[evilhamster]

It's really not recommended to change the artist/albumartist tags while keeping the musicbrainz id. But what would happen in this case:
If you don't have prefere online info and don't have fetch additional information enabled, you should get the following:
In the artist view:
Favorite artist
Favorite artist

(Same name, but different mbrainz id)

If you have prefer online info and fetch additional information, you would have the following in the artist view:
Wyclef Jean
Cyndi Lauper

When a new artist with a new musicbrainzid is encountered, it will be added to the kodi database with the alias as the name. When finding a more songs by that musicbrainzid, those will be linked to that artist (since from the tags we can't know which name is the real name).

So for example, first we add the song (with prefer online information disabled)
Artist = Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo
Artists=Wyclef Jean / Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo
Title = Slumdog Millionaire
MusicBrainz Artist Id=4f29ecd7-21a5-4c03-b9ba-d0cfe9488f8c / 7bd9e20e-74b9-446a-a2ed-a223f82a36e7

We then have the following information in Kodi:
Wyclef Jean
Song: Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo - Slumdog Millionaire
Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo
Song: Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo - Slumdog Millionaire

We then add one more song,
Artist = Cyndi Lauper
Artists= Cyndi Lauper
Title = Girls Just Want to Have Fun
MusicBrainz Artist Id= 7bd9e20e-74b9-446a-a2ed-a223f82a36e7

The our library would look like this:
Wyclef Jean
Song: Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo - Slumdog Millionaire
Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo
Song: Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo - Slumdog Millionaire
Song: Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun

If you enable prefer online information and refresh the artists (or kept it enabled during scanning and enabled fetch additional information), it will look like this:
Wyclef Jean
Song: Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo - Slumdog Millionaire
Cyndi Lauper
Song: Wyclef Jean feat. Cyndi Lauper aka Luscious Loo Loo - Slumdog Millionaire
Song: Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun

I hope it makes sense

[steve1977]

Thanks evilhamster, this description is very clear.

So, the artist view / library in Kodi is built around MBZID if present and artist as a fallback option (if no MBZID present). For my use case to work, the first fallback would need to "artists" and only the second fallback would need to be "artist". Or not to use MBZID in the first case and build the library around "artists" (fallback "artist"). What is the advantage of using MBZID?

I see two complications around using MBZIDs for Kodi:

1) Manual edits to the tags not possible. For example, I have the "Buddha Bar" collection, but it annoys me that they are not grouped under one albumartist. Instead, they are under "Various Artists", "David Visan", "Ravin" and others (http://musicbrainz.org/search?query=budd...od=indexed). I actually had tried to harmonize them on MBZ, but the majority of developers believe that it is actually correct for them to have different albumartist depending on the edition. So, I went ahead and manually changed the albumartist for "Buddha Bar". The issue is that the MBZID still links to all the various different albumartists, in which case I will have duplicates with the new / current implementation. This is just one example and I can think of many examples where I (and many others) group series under one albumartist name.

2) MBZIDs can be wrong (more often than actual artist names). There are often two artists with the same name (identical). Typically, one famous one and someone who has the same name, but is unknown and just shows up on a random sampler as feat artists. Unfortunately, when people add tracks to MBZ, it is not uncommon that they link a song of the popular artist to the unknown one. Both have the same artist name, so the "artist(s") tag is ok, but the MBZID shows two artists. If Kodi build on MBZIDs, it will show two separate artists. Admittingly, this is actually great assuming that the MBZID os correct, but more often it is not, which leads to a mess.


What is the big advantage of having the music library backbone built around MBZIDs? Would it not be much "cleaner" just to use "artists" tag (and if not present "artist" tag)? What do you think?

[zag]

What is the big advantage of having the music library backbone built around MBZIDs?

Metadata retrieval mainly (the majority of lookups on TheAudioDB use the MBID now), having a unique ID gives all kinds of possibilities.

[steve1977]

Thanks. This would not require the whole structure to be applied this way, does it? I see the benefit of having MBIDs and prefer not to discard them. Question is why it needs to be the "backbone" of the music library structure. Wouldn't it be better to have it the same way as with movies and tvshows. The "structure" is around the name, but the MBID is saved (same as genre, etc.) for look-up at theaudiodb or others.

More pragmatically speaking. Right now, Kodi takes the MBID as identifier and associates the first name to it. Would it be better the other way around? Just use tha artist name (from artists tag) and then associate the first MBID with it? This way, we have the best of both worlds and don't rely that much on MBZ (similar to IMDB).

[zag]

Movies uses the IMDB/TMDB ID as the "backbone", TVshows uses TVDB ID.

You always need a unique ID really for the whole process to work, that was the idea of MB support.

[steve1977]

I can have two different movies with different names and the same IMDB (e.g., Apocalypse Now Redux and Apocalypse Now have different names in my NFO file, but the same IMDB number). The issue is that I cannot have two artists with the same MBID as the second one takes the name of the first.

I really don't like my current work-around of deleting the MBIDs (for the reason that it makes look-ups more difficult), but I really struggle with having 5 different (random) albumartists for the Buddha Bar series. And that's unfortunately just one example of many.

[zag]

Yes there are a few inconsistencies as you mention but that's basically how MusicBrainz organizes stuff so we have to abide by their way as there is no other alternatives right now.

I've also asked in the MB IRC channel many times about these logic errors (in my opinion). Don't even get me onto their Genre support

I think the solution in those cases is always going to be removing the MBID or using a custom nfo file.

EDIT: Saying that... doesnt MusicBrainz support a "Series tag"?

http://musicbrainz.org/series/4b5f2897-9...20e27143e7

[steve1977]

I am actually not complaining about MBZ. They put strong emphasis on rules rather on judgement, but that may be the easier way as otherwise you can never get everyone happy. You and I may agree on the "Buddha Bar" logic, but ultimately there will always be this 1%, which likes it this way and "rules-wise" the 1% is right. So rather than applying judgement, the MBZ folks remain strict on the rules to be the referee. Nothing wrong with that and obviously it is always easy for me to make the manual changes.

The issue actually now comes with Kodi. if I want to have artists support (with an "s"), I have to add MBID. If I remove the MBID, "artists" is not supported. That's why I am asking whether there is a way that I "artists" could be the "key". What do you think?

[steve1977]

One thought. I could keep the artist-MBID and only remove the albumartist-MBID. In this case, I should still have the benefit of getting rid of the "feat" in my artist list and don't have duplicates. Would this work-around work? How are artist and albumartist linked in the "backbone"?

[Gitrian]

2) MBZIDs can be wrong (more often than actual artist names). There are often two artists with the same name (identical). Typically, one famous one and someone who has the same name, but is unknown and just shows up on a random sampler as feat artists. Unfortunately, when people add tracks to MBZ, it is not uncommon that they link a song of the popular artist to the unknown one. Both have the same artist name, so the "artist(s") tag is ok, but the MBZID shows two artists. If Kodi build on MBZIDs, it will show two separate artists. Admittingly, this is actually great assuming that the MBZID os correct, but more often it is not, which leads to a mess.

If you find any song linked to a wrong artist in MB the correct way is to change it to the right artist on the MusicBrainz site. This would also help all other users of MusicBrainz

[evilhamster]

Thanks evilhamster, this description is very clear.

So, the artist view / library in Kodi is built around MBZID if present and artist as a fallback option (if no MBZID present). For my use case to work, the first fallback would need to "artists" and only the second fallback would need to be "artist". Or not to use MBZID in the first case and build the library around "artists" (fallback "artist"). What is the advantage of using MBZID?

-cut-

What is the big advantage of having the music library backbone built around MBZIDs? Would it not be much "cleaner" just to use "artists" tag (and if not present "artist" tag)? What do you think?

The benefit I see of using musicbrainz id,
* As Zag pointed out, to make scrapers more precise
* To be able to separate between two artists using the same name
* To be able to sort the variant names used by a performer under the same name in Kodi.

1) Manual edits to the tags not possible. For example, I have the "Buddha Bar" collection, but it annoys me that they are not grouped under one albumartist. Instead, they are under "Various Artists", "David Visan", "Ravin" and others (http://musicbrainz.org/search?query=budd...od=indexed). I actually had tried to harmonize them on MBZ, but the majority of developers believe that it is actually correct for them to have different albumartist depending on the edition. So, I went ahead and manually changed the albumartist for "Buddha Bar". The issue is that the MBZID still links to all the various different albumartists, in which case I will have duplicates with the new / current implementation. This is just one example and I can think of many examples where I (and many others) group series under one albumartist name.

EDIT: Saying that... doesnt MusicBrainz support a "Series tag"?

http://musicbrainz.org/series/4b5f2897-9...20e27143e7

It sure does and I found a ticket include that information in the tags (http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/PICARD-711), if that ever gets implemented we should be able to add support for it in Kodi!

if it doesn't get included in picard, maybe we could update the scrapers to pull in that information?

[zag]

It sure does and I found a ticket include that information in the tags (http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/PICARD-711), if that ever gets implemented we should be able to add support for it in Kodi!

if it doesn't get included in picard, maybe we could update the scrapers to pull in that information?

I'll bump the topic with the Pircard and Music Brainz developers. Anyone can actually speak to them in IRC on freenode #musicbrainz-devel, they are usually pretty cool

Including the series on TheAudioDB is a great idea, I'll look into it as its probably already available on the MB api so I can should be able to just import it.

[steve1977]

Thanks guys. I understand your logic. Having support for series tag in Picard and Kodi would indeed be great.

Any thoughts how artist and albumartist are related in Kodi? Would my approach to delete "albumartist MBID", but keep "artist MBID" give me the best of both worlds? While this lead to duplicates (MBID for artist A and same artist A as albumartist but without an MBID)?

[jjd-uk]

If any of you guys want a challenge then get this into shape to be mainlined as I don't think Montellese has the time to work on it https://github.com/Montellese/xbmc/pull/48 I think it's mostly in a complete state but would need rebasing and runtime tested then adjusted for any bugs found. Note - I'm not a Team Dev so don't know exactly what's required, however as a music user it's something I'm keen to see get in.

[steve1977]

@jjd-uk, this would indeed b e great if someone can pick this up. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to code.

Any hope in seeing evilhamster's PR in the main soon? Or another test built based on the latest nightly? Unfortunately, current test built is based on one of the very rare versions that has been using videodatabase V95 (while alpha2 is on V94 and latest nightlies on V96). Will help me for using mysql.

Different thought - any idea how / whether Kodi could read / sync itunes playlists?