I accidently hit 'refresh' in the artist information window and changed the artist to the wrong artist. The right artist isn't in whatever database it is trawling so I don't know how to make Kodi display the original artist tag.
Anyone know how to do this?
Thanks
To solve this I changed the artist tag of all the source files in question, rescanned them, changed them back to the original, then rescanned them again. A little inconvenient, but I suppose not too bad.
In general, Kodi attempts to lookup an artist name in the online Musicbrainz database. If it is successful, it obtains a unique code number known as Musicbrainz ID for the artist and stores it in the Kodi local database for further use. Users can control the process by using 3rd party programs to obtain the correct ID data and store it in the music file's metadata tags. When users do this, it eliminates the possibility of Kodi matching the wrong artist.
If you choose not add the ID tag into your files, it can be a bit trying to remove a bad association from the Kodi music database.
From a design perspective, I suppose there are trade-offs between making the process as automated as possible (with some resulting mis-matches) or making it more user-guided by generating many "Are you sure?" popups which would slow things down and could annoy users.
In your specific case if you do not add the Musicbrainz ID in your files it probably would be easiest to temporarily move all music files with the mis-matched artist out of the Kodi music source folder tree and re-scan, so Kodi can drop that artist. Do note that to Kodi "artist" is a person/group involved in any role so in cleaning up your tags you can't just consider the song artist tag, but also album artist, ensemble/band, composer etc.
scott s.
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Thanks scot967, now I know how Kodi does this I can remove those tags when necessary. On another occasion I had wondered why some operas I had scanned using MusicBrainz were refusing to display properly and now I know. Kodi was prioritising the unique ID tags.