[justinhow]

If I list Artists and then select one to see the Albums they have released, it will show me all their albums + any Compilation albums that they have a track on.

Should it do this and is there anyway to stop this behaviour?

I am using Kodi 15.2 on Windows and have the option "include artists who only appear in compilations" turned off.

I do use the "Album Artist" ID3 tag religiously (using tag scanner) and have it set to "Various Artists" for all compilations.

[PH-SYM]

That's normal behaviour. You can hide artists that appear ONLY on compilation albums but for "album artists" in your library, all tracks are shown including those on compilations or any guest performances on albums by other album artists.

[justinhow]

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

It's a shame there is no way to change this behaviour.

Sonos and Plex list Albums without listing compilations, but I guess there is no right and wrong way - I just know which I prefer.

[DaveBlake]

You can possibly get what you want using custom nodes or smart playlists.

Normal behavior the the default nodes genre > artist > album > songs is to show:
the artists with songs of that genre,
>>the albums by that artist with songs of that genre
>>>the songs of that genre on the album by that artist

Plus you have a (IMO poorly named) setting "include artists who only appear in compilations" that when disabled only shows album artists rather than artists from albums and songs.

Hence, as you have found, under an artist you will get those albums that contains a track that they feature on.

There are pros and cons with this approach. It does find all the songs by an artist, but sometimes you don't want that. Also sometimes having found an album that they play on a track I actually would like to hear all the album not just that track.

But back to that custom node...
Test out using rules to get what you want in smart playlists, same rules can be used in nodes http://kodi.wiki/view/Music_nodes and have its own place on the menu.

What rules. Well have you tagged all the tracks from a compilation album as compilation? I think you can filter that out.

Otherwise it is an interesting question if Kodi could offer both kinds of UI, nodes that work as currently but also those that only give albums where the artist is the album artist. The latter is actually a simpler query.

[justinhow]

Thanks for the reply DaveBlake,
If I read it enough times I might fully understand it ;-)
I will feedback if I manage to sort something out with the Smartlists