[hurricane51]

This only recently popped up when I upgraded to 15.2. I always had "Include artists who only appear on compilations" disabled. It worked fine in all versions since Eden. Now it always includes the artists that only appear in compilations even with this unchecked. In addition, if I have an artist who also has non-compilation albums, it adds the compilation album to the artist album list.

I've tried deleting the compilation albums, cleaning the library, and updating the library, but if I add a compilation the problem comes back.

Did something change in 15.2 to cause this?

[DaveBlake]

Not quite sure what you are experiencing, perhaps it all depends on how your music files are tagged?

The "Include artists who only appear on compilations" setting is poorly named, internally it is implemented as an album artists only flag. When disabled you see only those artists that are in the TPE2 or ALBUMARTIST tags of your music files, when enabled you see the artists from the TPE1 or ARTIST tag of every song.

What Kodi considers a compilation album is also a little complex.

We have a compilation if
1. album name is non-empty AND
2a. no tracks overlap OR
2b. all tracks are marked as part of compilation (i.e. COMPILATION tag set) AND
3a. a unique primary artist is specified as "various" or "various artists" OR
3b. we have at least two primary artists and no album artist specified.

Albums that are accordingly flagged as compliations get listed under the Compilations node, but the compliation flag has no effect on what artists are listed.

But I don't think 15.2 has changed in this area (although there are some fixes in Jarvis), so I am surprised that you are seeing different behaviour. How are the tracks from your compilation albums tagged?

[hurricane51]

My compilation albums (I don't have many) are all tagged a bit differently. Some have artist names for individual tracks but the album artist is either blank or "Various". I never gave them the attention I did the single artist albums. Most are soundtracks. I don't have the Compilation flag set, but I can correct that easily. I'm a bit confused by your condition "a unique primary artist is specified as 'various' or 'various artists'". I'm not sure what "primary artist" means in this case?

Let's say I set the compilation tag on all tracks and set the album artist as Various. Should that do the trick?

(I just upgraded another system from 15.1 to 15.2 and experienced the same behavior.)

[hurricane51]

OK, there doesn't seem to be a Compilation tag for FLAC files. I replaced all the AlbumArtist tags in my compilations with "Various Artists". That solved the problem of the bloated Artists lists where everyone who had even one song in the library got a separate line.

The only problem I have now is that if I have an artist with one or more non-compilation albums, the compilation albums he or she appears on are now listed with the other albums. So only halfway fixed.

[DaveBlake]

In FLAC complilaion tag for tracks is "COMPILATION" set to 1 or 0.

"Unique primary artist" in that case is that all the tracks have a single consistent ARTIST tag value of "Various Artists" or "Various"

I replaced all the AlbumArtist tags in my compilations with "Various Artists". That solved the problem of the bloated Artists lists where everyone who had even one song in the library got a separate line.

Surely only those artists on the compilation album that Kodi was not seeing as a compilation were bloating things? Kodi must have been populating absent albumartists tags with artist values.

The only problem I have now is that if I have an artist with one or more non-compilation albums, the compilation albums he or she appears on are now listed with the other albums. So only halfway fixed.

Think that is standard behavior - find the tracks with that artist.