Genre tagging: using available tag and order sorting

[alan9990]

Fair comment. And yes, it's your software, written to your satisfaction. I can't have any argument with this. It's also excellent at what it does, which is why it pains me that a) I feel a little compelled to take up your time with something you clearly see as not important while b) trying as hard as I can to find ways around this.

So, in closing I might say (because clearly there becomes a rapidly diminishing return in keep posting about a dead subject) and such that you might at least understand why this is important for me if not for you:

I don't do streaming of any kind. Okay so all the work of tagging and sorting was already done - upstream.

All my replay is of an ever growing local library. And being distinctly "old school" about certain aspects of my music replay, just imagine the following scenario:

Tag files embed all manner of useful information beyond the obvious of who it is and what the tune/album is called. We can agree on this.

So, one day I decide that I want to have a "Louis Armstrong" day, or that I want to listen to all tracks released by a particular Label/Publisher. Or that I want my server to be able to filter all songs in my library by writer, or whatever.

Louis Armstrong collaborated with many other notable artists. To name just two: Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald.

So, when I sort/filter my albums by "artist", oh but anything that Louis Armstrong recorded with these other artists is not even available - because it has been rejected and is not indexed. Oh, but then simply strip out the multiple "Albumartist|Albumartist" and use just one!

Yes. But tomorrow, I want to listen to all the music by Ella Fitzgerald. Except now the albums featuring Louis Armstrong no longer get included.

I even thought of removing "Albumartist" tag from my entire library, so happy would I be to just have everything indexed and sorted. But then... what about the hundreds of compilation albums I have, all of which have "Albumartist=Various Artists". These would end up becoming thousands more new 'albums' containing just a single track!

So, without wanting to seem picky or personal or indeed the slightest unpleasant... it absolutely baffles me as to why such a seemingly obvious and natural filter (multiple Album Artist values) is unsupported? It just makes no sense at all to me.

If I say that having a database behind the files seems awesome... then yes! So again, just imagine I'm chatting with friends, and a conversation emerges about a particular song.... followed by an anecdote of what somebody was doing on that particular day/week/month (this does happen). So I decide that for fun I'll create a dynamic playlist that will play:

Filter genre> Pop|Jazz Pop

Filter these results by year: Up to 1964

Filter this by month (because tags support full date): Up to October 1964.

And play THESE songs.

Isn't this the very point of having everything stored in a database?

If it's simply impossible to have Minimserver work with multiple Albumartist values then... well, I can think of ways I might mitigate this e.g. create two copies of each album where there are shared "Albumartist" values, and have each copy of the album labelled with one and then the other artist. But to simply have them not show up is extraordinary.

But yes, I have gone back to AssetUPnP for the time being. If ever anything changes here I'll be right back!

[simbun]

(28-03-2026 19:55)alan9990 Wrote:  Fair comment. And yes, it's your software, written to your satisfaction. I can't have any argument with this.

I'm just a user, @simoncn is the author.

Does it need to be a UPnP server?

[alan9990]

my apologies.

It does yes, specifically because I did a fair bit of research before buying my DAC. And I concluded that DLNA was not wanted/necessary (it's more restrictive than UPnP despite being a subset of the protocols), and that I want just a music server running on a box, because a) not about to 'stream' photos or video etc. around my home and b) I'll eventually build a small form factor Pi/SBC box precisely to sit in the corner and just run the server, rather than (at present) fire up the 'spare' PC and leave the whole thing running just to run a music server.

I came here because Cambridge Audio recommended either Minimserver or AssetUPnP as the two music specific UPnP servers that work well with their hardware (I have the MXN100)

I've looked and looked, and tried and tried with other software, and just given up in despair/frustration because so many open source projects - kept alive by passionate volunteers mostly - just simply fails at some important hurdle, or ends up being unwieldy, or most often is geared towards video streaming and audio is a bit of an afterthought. Stuff like Plex and etc. seem to want to transcode on the fly - an absolute no for me.

I don't want a server that's controlled via a web interface, and for which I have to enable transcoding. Software like Volumio and Lyrion seem to need to be installed on a Pi or similar device before they work, thus I can't really test them out fully without buying hardware, and even then they may not work (I've tried booting them from a portable installation).

Minimserver ticks every box but one, and it's properly designed, does nothing except what it's supposed to, and will tell me if it needs updating. I'm delighted it does one thing only and does it well. However, I'm not in a mood to address in excess of 70,000 music files (I've been busy of late!) to "bodge" my way around what I see as a shortcoming in its features.

If you are able to tell me of any other server software that is audio focused, supports WiFi sharing on a local network, will run under Linux, ideally is lightweight, and doesn't need a degree in engineering or software to make it work... I am most certainly all ears! And yes, VERY very happy to pay for it - nobody wants to work for free. But to date, this software and the other mentioned are the only 2 from about fifteen I've tried that actually work to any important degree.

[simoncn]

Thanks for explaining how you use multiple AlbumArtist values and why they are important for you. I understand this and I will first propose a simple solution and then give some background into why MinimServer works the way it does.

The simple solution is to set these MinimServer property values:

aliasTags: AlbumArtist:AlbumArtists
tagFormat: AlbumArtist.displayFormat={$albumartists}
indexTags: remove AlbumArtist (if currently set) and add AlbumArtists:AlbumArtist

The aliasTags setting changes the tag name for your AlbumArtist tags to AlbumArtists. The tags in your files are still AlbumArtist but MinimServer reads the files as if they contained AlbumArtists tags instead of AlbumArtist tags. This prevents any errors for multiple AlbumArtist values.

The new tagFormat setting creates a "virtual" AlbumArtist tag whose display value is a combination of all the tagged album artist names. The new indexTags setting creates an index shown as AlbumArtist whose values are the names that are tagged as AlbumArtist in your files. For example, if an album has tagged AlbumArtist values Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, the album artist shown in your control point's artist display will be "Ella Fizgerald, Duke Ellington" and the AlbumArtist index will contain two separate index entries "Ella Fizgerald" and "Duke Ellington" with the album listed under both of these. As I understand it, this is exactly what you would like to see.

Now for the background. In the early days of MinimServer, there was much discussion about how Artist tags and AlbumArtist tags should be used and should be handled by MinimServer. The consensus was that the AlbumArtist value is the overall artist for the album and the Artist values are all artists that contribute to the album. As a result of this, it was decided that the MinimServer index would provide the following index values:

Artist: the single AlbumArtist tag value for the album if there is one and all the Artist tag values otherwise
All Artists: all the Artist tag values
AlbumArtist: the single AlbumArtist tag value

As well as its use for indexing as described above, the AlbumArtist tag is used by MinimServer to locate and combine audio files belonging to an album if the mergeFolderAlbums option is enabled. With this option, MinimServer scans the whole library looking for files that are part of the same album based on rules that involve AlbumArtist and Artist tag values (see this section of the user guide). The way this matching is implemented is quite complex and allowing multiple AlbumArtist values would increase this complexity considerably and would produce incorrect results if all the AlbumArtist values are not completely consistent in all cases.

[simbun]

(28-03-2026 20:21)alan9990 Wrote:  It does yes, specifically because I did a fair bit of research before buying my DAC. And I concluded that DLNA was not wanted/necessary (it's more restrictive than UPnP despite being a subset of the protocols)

I wasn't referring to DLNA vs UPnP, I meant did you need a server (DLNA/UPnP) that is visible to DLNA/UPnP control points e.g. Cambridge StreamMagic app?

(28-03-2026 20:21)alan9990 Wrote:  If you are able to tell me of any other server software that is audio focused, supports WiFi sharing on a local network, will run under Linux, ideally is lightweight, and doesn't need a degree in engineering or software to make it work... I am most certainly all ears!

There's only one other server that I recommend, though it's not UPnP.

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