Kodi Community Forum

hi
there should be an option to merge the records which were released as individual artist with the band's releases (there are tons of records where the artist's name is the same as the music group's name and i don't see the point of getting separate folders)

although there is for instance the seventh star black sabbath album where toni iommi gets his own folder. on musicbrainz it says Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi but it's still a black sabbath record. imo. should be merged by choice.

i don't want to sound rude, if so, i'm honestly sorry for it. plus if there is already an option for the above problem and i didn't find it, accept my apologies twice.

(ah yes and i own all the records i grabbed in digital form for preserving the original copies obviously for home use only. i don't know if it's needed to say)

It sounds like you only want Album Artists displayed in which case disable “Show song and album artists” see https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Media/Mu...um_artists

Let's have a nice new thread for your question/request @rigo , it has nothing to do with providing a guide to using Kodi to help others.

Quote:there should be an option to merge the records which were released as individual artist with the band's releases (there are tons of records where the artist's name is the same as the music group's name and i don't see the point of getting separate folders)

I think jjd misunderstood you. What you want is the option for the albums by say Roger Waters, who was once a member of Pink Floyd, to be included with the albums by Pink Floyd, something that automatically groups former band members with the band, or the odd solo album back with the band. Is that correct?

Requesting new features is absolutely fine, they could be inspired ideas, but with such a small dev team and so much work to do all users need to know that getting what they want is unlikely. I have no plans to add such a feature in the forseeable future and I am currently the only dev taking an interest in the music library, of course someone else could come along to do some work and I would not object!

Having said that if you are desperate not to have band members that have albums of their own separate in the library, then change the album artist tag to be the band. However it will make the scraper unable to identify the album correctly and fetch art and additional info, and you will have to remove all Musicbrainz ID tags (if you have them) otherwise inconsistent album artist and Musicbrainz IDs will make a mess of the library. It is not a course of action that I recommend, but you are a grown up so deserve to be informed and make your own choice.

thanks for the quick reply
actually no, in this case i'm talking about the artists who've published records as solo artists and as a band as well. like alice cooper or joan jett as mentioned. where the band name is the same as the artists name.
on musicbrainz:
Alice Cooper (the musician Vincent Damon Furnier)
and
Alice Cooper (the group)
such as
Joan Jett
and
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
this is the reason the albums are getting separate folders.
i'm ripping a LOT of cds right now (some are really worn out and scratchy ) and will come back with some more precise results of my findings, maybe it's not a big deal after all.
(is'nt the Album Artist thing i'm looking for? i'll give a try with alice shortly)
thanks again!

OK, the examples help, and I was close but not quite right, anyway the answer is the same I'm afraid.

If Muscbrainz gives an artist a separate entry, the Kodi will also see that as a separate artist. Remember name is not unique, so although Alice Cooper the individual is also in Alice Cooper tha band they are separate artists, and there could be another Alice Cooper that is nothing to do with either.

a little update, or suggestion if you will, there was earlier (not sure if it still works like that) that you could put a txt file with the imdb link in the directory of the movie and that was the very first the scraper checked.
perhaps you could do something similar with the scraper.
almost everything works fine now meaning that i do understand why some of the albums are scraped into separate folders. there is one thing here: i get the info from musicbrains with the direct MBID number of the record Led Zeppelin I still the scraper scrapes something called "They play led zeppelin" a tribute band and i just can't find a way to change it. this was when i came up with the idea that if i'd put a txt file with the link in it that could solve such.

also check the bands where there are 1 or 2 records with "featuring XY" and the album in question goes to a separate directory. for instanceKansasor Black Sabbatheven if i fill "album artist" and "artist" tag with only the band's name.

thanks so much for your support!

The symptoms you mention sound tagging related.
 

Quote:i get the info from musicbrains with the direct MBID number of the record Led Zeppelin I still the scraper scrapes something called "They play led zeppelin" a tribute band and i just can't find a way to change it.

Are you using Picard to tag your files? This adds a number of Musicbrainz ID tags that identify album (release), artists(s) and album artists(s). The Universal Artist scraper uses Musicbrainz Artist ID when it is given it, otherwise it attempts to lookup the Musicbrainz entry using name alone (far less accurate) before using that ID to serach the other resources.

Kodi expects all the Musicbrainz ID tags to be present (that is what Picard supplies), not just some of them.
 

Quote:also check the bands where there are 1 or 2 records with "featuring XY" and the album in question goes to a separate directory

Just given the name "X featuring Y" Kodi does not know by default that X and Y are separate artists and " featuring " a separator. You could tell it that " featuring " is always a separator by adding artist separators to the advancedsettings.xml and it will find X and Y. Another perhaps easier approach is to add an ARTISTS (note the "s") tag, ARTISTS = "X / Y" that uses the standard separator space-slash-space to give both song artists. Or alternatively, and best of all for accurate artist scraping, you could tag using Picard, that would accurately add the Musicbrainz IDs for artists X and Y, and ARTISTS tag.

I think you need to look at a how to tag your music guide, start here maybe  https://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging#MusicBrainz

This comes up all the time in East Asian pop music where groups / sub-groups / solo by group member is common (made worse by typical "record" having 4-10 different "releases" though often the difference is in packaging).  If you really want to capture this I suspect using the "artists" tag (along with MBID for each artist in the artists tag) is the least-cost method (but still means a lot of hand-editing).

Another possibility is the MB disambiguation comment for an artist which often is used to indicate group membership for individual artists.  I don't know how to use that in Kodi though.

scott s.
.

I do not know if it helps you, but I'll try to describe here something I created for private use.

Since I have several "loose" songs from various artists, I kind of created a fake compilation.

The idea was to join musics of the same type (for example songs of brazilian bands). I did not use MusicBrainz Piccard, I just put simple tags:

Title: (name of the track)
Artist: (Name of the song artist)
Album:Clube Urbano: Artistas do Brasil (fake album)
Album Artist: Clue Urbano (fake artist)
I did not use track number, and the year I put the year of EVERY MUSIC.

That way, I have an "artist" (fake) on my list of artists called "Clube Urbano". I put a fanart, thumb artist and logo customized in the artist's folder. And enter the artist node "Clube Urbano", I have the (false) album called "Clube Urbano: Artistas do Brasil". I also put a custom cdart and cover in the album folder.

I also put covers in the songs tag, being the REAL cover of the album of the artist, in this way, instead of showing the cover "fake" of the album, shows the real cover, not losing the identity.

The result was this:

Artist List:


Album List (inside the artist node)


Music List (Inside album node):
Music List

Music Fullscreen:
Music Fullscreen

If I disable the option "Show song and album artists" I do not have that many artists of 2 or 3 musics only, and I do not group ALL the albums of compilations in the item "various artists". I myself do not use the "Various Artists" option because it groups different types of albums of different genres, and using as I described, I create fake artists, such as the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, instead of using the tag "Various Artist "in albumartists, I use" Mortal Kombat ", thus creating an artist called " Mortal Kombat" in the list of artists, and when I enter the node, I have an album called "Mortal Kombat: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" with thumb, logo and nfo custom.

I have this result:
Mortal Kombat Artist

So, I think if the idea is to join a solo artist with their original band, just leave the artist tag for "artist name", and the albumartist tag for "band name". Eg: Bruce Dickinson in the album Balls to Picasso:

Track: "Number of the Track"
Title: "Track Title"
Artist: Bruce Dickinson
Album: Balls to Picasso
Album Artist: Iron Maiden
Year, Genre, Composer and bla bla bla: The same as the album Balls to Picasso.

In this way Bruce Dickinson will appear on the Iron Maiden node, and deactivating the "Show song and album artists" option, it will not appear in the artists list.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to make sure it was clear what I did, showing that this "workaround" really works.

Cheers