[DaveBlake]

Also is it just me that gets wound up by the v16 onwards label1/label2 variation with sort method. e.g. sort songs by artist and year, and you don't see track number. I get that the thing you sort by should be displayed, but I would always like to see track number. Too much automation, not enough user choice!

this sounds like a skin issue, if I sort by artist and year, i still get track nr in My skin.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9bSf6...jJTaFFQczg

Yes it would be skin specific, good that Madnox shows track. But I do think that core Kodi should offer better label1 & label2 for those skins like Estuary and Confluence that use them.

But as you can see a (Double) Disc with Various Artist is a mess, Which makes total sense, because it sorts the songs by Artist

Ah yes, albums with songs of varied year or artist (e.g. Various Artist) won't look right with sort by artist and year. Noted, thanks for that.

So we really need a sort by album and track (inc disk) option for songs, or rather when sorting by "track" to implicitly sort by both disk and album. Then the question is what order are the albums? Again a choice e.g. by year, title or album artist or some combination...

To be able to sort songs by album properties means fetching those properties as part of the songview view, but that is doable. As I already know sorting needs reworking and extending, I'm just thinking loudly

It also seems that the facility to sort the items in the current playlist would be very useful, currently it is shuffle or not.

this makes the most sense to me, sorting your playlist like for example the song note, would give a lot of freedom to the user

Yeap, noted too. No idea when I am going to find the time, nor if it will get reviewed/approved by the team, but I will try.