File Tagging Standards

Artist

Album Artist (ALBUMARTIST)

This field is used to store the name of the artist for the release. It works as a grouping so if there are tracks on teh release with differening artists, such as a various artists compilation, it groups the release under a single artist name. It also allows releases by an artist where they may have used a different artist name to be grouped together.

An exmaple of this is a release by Wings will have an ALBUMARTIST value of Paul McCartney.

Unless it is clearly stated in band media (such as on album covers) a band that has and 'and' it's name is represented with an ampersand (&). Examples are Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers or Paul McCartney & Wings.

Artist

Genre (GENRE)

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Release

Album Title (ALBUM)

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For multiple disc releases that are a boxed set of separate albums the title becomes a little more complicated. Each induvidual album needs to have it's own title added. For example, the first disc in The Beatles Stereo Box Set is the album Please Please Me. The ALBUM tag is The Beatles Stereo Box Set [Boxed Set] 01 Please Please Me (1963). This includes the name of the full release plus a number (to sequence), the title of the induvidual album, and a date of original release in brackets. If the release is all new material the year is not required. Where there is a multiple disc release within the release, for example the double album The Beatles, the title would only include numbering for a single album. For example, The Beatles Stereo Box Set [Boxed Set] 10 The Beatles (1968).

Release

Subtitle (SUBTITLE)

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Release

Release Date (RELEASE DATE)

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Release

Release Year (DATE)

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Release

Label (PUBLISHER)

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Track

Artist (ARTIST)

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Unless it is clearly stated in band media (such as on album covers) and band that has and 'and' it's name is represented with an ampersand (&). For example, Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers or Paul McCartney & Wings. The exception to this is when two or more artists collaborate, and it itsn't an official band name. The full word 'and' is used in this situation. For example, John Lennon and Elton John or George Harrison and Ravi Shankar. Occasioanlly an artist is joined by another, rather than a collaboration. In this situation the word 'with' is used. For example, George Harrison with The Remo Four or Polly Pleasence with Ringo Starr.

Track

Track Title (TITLE)

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Track

Original Year (ORIGYEAR)

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Track

Composer(s) (COMPOSER)

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Mutiple composers are separated by a ; . This is a tagging standard that allows software to read names induvidually when listing Composers. Names are added as FirstName Surname. If the composer has a nick name the composer is added as FirstName 'NickName' Surname. Examples of this are John 'Ozzy' Osbourne and Ian 'Lemmy' Kilmister. If the composer has a stage name that they are only known by the composer is added as StageName (FirstName Surname). Examples of this are King Diamond (Kim Bendix Petersen) or Slash (Saul Hudson).

Folders

Folder naming uses the format of Artist / Release.

Where the name of an Artist is quite long (such as Paul McCartney & Wings it has been shortened to something like Paul McCartney. This has no purpose other that ensuring I do not cross the 255 character length of file names in Windows NTFS file system.

The Release names uses the format of <Date> <Artist> - <Release> <[Format]>. Date uses the <YYYY-MM-DD> format. And example is 2001-07-07 Paul McCartney - Wingspan [Compilation]. Althought the full album title is Wingspan (Hits & History) I have shortened it to the critical information only, again to ensure I do not cross the 255 character length of file names in Windows NTFS file system.

If the release has a format that is noted in the file name tagging (such as Compilation or E.P.) it is included in the folder name.

For releases that have multiple discs the folder structure becomes a little more complicated. This is due to the way Jellyfin reads files. I don't particularly like the inconsistancy noted below, but this is the only way to read the files correctly into seperate releases. This workaround is related to the Subtitle section above.

For a standard two disc compilation such as The Beatles - Live At The BBC the folder stucture under the main folder must be numbered as Disc 01 and Disc 02. For example the complete path would be The Beatles / 1994-11-30 The Beatles - Live At The BBC / Disc 01. Without doing this the two discs are listed as two seperate albums in any Jellyfin player apps. This naming does not seem to have any affect on other players. Although Jellyfin documentation notes that the file tags are more important than the folder naming, in my experience this is totally untrue.

Where this becomes a little more complex is for multiple disc releases that are boxed sets of seperate albums. Using the method noted above, all discs are under a single release with a title matching the first disc in the box. For example, the first disc in The Beatles Stereo Box Set is the album Please Please Me. Because the ALBUM tag is The Beatles Stereo Box Set [Boxed Set] 01 Please Please Me (1963) this will now show as the title for the entire multi disc release. Until Jellyfin release support for the SUBTITLE tag the workaround is to NOT use the word 'Disc' for folder naming, but instead just put the number. This then forces Jellyfiln to add each disc as a seperate release of it's own. For example, The Beatles / 2009-09-09 The Beatles - Stereo Box Set [Boxed Set] / 01. This introduces another quirk, that sub-folders for multiple disc albums within the boxed set, for example the double album The Beatles, must be in a single folder with both disc numbers concatonated with hyphen (for example 10-11) and the discs within the folder reverting to the Disc 01, Disc 02 naming to ensure they are grouped together.

Music Files

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Image Files

All image files are in Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format.

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