[steve1977]

Falco curated by Blank & Jones
https://musicbrainz.org/release/9530560d...050a228002

It separates it into "Falco curated by Blank" and "Jones".

That is the Kodi artist name parsing doing its best to find names to match the 2 artist mbid tags that Picard has provided. It tries but fails.

So either (preferable) add
ALBUMARTISTS = "Falco / Blank & Jones"

or assuming it is an mp4 file, and you fail to find a way to get Mp3tag or some other tag edito to add an albumartists tags in iTunes tag format change the
ALBUMARTIST = "Falco / Blank & Jones"

Now,this is really weird. I tried to add albumartists tag to this album. I tried two different taggers:

1) Jaikoz - Jaikoz adds a multi-value album_artists tag to the file. It includes "album_artists = Falco; Blank & Jones" (different from Picard, an "_" is included in the tag description). When rescanning in Kodi, artist shows as "Falco" (but "Blank & Jones" does not show up).

2) MP3Tag - there is no albumartists tag per se, but I tried to manually add one. This failed and it shows "Falco curated by Blank & Jones" as artist.

Any idea how I can manually get a working albumartists tag for an MP4 file?

[steve1977]

Just had an idea - if I include a NFO file, would Kodi read this first (before the tag) and could "fix" the issue I am facing with the specific album above?

[DaveBlake]

Just had an idea - if I include a NFO file, would Kodi read this first (before the tag) and could "fix" the issue I am facing with the specific album above?

No.

The library is populated from the tags, a mis-match (as Kodi sees it) between Musicbrainz artist IDs and names in tagging can not be fixed using NFO files.

Having failed to find a way to get Mp3tag or some other tag editor to add an albumartists tags in iTunes tag format simple change the ALBUMARTIST tag to use a standard separator (not comma or ampersand etc.)

[scott967]

MP3Tag worked for me, trying one m4a file. But I had a problem using <space><slash><space> as the separator, though I was doing some hex-edit and I could have made an error.

Anyway this is what worked for me:

Load file in MP3Tag

Set the ALBUM ARTIST tag using the credit string
In Extended tags:

Create a new Tag ALBUMARTISTS
Add the data in format artist1|artist2
Create a new tag MusicBrainz Album Artist Id (note capitialization and spacing)
Add the data in format AAMBID1|AAMBID2
Create a new tag MusicBrainz Album Id (again note cap/spacing)
Add the data in format AlbMBID

So in all 4 tags. Ensure after adding the tags in extended tags that MP3 does not create multiples of the tags (multiple tags normally happen only if you use the MP3Tag separator \\ but you can change that).

Note: in my MP3Tag I couldn't get it to capitalize the tags correctly, but that may be because I already have the tags available for APE and FLAC (use all caps for these). So I had to edit in a hex editor, but again that may be I don't work enough in MP3Tag. And using underscore instead of space is a No-Go.

Finally in my advancedsettings.xml I have

Code:

        <artistseparators>
            <separator>|</separator>
        </artistseparators>

After doing that I got the file scanned correctly.

scott s.
.

[steve1977]

Great, let me give it a try and also try "; " instead as a separator. Will report back on my success.

[DaveBlake]

Thanks for Mp3tag instructons Scott.

One thing is that example advanced settings change will make "|" the only artist separator (along with the default " / "). Having this section in advancesettings.xml replaces the default artist separator values, so all the artist separators you want to use must be included.

Hence I suggest this:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<musiclibrary>
...
    <artistseparators>
    <separator> feat. </separator>
    <separator> Feat. </separator>
    <separator> with </separator>
    <separator>;</separator>
    <separator> ft. </separator>
    <separator> Ft. </separator>
    <separator>|</separator>
    </artistseparators>
...
</musiclibrary>
...
</advancedsettings>

That is what I use personally, none of my artists have " with " in the name it is only a joining phrase. It is case sensitive too.

The default artist separators are ";", " feat. ", " ft. " , these are what are used if you do not have a <artistseparators> section in your advancedsettings.xml file.

[scott967]

Thanks for Mp3tag instructons Scott.

One thing is that example advanced settings change will make "|" the only artist separator (along with the default " / "). Having this section in advancesettings.xml replaces the default artist separator values, so all the artist separators you want to use must be included.

Hence I suggest this:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<musiclibrary>
...
    <artistseparators>
    <separator> feat. </separator>
    <separator> Feat. </separator>
    <separator> with </separator>
    <separator>;</separator>
    <separator> ft. </separator>
    <separator> Ft. </separator>
    <separator>|</separator>
    </artistseparators>
...
</musiclibrary>
...
</advancedsettings>

That is what I use personally, none of my artists have " with " in the name it is only a joining phrase. It is case sensitive too.

The default artist separators are ";", " feat. ", " ft. " , these are what are used if you do not have a <artistseparators> section in your advancedsettings.xml file.

When I first tried using " / " for some reason it wasn't picked up as a separator but I was at that point trying to see what was needed to get itunes tags to work so I just took the expedient of adding the single "|" separator to eliminate possible issues. Mainly what I learned was that unlike APE and FLAC tags where I use multiple of the same tag for example ALBUMARTISTS with one artist in each tag, the itunes tag only works when all artists are in a single tag requiring separators. MP3Tag seems to know to prepend the ----:com.apple.iTunes: stuff when writing the tag into the file.

Unfortunately there is nothing like a "PERFORMER" tag for itunes/m4a which reduces the utility.

scott s.
.

[HeresJohnny]

Kodi parses the ALBUMARTISTSORT (TSO2), ARTISTSORT (TSOP) and COMPOSERSORT (TSOC) tags to find sort names for the artists given in the tags. It is obviously possible to confuse this parsing, but it will handle the obvious.

Dang, another non-standard. According to this table the sort tag names for ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 used in foobar2000 are ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER, ALBUMSORTORDER, ARTISTSORTORDER and COMPOSERSORTORDER.

[scott967]

Kodi parses the ALBUMARTISTSORT (TSO2), ARTISTSORT (TSOP) and COMPOSERSORT (TSOC) tags to find sort names for the artists given in the tags. It is obviously possible to confuse this parsing, but it will handle the obvious.

Dang, another non-standard. According to this table the sort tag names for ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 used in foobar2000 are ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER, ALBUMSORTORDER, ARTISTSORTORDER and COMPOSERSORTORDER.   

as long as foobar writes eg TSOP into the ID3 tag for the artist sort name, what difference does it make what foobar chooses to call it?

However, the Kodi wiki tag table Music tagging (wiki) does need to be updated.  I believe Kodi is consistent with this: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Tag_Mapping 

scott s.
.

[HeresJohnny]

You're probably right, it doesn't make a difference for IDv3 tags. But it will probably make a difference for VORBIS and APE tags. I haven't looked into that enough, though.

[scott967]

You're probably right, it doesn't make a difference for IDv3 tags. But it will probably make a difference for VORBIS and APE tags. I haven't looked into that enough, though.

 I assume foobar has a way to see the exact tag being written into APE or FLAC/Vorbis, otherwise I would consider it fubar.

scott s.
.

[DaveBlake]

Dang, another non-standard. According to this table the sort tag names for ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 used in foobar2000 are ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER, ALBUMSORTORDER, ARTISTSORTORDER and COMPOSERSORTORDER. 

No standard breaking here as far as I can tell. As Scott says, it does not matter what any tagging software chooses to call a tag descriptively in its UI or documenetation, just what it actually places in the music file. Most have a descriptive field name they use for the tag, which then has variations for each tag format, I think what you list from Foobar are just that not the true tag applied. But to check why not tag a FLAC file, and then examinie it using other tagging software such as Mp3tag or Picard.

Also since foobar2000 only runs on Windows I don't see it as offering any kind of definitive standard!

Unfortunately, unlike ID3 tags, there is not official standard for Vorbis comment tags names. However there is a general consensus used by many media players and tagging software. What this says Picard Tag Mapping has a strong input to what happens in Kodi. From what I have been able to research ALBUMARTISTSORT is the generally used actual Vorbis comment for Album artist sort tag (that is TPE2 in mp3 files) etc. But come back with evidence if you can prove otherwise.

Yes the wiki will need updating for v18 once it is released, to do so during alpha when things are still in flux would just be confusing.