List of available music metadata fields, migrating from Apple Music/iTunes

[JANONYMOUS]

Hi,

I was wondering if there's a list with all the available metadata fields for Jellyfin Music.

The following is what I'm essentially using in Apple Music:

• Album
  
• Album Artist
  
• Artist
  
• Comments
  
• Composer
  
• Disc Number
  
• Genre
  
• Grouping
  
• Track Number
  
• Year
  

Which of these fields will be adopted by Jellyfin after all?

As far as I can tell, Album, Album Artist, Artist, Disc Number, Genre, Track Number, and Year seem to be there.

Now I don't care about ratings or stats, including plays and skips, but I heavily rely on Comments, Composer, and Grouping.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find those fields or possible equivalents in Jellyfin.

Am I missing something, or do these fields not exist in Jellyfin?  If so, will more metadata fields be made available in the future, and will they take over the respective values from Apple Music?

Thanks for your insights!

[TheDreadPirate]

If you "edit metadata" for a song/album/artist, everything there is what Jellyfin will use. Lyrics is the exception. That won't be shown in that UI.

[JANONYMOUS]

Thanks for the clarification.

Are there any plans for adding more options in the future? I would really like to migrate, however, it's currently too limited for my needs.

[TheDreadPirate]

Not that I'm aware of. If you are very music focused, check out Navidrome. It is also FOSS, self-hosted, but very much music focused.

https://www.navidrome.org/

[JANONYMOUS]

Thanks for the recommendation, I already have actually. The reason I chose Jellyfin over Navidrome is that I'd like to keep all media under one roof.

Would it be possible to continue managing these files through iTunes and simply point Jellyfin to this folder for playback? I've been archiving music since the 90s and everything is in perfect order. So unlike most users, I don't do this for scraping functionality or convenience. What would happen if I disabled all of these additional features and used Jellyfin exclusively for streaming purposes? Will the software be able to properly handle the existing structure and leave the metadata alone?

[TheDreadPirate]

Even if Jellyfin scrapes data from online data bases, Jellyfin doesn't modify your music files. Any metadata it pulls from Musicbrainz is saved into Jellyfin's DB. Also, Jellyfin will scrape online DBs only if the music's embedded tags aren't populated.

You can use iTunes to manage your files, if you want. But doing so won't "trick" Jellyfin into displaying your music in a different way.

[JANONYMOUS]

That's good to hear, again. I guess I needed to hear it twice. It's just me being old school. So in theory I could just do that and point Jellyfin to my Apple Music folder and have both applications share the same source without having to worry that Jellyfin could mess up files and metadata, right?

I also noticed that even the scraping part can be deactivated, on an album basis at least ("Lock this item to prevent future changes"). And I could uncheck the scraping options in the library settings as well.

So I just tried with a couple albums and it seems to work basically but I believe I might miss out on some features if I don't follow the Jellyfin structure.

For example, iTunes handles files like this:

Artist > Album >

Single disc:
01 Track Name.aif

Multiple discs:
1-03 Track Name.aif
2-06 Track Name.aif

Jellyfin apparently requires an extra disc folder, etc. So I'm wondering whether or not that might cause any issues.

Do you have any experience with that?

Other than that I think I might just take that route. Keeping iTunes running will come in handy for use with iPhones and iPods as well.

Thanks much again!

[TheDreadPirate]

I believe Jellyfin needs the separate folders OR a metadata tag for disc number. I checked through my library and I have a few albums with both discs in the same album folder but Jellyfin still distinguishes each disc since the files are tagged with a disc number.

[JANONYMOUS]

Perfect! That's how I've been experiencing it so far. Since they're all tagged properly that shouldn't be an issue.

One last question I totally forgot to ask: How does Jellyfin handle compilation albums (as in various artists)? I haven't been able to find anything useful. Will it also honor the compilation tag coming from iTunes? I can't really test this since Jellyfin has been spinning ever since yesterday trying to scan the Apple Music folder. And I suspect compilation albums could be an issue or at least causing this to take forever.

Thanks for your efforts.

[TheDreadPirate]

I don't believe Jellyfin uses the compilation tag.  Jellyfin will list the compilation album in the "Albums" tag.  When you select an artist that is on that compilation album, it will list that album as one of theirs.