Missing compilation albums in XBMC 13
#1
I've upgraded to XBMC 13. I have rescanned my music collection using the nfo scraper for album information and the universal artist scraper for artist information. All of my compilation albums (flac) include these tags:

ENSEMBLE=Various Artists
ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists
ALBUM ARTIST=Various Artists
COMPILATION_ARTIST=Various Artists

I probably don't need all 4 of them any more but they've all been included for various reasons over the years. Until XBMC 13, I could get to my compilation albums by scrolling down the artists to "Various Artists". They're not there any more. I can get to them if I go to the top of the artists screen, click on the two dots and then select "Compilations" where they appear as normal. Is there any way to get them back among the artists? Is "Various Artists" a special term that I should avoid in my tags, ie would XBMC's behaviour change if I coded "Various" instead of "Various Artists"? It's not a massive pain for me to do that.
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#2
In Frodo "Various Artists" is a special term--not sure what version you were using where it wasn't. Changing to something else will have the effect you are after.

B.
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#3
Thanks Brian, I suspected as much. "Various Artists" worked the way I wanted in XBMC 12, but I would see "Various Artists" with a capital "A" (what I put there) in the artist menu and "Various artists" with a lowercase "a" in other places (what XBMC or the scraper put there). Nothing I did could change that. So now the case sensitivity has gone.

I will change them to "Various".

Cheers
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#4
I've added a compilation album with these tags set:

ENSEMBLE=Various
ALBUMARTIST=Various
ALBUM ARTIST=Various
COMPILATION_ARTIST=Various

It doesn't appear amongst the artists that start with "V". I still have to go to the artists menu, click the 2 dots at the top and then select "Compilations". Is there any way to get my compilation albums to appear somewhere on the Artists menu?
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#5
Is "Include artists who appear only on compilations" on? see Settings/Music (wiki)
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#6
This works for me;

ALBUM= A Tribute to Doc Pomus
ENSEMBLE= 'no tag'
ALBUM ARTIST= Various - Doc Pomus Tribute
ARTIST= Various - Doc Pomus Tribute
COMPILATION_ARTIST= 'no tag'

I try to leave the artist name in the filename, or put it in the comment field, just to make it easier if I ever want to revert later.

This is with "Include artists who appear only on compilations" turned off.
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#7
I think if ARTIST=ALBUM ARTIST then by definition it is not a compilation.

scott s.
.
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#8
Without looking at the source code this is just a guess but it looks like if you have one or more tracks where the artist equals the album artist, the album will appear in the artists menu. Otherwise it will only appear under Compilations. I have an Adam Beyer album in my collection with only 2 tracks by Adam Beyer, but it still appears under Adam Beyer in the artists menu.

I'd love it if we could return to the old behaviour of compilation albums appearing where we want them, eg I'd like to be able to have the Ahk-Toong Bay-Bi U2 tribute album appear amongst my U2 albums instead of only in the hidden away compilations section.

Do we have any devs here? Is this the right place to ask? (I am fairly new here.)
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#9
I'm not one of the dev's and I'm no expert on this part of XBMC, but there is an explanation at Adding_music_to_the_library (wiki) however I'm not sure if that's totally current as work was done on how the music database works for Gotham.

(2014-05-28, 13:18)sysprog Wrote: Without looking at the source code this is just a guess but it looks like if you have one or more tracks where the artist equals the album artist, the album will appear in the artists menu. Otherwise it will only appear under Compilations.
As I said before, if an artist only appears within a compilation album which xbmc has identified and listed under the Compilations node, then you need to make sure ""Include artists who appear only on compilations" is enabled, unless this has somehow become broken within Gotham.
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#10
^with simply checking "include artists", you get a separate entry in the artist menu for each individual compilation artist. This is not the result the OP wanted, which was for one entry in the artist list to appear as "Various Artists" where all those compilation albums would then be found.

I think tagging workarounds are the only way to get that result (Artist = Album Artist='Various Artist'), in which case its important to understand the behavior/logic as explained.
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#11
That's right whitebelly, I had that option checked previously. It caused a massive number of one track artists to appear in the artists menu. Thanks for the suggestion jjd-uk, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to do what I want.

I've just noticed that all of my Triple J albums (Triple J is an Australian radio station) still appear where I want them under Triple J in the artists menu. None of the tracks have artist = Triple J but they still appear exactly where I want them. It looks like "Various" and "Various Artists" (anything starting with "Various"?) get shunted off to the hidden Compilations section. My Ahk-Toong Bay-Bi U2 tribute album comment earlier was a red herring. On closer inspection I found that album had "Various Artists" in its tags too. I had meant to change them to U2 but I never got around to it.

I'll see what happens if change the album artist tags to "Compilation Albums".
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#12
I use different Various Artist/Album Artist field entries, sometimes to group albums, "VA-Kids" is one of them. So I think VA will work for you as well. I'll try to check tonight to see if they are still all the same as before, I haven't really paid attention.
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#13
Changing the tags to "Compilation Albums" caused an entry called "Compilation Albums" to appear in the artists menu. I'd rather have those albums under "Various Artists" but I can live with "Compilation Albums". Your stuff under "VA-Kids" is probably where you expect it to be.
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#14
I just tried this with a couple of tracks, set:

Artist = Various Artists

Then make sure any other Artist fields are blank including Album Artist.
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#15
Certainly that would organise them under "Various Artists" jjd-uk, but then I wouldn't be able to see the name of the actual artist. My Triple J compilations still appear under "Triple J" and my Ministry Of Sound compilations still appear under "Ministry Of Sound". The artist names are still correct for those albums. My problem seems to be limited to tracks where the album artist is "Various" or "Various Artists".
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