumartist. I doubt that this can be easily fixed until support of the "albumartists" tag is implemented? Not sure though

 

To sum it up, MBS is already front-running and has done an amazing effort with multiple artist support. However, DLNA support is to some degree broken now!