Symfonium doesn't show the correct Album Artist

GeneralDuckling · April 24, 2026, 4:30pm

App version

Production

Issue description

I have 3 albums, each from a different movie. I used Musicbrainz Picard to tag them and manually set the Album Artist tag to “AVATAR”. After moving them to my phone and syncing the library there is no AVATAR entry in Album Artists, neither does it appear when searching for it. However in the home page and in the track info I can see the correct album artist name.

I am attaching some pictures below from Symfonium and Picard and one of the song files. I should note Navidrome and other music players, such as Namida Music Player, detect the files correctly.

I provided the log files, I am not sure what I can do to capture the issue, I did a search and went to the album artists page.

Device type

Phone

Media provider

Local device

Steps to reproduce

Go to Library → Album Artists
or go to Search and search for “AVATAR”

Screenshots

I searched existing issues first

on

I understand that logs are mandatory

on

Log upload name / description

WrongAlbumArtist

Tolriq · April 24, 2026, 4:43pm

You can not just change the album artist and not touch the mbids. They are both related.

GeneralDuckling · April 24, 2026, 5:04pm

Hello,

If by mbid you mean Musicbrainz id then no I didn’t change them. I deleted artist, recording and release artist id and now they are grouped into one!

I am curious though, why did those mbids affect symfonium but not other media managers/players?

Also I want to edit the biography of the album artist and found this, this will do what I want right? Artist information folder

If yes, what should I put for the artists folder title, the album title (AVATAR) or the artist (James Horner)?

Tolriq · April 24, 2026, 5:16pm

Because Symfonium is actually the only app to fully use properly all the tags as they are supposed to be used ?

And you put the name of the artist you want to see the bio of ?

GeneralDuckling · April 24, 2026, 6:14pm

The albums have various different artists which is why I don’t know which to choose. The album artist entry has a different biography than the artists. I set the nfo folder location to the folder I created. I followed the exact path shown in the documentation.

I created an nfo for AVATAR and for The Cranberries as a test. The biographies didn’t change. I uploaded a new log file called ArtistNFOTrouble where I did a sync and went to check the album artist biographies.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<artist>
	<name>AVATAR</name>
	<biography>Test</biography>
</artist>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<artist>
	<name>The Cranberries</name>
	<biography>Hello There</biography>
</artist>

Celorien · April 25, 2026, 6:02am

I spent a lot of time setting up the artist.nfo’s for my own library recently so I’ll try to help here…

The folder name doesn’t actually matter, only the content of the nfo is read. (After all, artist names may have special characters that you can’t put in the folder name.)

The content of these looks correct to me. Something easy to overlook: what is the filename for these nfo files? Did you name it “AVATAR.nfo” or did you leave it as “artist.nfo” ?

The filename must be “artist.nfo” or it will not be read. Again, the folder name can be anything–folder name is just so you can distinguish which “artist.nfo” is which. (And so they don’t overwrite each other )

In regards to artist.nfo files, you will need a separate file (in its own folder) for every artist you want to set information for. Album Artists are treated exactly the same as Performing Artists in this regard.

AFAIK you cannot have separate bio’s for “John Doe” the album artist vs “John Doe” the performing artist unless you jump through some hoops. (It would require separate MBIDs to distinguish the two as separate artists, which would complicate the Artist tags. I’ve not messed with that so can’t comment further.)

Edit for clarity: the ArtistInfo folder you select inside Symfonium should be the “outer” parent folder. That folder needs to contain multiple, separate folders for each artist you are adding an nfo for. (These folders can have any name.)

Inside every one of these folders must be a file specifically named artist.nfo Do not use the actual artist name in the filename.

The name field inside this file must exactly match the artist name used in your tags. The content you posted above seems correct in that regard.

GeneralDuckling · April 25, 2026, 5:55pm

Hello, thanks for taking interest in my issue

I have selected the correct folder which contains subfolders with the artist.nfo files. The filenames are correct.

Because the whole AVATAR album is custom and doesn’t have any MusicBrainz ids I would understand if it isn’t possible to manipulate the biography. However, seeing as The Cranberries’s biography wasn’t changed either I must be doing something wrong. Could it be that it is prioritizing online info over the .nfo? If so how could I change that?

Tolriq · April 25, 2026, 6:36pm

You can read the logs yourself you know

2026-04-24 21:07:35.520 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: 21 artists
2026-04-24 21:07:35.520 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Queen - 0383dadf-2a4e-4d10-a46a-e9e041da8eb3
2026-04-24 21:07:35.521 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Jeff Lynne’s ELO - 0c502791-4ee9-4c5f-9696-0602b721ff3b
2026-04-24 21:07:35.521 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Sean Kiner - 1aea19f9-59fd-42c2-8a35-e336a684b08a
2026-04-24 21:07:35.524 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found George Martin - 26fa8b67-6c7f-406c-ad64-a1d070092df2
2026-04-24 21:07:35.525 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Men at Work - 395cc503-63b5-4a0b-a20a-604e3fcacea2
2026-04-24 21:07:35.525 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Kevin Kiner - 5c2786b5-5a75-419f-b349-af9212a001bc
2026-04-24 21:07:35.525 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Dire Straits - 614e3804-7d34-41ba-857f-811bad7c2b7a
2026-04-24 21:07:35.525 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found His Orchestra - 61c81797-b7d3-4c01-b0d7-6b970dec450c
2026-04-24 21:07:35.525 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found AVATAR - c82beb12-579c-48e6-aa97-dd5b0f3a6078
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Miley Cyrus - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Simon Franglen - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Zoe Saldaña - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found James Horner - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Leona Lewis - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Nirvana - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.526 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Mark Knopfler - 
2026-04-24 21:07:35.527 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found The Beatles - b10bbbfc-cf9e-42e0-be17-e2c3e1d2600d
2026-04-24 21:07:35.527 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found Deana Kiner - c7aba07a-18a9-45ef-a13d-4b8196136e03
2026-04-24 21:07:35.527 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found The Weeknd - c8b03190-306c-4120-bb0b-6f2ebfc06ea9
2026-04-24 21:07:35.527 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found The Cranberries - c98d40fd-f6cf-4b26-883e-eaa515ee2851
2026-04-24 21:07:35.527 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: Not found ABBA - d87e52c5-bb8d-4da8-b941-9f4928627dc8
2026-04-24 21:07:35.527 Verbose ArtistScraper  NFO: End scraping (0)

Your artists have mbids so the nfo needs have the value too to work.

GeneralDuckling · April 25, 2026, 6:57pm

My bad, I honestly didn’t think of checking them myself. I added the mbid and it did change the biography for the cranberries. Now I got 2 questions:

If I ever want to, how can I go back to the default artist info before I added then nfo?
Since the AVATAR album artist consists of at least 2 different artists which mbid should I use?

Celorien · April 25, 2026, 9:08pm

Remove the nfo file and rescan your library?
The log above shows only a single MBID for AVATAR so probably use that one. If this name only appears in the AlbumArtist field, this should be using the “Release Artist” MBID.

You can absolutely make nfo’s for artists without an MBID, as long as the track metadata also does not have an MBID for that artist.

GeneralDuckling · April 26, 2026, 6:29am

Ok I now have a custom biography for AVATAR. I tried deleting the nfo for the cranberries and re-syncing but I still see the custom one. I tried clearing cache but it didn’t fix it. The log shows that there is no nfo for the cranberries which is right.

2026-04-26 09:24:16.922 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: 21 artists
2026-04-26 09:24:16.923 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Queen - 0383dadf-2a4e-4d10-a46a-e9e041da8eb3
2026-04-26 09:24:16.924 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Jeff Lynne’s ELO - 0c502791-4ee9-4c5f-9696-0602b721ff3b
2026-04-26 09:24:16.924 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Sean Kiner - 1aea19f9-59fd-42c2-8a35-e336a684b08a
2026-04-26 09:24:16.924 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found George Martin - 26fa8b67-6c7f-406c-ad64-a1d070092df2
2026-04-26 09:24:16.925 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Men at Work - 395cc503-63b5-4a0b-a20a-604e3fcacea2
2026-04-26 09:24:16.925 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Kevin Kiner - 5c2786b5-5a75-419f-b349-af9212a001bc
2026-04-26 09:24:16.925 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Dire Straits - 614e3804-7d34-41ba-857f-811bad7c2b7a
2026-04-26 09:24:16.925 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found His Orchestra - 61c81797-b7d3-4c01-b0d7-6b970dec450c
2026-04-26 09:24:16.925 Verbose/QueryBuilder: Query: UPDATE artists SET description = 'Test' WHERE artists.provider_id=1 AND artists.external_id='avatar/c82beb12-579c-48e6-aa97-dd5b0f3a6078' ('') [0 in 0.26ms (RAW/false)]
2026-04-26 09:24:16.926 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Simon Franglen - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.926 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Miley Cyrus - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.926 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Zoe Saldaña - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.926 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found James Horner - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.926 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Leona Lewis - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.926 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Nirvana - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.927 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Mark Knopfler - 
2026-04-26 09:24:16.927 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found The Beatles - b10bbbfc-cf9e-42e0-be17-e2c3e1d2600d
2026-04-26 09:24:16.927 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found Deana Kiner - c7aba07a-18a9-45ef-a13d-4b8196136e03
2026-04-26 09:24:16.927 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found The Weeknd - c8b03190-306c-4120-bb0b-6f2ebfc06ea9
2026-04-26 09:24:16.927 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found The Cranberries - c98d40fd-f6cf-4b26-883e-eaa515ee2851
2026-04-26 09:24:16.928 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: Not found ABBA - d87e52c5-bb8d-4da8-b941-9f4928627dc8
2026-04-26 09:24:16.928 Verbose/ArtistScraper: NFO: End scraping (1)

Celorien · April 26, 2026, 6:52am

Just tried it on mine and yeah, it stays. Odd.

Quick fix: in the Media Provider settings, enable the “Scrape additional artist metadata” option if it’s not already on. This will add a button to “Clear scraped data”. (You can then disable the toggle once you’ve clicked the Clear data button, if you weren’t using it before.)

DISCLAIMER: this will clear all scraped data! Both online and from nfo files. So the next sync may take a while since it has to scrape everything again.

GeneralDuckling · April 26, 2026, 7:09am

I encountered some kind of bug because the “Clear Scraped Data” button wasn’t working. Instead I deleted the media provider and re-added it. Everything works now. Thank you so much Celorien and Tolriq!!