[Timbergetter]

I use foobar 2000 and freedb.freedb.org for tagging mp3s. This seems to often dish out code (81) for Genre and places that in the TCON frame. I understand that Code (81) refers to the Folk-Rock genre which I normally agree with. It seems that Kodi interprets Code (81) as Folk/Rock and not Folk-Rock. This genre in my collection is therefore split between two classifications; Folk-Rock and Folk/Rock. I have been hand massaging all Code (81) entries to contain what I understand to be the compliant explicit standard Folk-Rock name, but this is a pain. Does Kodi need to change its lookup table so that Code (81) references Folk-Rock and not Folk/Rock?

[Razze]

The "problem" is located in taglib which kodi uses https://github.com/taglib/taglib/blob/a0...s.cpp#L116

So you might want to reach out to them and argue with them

[DaveBlake]

Genre is generally a loosely defined tag, something I use to help manage my music library mixed content, predefined genre would be useless for me.

Timbergetter some sql changes in your musicDB database could fix things for you, not sure what your "hand massaging" entails.

More generally it could be useful to either have a means of grouping genres or merging them as discussed in Merged Genres so Folk/Rock, Folk-Rock, Rock-Folk, Folky Rock etc. could all be the same genre.

I would also find a use for sub-genre e.g in my tagging songs with genre of "Classical" also has genres of "Symphony", "Violin Concerto", "Baroque" etc., and I really don't want to see "Symphony" etc. along with all my popular music genres.

Those few music users out there, what are you doing with genre?

[Timbergetter]

I’ve come to realize it is as you say Dave; Genre is loosely defined with entrenched and subtle differences out in the wild. I am now resigned to doing reconciliations of the ID3 tags using ID3-TagIT whenever these aberrations occur. I like your suggestion re means of grouping or merging genres. No doubt this feature could be added to Kodi but I suppose the coding time and overhead cannot be justified at this stage. On the other hand the current half-baked solution of auto-defined genres is hardly a solution at all.

[evilhamster]

If I remember correctly the defined genres are a legacy from id3v1 where you used an integer to define the genre. With id3v2 they wanted to be backwards compatible so they enabled the use of both integers and/or strings to define the genres. If you have music collection where both the numerical alternative and the strings alternative is used, you could end up in the type of problem you are describing.