Music Library Organization
reddit / selfhosted

----------------------------------------------------------------------
reader3490 · 2023-11-02 14:18

The setup is a DLNA server (Emby), debian 12 bookworm server, no
container, fully functional out of the box, to my astonishment. The
problem is the library presentation. My media library includes not
only the "source tree" of ripped albums, but also two or three extra
copies of my favorite songs, painstakingly pulled from those album
folders and placed into different playlist folders.

I've done it this way because I have never found a satisfactory
playlist format that doesn't get destroyed when the library is
manually reorganized or moved to a new location, as often happens.

The reason this is a problem? Well, every organizing media player I
have used--Apple music, VLC via dlna, plex, jellyfin, and so forth--
includes every copy of every song it can find in the album view. So
all my favorite songs play three times when I play an album from album
view.

Since so many renderers present this same problem, it seems built in
to the way they think about music, based on the "buy individual tracks
and put them all in a folder" audience. So, I'm not hopeful about
this. Until I find a better solution, I can always go to a fully
functional "folder" view--assuming there is one, as in Emby or
minidlna--but not in jellyfin, for instance.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
olejazz · 2023-11-02 18:55

I suggest you also cross-post on /r/musichoarder as there are a few
people there with ideas to resolve various music library issues.

There are tools that can help automate reorganisation and tagging of
tracks, finding duplicates etc.

Also, some players can export playlists with relative directories, to
ease issues with change in location.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
gravelld · 2023-11-03 11:54

>Since so many renderers present this same problem, it seems built in
to the way they think about music, based on the "buy individual tracks
and put them all in a folder" audience. So, I'm not hopeful about
this. Until I find a better solution, I can always go to a fully
functional "folder" view--assuming there is one, as in Emby or
minidlna--but not in jellyfin, for instance.

This may be the case - software is a reflection of the authors' mental
models. But equally there are other apps that do support more album-
oriented listening modes.

Also - make sure your library is organised to support this. If you
have multiple copies of the same album, for example, some form of
disamiguation is required to hint to the music player that the albums
should be separated. Examples:

\- Folder location

\- Subtitles

\- Textual decorators on the album title

But I second the recco for r/musichoarder, where I also hang out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
reader3490 · 2023-11-03 21:44

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.