MinimServer Forum - Music Tagging

.displayFormat

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 11:14:09 +0000

Hi,
I have a custom tag "BoxSet" and I'll like to custom display like this:
•
e.g.
"Charles Mingus - Original albums • Jazz"

I tried with a tagFormat:
BoxSet.displayFormat={$BoxSet$Genre^^^ • }

when I try and save the config I got the error:
Incorrect option name 'display' in property 'tagFormat'

What is the correct way of doin' it?

Thanks a lot.

Giovanni, from Italy

Performer W/Instruments Sort

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 14:04:43 +0000

I have been updating tags in my library. I want to be able to sort the Performer tag alphabetically. I have included my current setup in the attached files.

My Performer:Perform W Instruments index is what I'd like sorted by last name.
I can get a partial result using the performer_name_sort: Performer Sort (A-Z) index, which sorts performers by last name, but I lose the instruments.

Is it possible to sort by last name & include the instruments? Any help would be great.
Thanks

  Index_values.png (Size: 86.97 KB / Downloads: 16)

  performer_sort(a-z).png (Size: 124.96 KB / Downloads: 15)

  performer_nosort_instrument.png (Size: 153.33 KB / Downloads: 13)

INDEX:
INDEX TAGS:
AlbumArtistSort: Album Artist (A-Z), Performer: Performer W/Instruments, performer_name_sort: Performer Sort (A-Z), Date, Location, Genre, #audioformat, #audioquality

ITEM TAGS:
Album, AlbumArtist

TAG OPTIONS:
Date.yearOnly.index.sort, -Date.yearOnly.index.sort, AlbumArtistSort.ignore.sort={THE, The, the}, Album.sortTags={AlbumArtistSort, Artist, Album, Location}

TAG FORMAT:
performer_name_sort.indexFormat={$performer_name_sort^^}, Title.displayFormat={$Title^^ - ^ $location^< ^ >, $#audioquality^(^), $#audioformat^|^|}, Album.displayFormat={$AlbumArtist^^; ^ $album^^, ^ $location^< ^ >, $#audioquality},

Use "Beatles,The" vs "The Beatles"

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 16:13:11 +0000

Hi, There are a lot of artists under the letter T as many bands start with "The" for example "The Beatles" I have a number of artists where the word "The" comes after the artist name. Unfortunately I have forgotten where I change and how I write the command.
If I can get help with this again, I would be grateful.
Greetings, Ulf Jansson

Musichi Tagger still available ?

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:28:44 +0000

Good afternoon

I am using Musichi Tagger since years on my laptop equiped with windows 10 OS.
It is a very useful tool for the tagging of classical music audio files.

This 12 years old laptop will need to be replaced soon and the next will have Windows 11.
Can we still install Musichi tagger ? It seems the software is not maintained anymore

Regards

Bubbleupnp's work display behavior - suitable minimserver tagging

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:59:47 +0000

Bubbleupnp increasingly displays "work" data when accessing music albums provided online by qobuz (cf. picture attached) und uses the musical work data as headline when displaying movements of a musical work. I tried to achieve the same Bubbleupnp behavior displaying classical albums sent provided with minimsever. My classical music collection uses a tag "work" for compositions and "title for composition parts, but Buppleupnp does not show any "work" when displaying albums oder applying "show metadata". Is anybody able to tell me, which tagging might be suitable for minimserver to display work data just like qobuz?

Work Tag Display.jpg (Size: 429.76 KB / Downloads: 21)

Empty AlbumArtist & displayFormat

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 10:37:14 +0000

Hello everybody...

My own tagging convention is:

(a) for CD with single AlbumArtist, e.g. "Keith Jarrett Trio – Still Live"
. Artist='Keith Jarrett Trio'
. Album='1988 • Still Live'
. AlbumArtist='Keith Jarrett'
(that is: the "main artist" of the album)

(b) for CD with Various Artists, e.g. "Soleluna Beach, Vol.2"
. Artist=
. Album='2001 • Soleluna Beach, Vol.2'
. AlbumArtist=''
(that is: no value at all)

Since I have this tagFormat:
. Album.displayFormat={$AlbumArtist$Album$OwnedLabel^^^ • }

when I browse [folder view]/albums, I see:
(a) 'Keith Jarrett • 1988 • Still Live'
(b) '2001 • Soleluna Beach, Vol.2'

case (a) is ok, but for case (b) I'll like to see:
(b) 'VV AA • 2001 • Soleluna Beach, Vol.2'
without phisically, or virtually, fixing the empty AlbumArtist tag.

And I do mean:
except for the Album.displayFormat() need, the AlbumArtist value,
when the album is "Various Artists" type, *MUST* stay empty.

I think I need something like:
. Album.displayFormat={isnull($AlbumArtist, 'VV AA')$Album$OwnedLabel^^^ • }

but displayFormat() doesn't seem to support a syntax like that.

Any suggestion?

Thank you
Giovanni, from Italy

Specific Tags for Compilations

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 11:33:43 +0000

Hi!

Most of my collection is composed of albums. For those I have album name showing year, album name, album peak, album dynamic range, bit depth sample rate. Tracks show track name, track peak, track dynamic range and track duration.

This works great for albums, but I have a few custom made compilations - on those I would like to see different tags. Album name should be just album name, and tracks should be the same as above with added audio format.

Is this possible in any way?

Thanks!

Feature request: addional tagOption lastName

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 09:17:39 +0000

Dear Simon,

I am still absolutely happy with minimserver. minimserver 2 provides almost everything it need to handle my extensive classical music collection. However, I would like to come up with a new feature request, hopefully not too difficult to implement.

I would be happy to have an tagOption "lastName" in addition to "reverseName" allowing me to get the last name part of name formatted as "lastname, firstname" as display or index value. My current solution is to keep both "lastname, firstname" and "lastname" in different tags. An lastName option would allow me to work with just one tag for any person names.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards from Germany
Peter

The "Performer" challenge

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 13:09:35 +0000

Hello everybody.

I own a good collection of CD, ripped, converted to flac and stored into a QNAP NAS.
The QNAP runs a licensed instance of minimServer.

I'm mostly into jazz music and I patiently filled the "Performer" tag of each and every track of my library.
As editing front-end I used foobar2000.
The string was entered into the above tag like this:
"Ron Carter; Elvin Jones; Herbie Hancock"
(of course this is just an example...)
and Foobar200 splitted and stored that string inside the flac, like this:
. PERFORMER=Ron Carter
. PERFORMER=Elvin Jones
. PERFORMER=Herbie Hancock

As controller I mostly use these applications:
. JPLAY (on iPhone & iPad)
. Linn (on iPhone, iPad, android tablet)
. BubbleUpnp (android tablet)
. Foobar2000 (PC Windows, Iphone, Ipad, Android)

My wishes are:
1. to search by single "Performer" and find all albums s/he is playing in.
2. to play an album (or a track) and see the perfomers playing in it.

Now, I understand Perfomer is outside the basic group of tags searched/shown by the above apps.
Oh, yes, I can do a search by the Performer tag using the "smart browse" of MinimServer (wish 1: ok),
but I couldn't find a way to see what performers are playing a song (wish 2: KO).
My first Q:
Is there a way to instruct minimServer to show the content of the tag "Performer" of a track?
-
Anyway, I tried a work-around.

I've found out that cloning the content of the Performer tag into the Artist tag gets me exactly what I need.

But I don't want to phisically change the content of the Artist tag

So I tried this:
on the page :9790/properties-advanced.html
. tagFormat: Artist.displayFormat={$Artist$Performer^^^;}

than, on the page :9790/properties-server.html
. indexTags: All Artists:TrackArtist,Artist:AlbumArtist

Merging togheter Artist & Perfomer creates a "virtual Artist" tag that perfectly works when JPLAY searches inside its local db
I can search whatever artist I like (both main or side artist).
And I can see the whole band playing a song, since showing the "Artist" tag now means to show Artist+Perfomer.

Too bad, this doesn't work as expected with the "By folder" browse, since the sub-folder "TrackArtist" can't access the "virtual" Artist tag.

My 2nd Q:
. Is there a way to let minimServer to "smart browse" by the "virtual Artist" tag ?

Since I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong, please suggest me any solution you like to satisfy my needs.

Thank you very much.

Giovanni, from Italy

Dividing an album to Suites

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:25:18 +0000

I have a single album (Murder of the Universe by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard), which has 21 tracks.
Each group of tracks represents a Suite
Each Suite has a number and a name, e.g.: Suite 1: The Tale of the Altered Beast
When I browse the album I would like to have choices such as ">> Suite 1: The Tale of the Altered Beast" above each track which begins a suite, similiar to multidisc albums with a DISCSUBTITLE tag.

What's the best way to achieve this, without tagging the files with DISCNUMBER and DISCSUBTITLE tags (as this is not a true multidisc album)?

I also don't want to use the GROUP tag, since it forces me to navigate to the group itself, and then I'm unable to play the entire album

Tag "Grouping" in m4a not read by Minimserver

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 08:32:25 +0000

Hi, I started using the tag Grouping on my mp3's and m4a's and added them via itunes.
I checked if they where there on MusicBrainz Picard.
The tag works for my mp3's, but not for my m4a-files (both apple-lossless and aac format). The m4a-files are found in Grouping under 'unknown'.
I hope you can fix this.

Furthermore, I am very satisfied with Minimserver. I have it installed on my Synology Nas and play the music on my Yamaha musiccast system. It is fast (much faster then itunes) and I don't need the extra computer (running itunes) anymore.

The only things i miss is being able to create smart play lists (like genre contains 'jazz' to include jazz, jazz rock, jazz fusion, etc). Hence the use of the tag 'Grouping'

I also miss the possibility to search for an artist or album in the musiccast app, so tips on that are welcome!

Thanks in advance.

Ignored DISCSUBTITLE value

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 13:32:27 +0000

I happened to look at my log recently and found it is full of warnings similar to the example below.

Warning: ignored DISCSUBTITLE value '1989-Present' with no disc number in file Marillion/The Best Of Both Worlds/CD 2/Alone Again in the Lap of Luxury (Radio Edit).flac

When I have a multi disc album I will tag it with (disc x) after the album title and totally remove the discnumber tag as I didn't think it was needed anymore.

In the example above I have the album title:

The Best Of Both Worlds (Disc 1)
The Best Of Both Worlds (Disc 2)

You can see I have used a DISCSUBTITLE as well for each disc.

I have no issues as everything works but I have noticed that re scanning can take longer and was wondering if it is because it is looking for a disc number tag as well.

If that is the case is there a way to stop scanning reading the disc number tag.

wrong DISCNUMBER

Tue, 13 May 2025 05:58:41 +0000

I have some warnings in minimserver logs about DISCNUMBER issues which are quoted as wrong when they are not.

The source of the problem comes from a specification which I now remember you told me long time ago, Simon.

The phenomenon is the same: two albums in a set; one has discnumber n and the other discnumber n+1

But unfortunatly the albums name finishes by disc p for the first one and disc p+1 for the second one.

Example: the set of Il Giardino Armonico,
Album 10 is
Bach: Brandenburg concertos, Nos. 1-6, Disc 1
Album 11 is
Bach: Brandenburg concertos, Nos. 1-6, Disc 2

And that triggers a discnumber error for both of them, while the tagging is rigorous.

I honestly find weird that this situation triggers a wrong warning when everything is correct.

Just a "warning" ? No I am joking, that does not stop me from listening to the music.

But I am not going to rename all those occurrences; I have a lot of them.

BTW mergeFolderAlbums is false

Thx !

Recreating a *RecentAdded List in MinimServer

Sat, 10 May 2025 10:06:22 +0000

Is it possible to recreate the list of recently added albums in MinimServer (*RecentAdded tag)? Due to various reasons, my current list of recently added content is either incomplete or contains too much.

As an alternative, I’m considering populating a custom tag like AddedDate, using the file creation date via a script or tool. Has anyone tried this, or are there better approaches for achieving a reliable "recently added" list?

Tag View

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:17:45 +0000

Simon, sorry for starting another thread, but I have one more question.

When browsing trough artists (BubbleUPNP), when you browse an artist there's usually a tag view - but that doesn't happen when an artist only has one album, and therefore all tag values are the same.

I would like to always see tag values, and all tags, is this possible? My indextags list is a little large

Artist Bios

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:37:01 +0000

Is it possible to add text with Artist Bios? I'm using Bubble UPNP as the control app. Thanks!

Display "Comments" metadata in JPlay (Control Point)

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 12:36:31 +0000

Hi,

First : thank you so much for your great work and please forgive my ignorance.

I would like if possible to display the "Comment" (or "Comments" ?) metadata in the control point I'm using, which is JPlay. I'm a bit puzzled, though.
I've tried a couple of things like adding "Comment" (or "Comments") in the indexTags or itemTags of MinimServer properties but nothing different seems to happen in Jplay. No doubt I'm missing something here.

What should I do to display the "Comment" metadata in JPlay, according to you ?

Many thanks !

MinimServer,Metadatics, Synology NAS-Tags scattered response

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:06:30 +0000

Im sure it's my lack of understanding but when I use Mosaic or Audrivana with my Rossini and the above set up.(DCS Rossini,Synology NAS,MinimServer,Moasic,Audrivana) I have way too many albums categories. Example I would like all my Beatles albums listed together under them as artists. However I get several separate groups I have to track down to see all my Beatles albums. I stored every album file under "The Beatles then the album name in the Nas. I still get a category second category of " Beatles,The"? and others ,so the albums remain scattered in different areas???? I have to search multiple places to find all of them.This is true for multiple artists.I also have tracks from one album being shown individually not as a album? All I am trying to do is name and artist and have all their albums shown for that artist, then I will browse the albums? Why can't I get this set up? What Am I doing wrong?

Additional tags

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 09:33:33 +0000

I would like to add tags for Producer, recording Engineer and Recording venue where possible. What is the best way to do this? David

Printing alternatives on tagFormat

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:24:05 +0000

I hope this heading makes sense - I am not good perhaps at describing what I want - simply:
I normally use Lumin, although sometimes the Linn control apps.

On my streamer playlists and on the listing on the streamer, I like to see other information besides just the Title and artist. To that end I have evolved this:
Title.displayFormat={$title^$date^ ~ ^$comment^~ ^$composer^ [^]}

In my comment field I put things like HD for High definition.

This works fine so that, as an example I get:

Across the Universe ~ 1968 HD [John Lennon ~ Paul McCartney]

I like to keep my FLAC files reasonably up to date in metadata with Composer information &c. I use Tag Editor on my Mac.

Now I am wondering if it is possible to put some sort of if-then statement and print something other than the contents of the field.
For example, I would like to put in my Titel.displayFormat expression something like

If comment="HD" then print "*", and for the icing on the cake: If comment is not equal to "HD" then print "" (nothing).

In other words, if I have HD in the comments field I get this
Across the Universe ~ 1968 * [John Lennon ~ Paul McCartney]
If I have nothing or something else in the comments field I get
Across the Universe ~ 1968 [John Lennon ~ Paul McCartney]

Sorry if I am not making sense. I could have written what I want in BASIC 40 years ago, but done nothing since!

Any thoughts?? Yes I know it is not a life or death issue, but would be fun.

donuk, sunny downtown York