[DaveBlake]

Is there a way in the Kodi music library to include associations between artists so that I see them when making selections what to play? For example on my shelves I put my Rodger Walters and David Gilmour CDs next to the Pink Floyd ones because that is how I think of them, never going to look under "R" or "D" for them in a long alphabetic list.

All I can think of is to create a "Pink Floyd Artists" playlist, which seems a bit clunky if connecting only pairs of albums.

It is harder than I thought to match digital music library organisation to the intuitive (only partly alphbetic) physical shelf approach I am familiar with. What have other people done?

[PH-SYM]

I am not entirely sure I understand what you want but I'll give it a try.

If you want "David Gilmour" to appear under "Pink Floyd" in the library, you can just set the "ALBUM ARTIST" tags to "Pink Floyd" and the "ARTIST" tags to "David Gilmour". Kodi will show the albums as if they are Pink Floyd's, but when playing it will show the real artist (David Gilmour).
Alternatively, if you set the "ALBUM ARTIST" to "David Gilmour" and use two ARTIST tags, one set to "David Gilmour" and one set to "Pink Floyd", David Gilmour will have his own entry in the library but the album or songs will also show up under Pink Floyd.

In short:
Any artist entry in the library will show any song that has an "ARTIST" tag set to its name. If a song contains multiple ARTIST tags, it will show up in the library under all those names as long as the artist is already shown in the library.

[DaveBlake]

Thanks! I had not thought about using tags to achieve this, but that will get me what I wanted. My one Roger Hodgeson album need no longer be lost in the Rs but can join those of Supertramp!

Next issue is how to separate all the classical composers from the pop/rock artists. Beethoven next to Berlin just does not work for me. Separate profile for when I want to explore my classical music collection? Smart playlists that include/exclude the "classical" tag. Genre alone is not quite enough - want to split my library to more categories than either classical or pop, and that still leaves a mixed artist list. Suggestions?

[PH-SYM]

Classical music is a bit tricky.
If you are like me, you'll probably want classical music sorted by composer and popular music sorted by performer. For popular music I often don't even know who the composer is of a certain song and for classical music it seems weird to browse through a list of directors or orchestra's to find a certain work.

Since Kodi doesn't know "composer" tags, I use the "Album Artist" tag for composer since that is my primary reference. I use multiple "Artist" tags, one for composer, one for director maybe some for the primary performers. That way, I might be able to use the search function to find any of them. I do have the composers in the same library as the popular artist but you might try to seperate them using smart playlists. Having the types of music in separate paths/sources makes that much easier.

In short:
Popular music: ALBUM ARTIST = Performer (artist or group/band), ARTIST = Performer | co-artists
Classical music: ALBUM ARTIST = Composer, ARTIST = Composer | Director | Orchestra | singer(s)

Since classical albums (CD's) are usually constituted of a major work and a few "fillers", you could decide not to store them as albums but seperate them by work. That is a major task though.

[DaveBlake]

Yes classical music by composer, popular music by peformer.. your suggestions for using ALBUMARTIST sound good PH-SYM as long as I have sight of the full Kodi UI (TV on).

Unfortunately I come unstuck when using a remote or web interface which just give a list of artists (not genre filtered) and have all the composers and performers mixed together. At the moment I am just not scanning my classical stuff into the music library but accessing it as files. Not ideal, but still cogitating...

What is also tricky is film music/soundtracks where you may want to select by movie or show, or by composer. Then again some are a various artists collection. Not sure what to do for the best there.

My modest collection of classical guitar music also caught me out. Am I most interested in guitarist or the composer? The popular guitarists like John Williams fit into my popular music library as performers, but then again Rodrigo's Concerto (I have several verisons) needs to be under composer. As albums under the "Classical guitar" genre all is well, but don't really want guitarist or composer cluttering up my artists list. This isn't easy is it!