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Not a dev, but I don't see this ticket going very far. What you are asking for is a feature change. Before you offer a design solution, I think there needs to be a better statement of what the requirement is. Personally, I don't think adding more tags that only Picard knows about is that good of a design, but again, first I would want to know what the actual requirements are.
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gibxxi
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Since Picard is the tagging software promoted by MusicBrainz themselves for use with their own database, if Kodi is to feature MusicBrainz support, it needs to also support the tags that Picard will add/modify. Otherwise, why add that support to begin with?
There's also a knock-on effect I've witnessed that now "Download Additional Information during scans & Updates" is sending the wrong MBIDs to fanart.tv which not only lengthens the scanning process considerably, but is also going to cause a lot more unwanted traffic for Fanart.tv because Kodi will re-attempt the request on each artist/album multiple times and fail because the wrong info is being sent.
So yes, I think this needs fixing.
If people don't want to use Picard, or MusicBrainz information in general, then Kodi needs to have the ability to ignore/disable support for MusicBrainz tags. Otherwise this issue, and others like it are going to keep cropping up.
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MBID is just a way of assigning a unique identifier to an artist or release. That avoids having to do searches using text strings. Has nothing to do IMHO with any other tags Musicbrainz may have invented.
I don't think Kodi is trying to implement the Musicbrainz database. It seems the real issue is defining how song artist (and maybe album artist) is displayed, vs how artist information is stored.
From what I've seen trying to interpret this thread and others, is that what needs to be determined is if a song is credited to something like "artist1 & artist2", must Kodi display the artist as "artist1 & artist2" or is "artist1" / "artist2" OK (where the string space-slash-space is the user defined artist separator for multi-artists). Should information be stored only for artist1 and separately artist2, or in addition a third entity "artist1 & artist2"?
If the album artist is credited as "artist1 & artist2" and a song from that album is credited to "artist1" does that make the album a collection?
ISTM these questions need to be resolved before looking at design solutions.
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For me, this is very clearly a bug - and quite a severe one. Kodi displays "Artist 1 & Artist 2 / Artist 1 & Artist 2" when download MBID information is disabled. If this is not a bug, what else is?
I fully agree though that we should discuss what a solution should be. I believe there are two different ways to go:
1) Deactivate reading MBID tags (or allow an option to do so). These are non-standard ID3v2 tags anyways, so this could be done. I wouldn't be too happy as I am a heavy MBZ user, but at least this would solve the above mentioned bug
2) Implement support for "artists" tag (with an S). This would also fix the bug. Given the MBID follows exactly the same logic as the "artists" tag, this would be quite logical as well.
(2) may be more development work, so potentially only a mid-term suitable solution. Short-term, (1) may be easy to get done to fix a rather big bug.
What do you guys think?
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I agree, either Kodi uses MusicBrainz tags or none. It cannot use only MusicBrainz ID's and not the other tags that are dependend on them.
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In my point of view, the current display mode of Kodi using "Artist 1 & Artist 2 / Artist 1 & Artist 2" is not correct. The correct way should be "Artist 1 & Artist 2". At this moment former way "Artist 1 & Artist 2 / Artist 1 & Artist 2" is implemented in the music database: I thing that the bug is somewhere in the Kodi music scraper proces.
As a bad side effect like using the Artist Slide show addon, this piece of brilliant software retrieves also the value of "Artist 1 & Artist 2 / Artist 1 & Artist 2" or is the bug is fixed probably the value "Artist 1 & Artist 2". So I suggest there must be implmentation of a display value for the skin-proces like value "Artist 1 & Artist 2" but also some variables that the addons can use in case of multiple artist values. The standard enumeration/dimension can be used by the addons. So in this example the fanart of both "Artist 1" and "Artist 2" can be shown.
And at least, because MB uses multiple values for the artist tag, the search engine of Kodi should find the song if you search on Artist 1 or Artist 2.
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gibxxi
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Another thing is, a lot of people who post on this forum (or who have posted in the past) about issues with library scanning / scraping in XBMC/Kodi are invariably pointed towards processing their music with MusicBrainz Picard. This has been offered as a solution by Devs, and users alike. Now your average Joe, isn't going to know / realise / care that MusicBrainz Picard adds non-standard tag info to his music. All he's concerned with, is the fact his music library isn't compatible with Kodi as it stands, and that the prevailing view of some is that tagging with MusicBrainz Picard (and/or) one of the derivative tagging applications that contain support for the MusicBrainz database will get him to his happy place.
He will spend large amounts of time processing his music collection manually with Picard, because that was the advice offered, and with the knowledge that Kodi now supports MusicBrainz in some form or other, will assume that once he has done so all will be right with the world. And he will be wrong.
You could blame the user for not reading the documentation about what support (in terms of MusicBrainz) exists in Kodi, you could blame the Devs for not integrating the full capabilities of MusicBrainz, neither will affect the end result.
The fact is that a limited subset of MusicBrainz features can and will lead to mass-confusion and an increase in threads like this one. I wouldn't stop with MusicBrainz either. There is a Discogs scanner. I don't know how well it works with the Discogs database because I don't tag my music against the Discogs site, but I would argue that out of the tagging database services available for free on the net, these two are the biggest, most popular (format-independant) standards in their own right. By the Dev's own admission, the Music library side of XBMC/Kodi isn't as fully featured as what exists for videos, and maybe complete MusicBrainz/Discogs support would go some way to addressing this.
However, as I mentioned above, if it's going to be done, IMHO, it needs to be done completely, or not at all. I now have 30,000 tracks that while completely correct as far as MusicBrainz is concerned, generate problems in Kodi I can't fix unless I revert manually every single one of those files. That and fresh library scans can take anywhere up to 12 hours. In lieu of a solution, I can put up with the issues, can you?
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So I was experimenting with how things are working in 14.2. To keep it simple at first, I looked only at the case where album artist = "various artists" so I didn't have to de-conflict the song artist and the album artist. It appears to me this is what Kodi should do:
Basic requirement is we want Kodi to display the song artist as an artist credit which may have various qualifiers, aliases, etc. And we ant Kodi to maintain a list of artists so that is is possible to do database operations without having to deal with qualifiers, aliases, etc.
Here is a detailed requirement I came up with:
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Kodi shall read the artist tag of each song.
Kodi shall construct an ordered list of all song artists by applying first the tag format specification for multiple entries in a tag field, and second by applying the system separator (default is space-slash-space). The result is one or more "song artists" as a string with unicode encoding.
Kodi shall store each "song artist" from the list of "song artists" to the database linked to "song".
Kodi shall read the MB Artist ID tag (if it exists) of each song.
Kodi shall construct an ordered list of all MB Artist IDs by applying first the tag format specification for multiple entries in a tag field, and second by applying the system separator. The result is zero or more "song artist MBIDs" as a string using MBID format validation. Invalid MBID shall be treated as null and act as placeholder. If the number of MB Artist IDs < the number of song artists, the missing MB Artist IDs shall be treated as null. If the number of MB Artist IDs > the number of song artists, Kodi shall test the "override tags" setting. If FALSE, Kodi shall discard all MB Artist IDs in excess of the number of song artists. If TRUE, Kodi shall use add the first song artist to the end of the ordered list of song artists so that the number of song artists is >= the number of MB Artist IDs.
Kodi shall match each song artist with MB Artist Id in order.
For each song artist Kodi shall call the current scraper using MB Artist ID if it exists, or song artist as string if MB Artist ID is null. Scraper shall treat "song artist" as a single artist.
Kodi shall test the "override tags" setting. If TRUE, Kodi shall replace the song artist with the MB database "artist". If FALSE, Kodi shall retain the song artist as "artist". Kodi shall use the combination of "artist" and "MB Artist ID" to determine a unique identifier and store the artist in the artist table as artist if new.
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This I think will get what you want without the need for new tags in music files. Adding in album artists will add some complexity, but I think it could be managed.
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I believe above could solve the issue, but is a fairly complex solution. Let me start with a description and then share a potential solution:
ISSUE
In MBZ/Picard, the "artist" tag is NOT the equivalent of the "MB Artist Id". Actually, the "artists" tag is equivalent to "MB Artist ID". Let me explain this with a simple example taken from MBZ:
Artist: Bob Dylan & The Band
Artists: Bob Dylan / The Band
MB Artist ID: 72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8 / 8c90ad8c-9150-4c51-a1eb-342232e99d06
You can see above that the "artist" tag does not include a system separator. Artists are only separated with "/" or ";" in the "artists tag" and the "MB artist ID tag".
SOLUTION
When scanning into the library, I would suggest the following behavior
1) Just ignore the "MB artist ID". It does not add any value and even leads the massive bug described above. With this simple change, the bug would be immediately fixed. Same for the other "MB IDs". Why scan them anyways?
2) In addition, it would be good to include support for "artists" (with and S) tags. The artists tag includes a system separator (";", "/") and does not include information such as "feat." or "&". So, this could be used to creating the ordered list for the artist view in Kodi, while the displayed artist would still need to come from the "artist" tag.
The first part of solution should be very straight forward and hope it can be implemented fast. The second one will require some work and there is a ticket to make this happen already.
Any thoughts or contacts to developers to take this on?
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2015-03-22, 23:24
(This post was last modified: 2015-03-22, 23:40 by scott967.)
[quote='steve1977' pid='1961837' dateline='1426988630']
I believe above could solve the issue, but is a fairly complex solution. Let me start with a description and then share a potential solution:
ISSUE
In MBZ/Picard, the "artist" tag is NOT the equivalent of the "MB Artist Id". Actually, the "artists" tag is equivalent to "MB Artist ID". Let me explain this with a simple example taken from MBZ:
Artist: Bob Dylan & The Band
Artists: Bob Dylan / The Band
MB Artist ID: 72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8 / 8c90ad8c-9150-4c51-a1eb-342232e99d06
You can see above that the "artist" tag does not include a system separator. Artists are only separated with "/" or ";" in the "artists tag" and the "MB artist ID tag".
]/quote]
Yes. Musicbrainz defines what they call "artist credit". I can see some value if you want to make a query of the form "show me all songs on which artist1 is featured". But other than that, the Picard "artists" tag is redundant with the MB Artist ID tag. Since by definition the MBID is a unique identifier for an artist, they have to be the same. The difference being the possibility of "aliases" but it seems to me that the "override tag" setting handles that -- unselected you get aliases, selected you get the MB standardized name.
Further, I see no reason why a system separator can't be used in the existing artist tag. So if the artist is Simon & Garfunkel it's treated as a single artist and there should be a single MB Artist ID and in MyMusicSongs it shows as Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water. If instead the artist is Simon / Garfunkel there should be 2 MB Artist IDs (with possibility of null entry) and in MyMusicSongs it shows as Simon / Garfunkel -- Bridge Over Troubled Water. In the case that only the single MB Artist ID is provided (for Simon & Garfunkel), MyMusicSongs still shows the same thing. But what you get in MyMusicNav for artist differs depending on the "override tag" switch. With override off, you get 2 artists, Simon and Garfunkel. With override on you get 2 artists, Simon & Garfunkel (based on single MBID) and Garfunkel (with no MBID). That can be considered "wrong" but it's due to user's bad tagging, not Kodi. Note that even in this case, MyMusicSongs still shows Simon / Garfunkel (override tag should not affect "song artist" in the Kodi database).
This way there is no need for new tags that are only directly supported in Picard.
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Thanks for your message. Let me share with you my two concerns on above:
1) "Artists" and "MB artist ID" being redundant - this is factually correct. However, there are two issues with this implementation. First of all, a duplication occurs, which is clearly a "bug", when "override setting" is disabled. Also, the "artists" tag allows Kodi to work "offline" without scraping additional meta data. This is very convenient and I prefer to have all info in my tags.
2) System separator in "artist" tag - I know this is a rather fundamental debate, but my main concern is itunes compatibility (and also basically any other commercial UPNP client or other media player). They all only pull from the "artist" tag and it would be weird to have "Simon / Garfunkel" instead of "Simon & Garfunkel". So, I would very much prefer to have the proper artist name ("Simon & Garfunkel") being displayed. While I methodology-wise agree on system separators in artist tag, I don't think it is feasible as no commercial player supports it - particularly not ITunes.
I am starting to think whether it would all be easier if I just live with the bug and change to "override". In this case, all would work, but I would need to live with the need to download additional info from the net during library scan?
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gibxxi
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2015-03-23, 04:53
(This post was last modified: 2015-03-23, 05:02 by gibxxi.)
The only problem with the override setting is it's global for ALL aspects of the music library. I have seen and personally scraped albums with exactly the same name but were released in different years, and were different volumes of a series, but no info differentiating them exists in the tags / album names as specified on MB. I can see this leading to different albums like this being clustered into the same entry. I've also seen separation bugs (i.e: one album, but multiple entries in the library) when all the relevant tags aside from track number, and track name match. This may be down to peculiarities in the tagging process and/or MBIDs, but the end result is still a mess.
Rather than having a global override option as it currently exists, I think a better solution is to be able to have an option/switch where Kodi simply ignore the MBID fields like it does for those MB tags that it currently doesn't recognize anyway (there are many) as was suggested above. This could/would also then have to automatically disable the facility to download extra information during updates, as this functionality relies on the information returned by the MBID scanned into the library as it stands.
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gibxxi
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2015-03-23, 05:02
(This post was last modified: 2015-03-23, 10:13 by gibxxi.)
Currently, in order to reduce the insane scanning times, wiping the database and setting Kodi up to use the AudioDB scrapers is the only option (aside from local nfo's). Those scrapers do not pull any info from MB, but a lot of releases are nearly identical on AudioDB to MusicBrainz, so if you have a library processed against either, you should be in better shape than a disorganized library at least.
I'm trying this now on a friends system I'm building/administering, so don't know what the resulting artist list will look like. If the increase in scanning speed over the Universal scrapers is anything to go by, this may be the most effective temporary work-around for those with a MB-processed collection.
EDIT: Well no improvement on the duplicated artist entries, but library scan duration is 1/10th the duration than with the Universal scrapers (with additional info turned on). So not a complete success as hoped.
