[black_eagle]

Ha, I've not even started on classical stuff, or indeed a large amount of compilation albums.

BUT.....results so far are very encouraging. For instance, for an ARTIST of "B.B.King", I get "Reflections", "The Best Of B.B.King" and "Riding With The King" listed. Riding is also listed under "Eric Clapton", which is exactly how I want the library to behave, rather than having an artist "B.B.King & Eric Clapton" for just that one album.

So yeah, improving my tagging in files has definitely improved my music library experience.

Does the 'compilations' node in Jarvis use a directory name to build the list from ?

I have re-tagged a couple of Now! albums (with picard) but these have now moved to a "Various Artists" directory from a "compilations" directory, (picard is set up to move files on saving) and now show in Jarvis under "Various Artists". Although I realise that that is technically correct, I would much rather list them under "Compilations", where I can keep them in a separate node and out of the artist view. It just seems to me more sensible that way, and a cleaner way to navigate.

Can I do this and do I do it through tags or something else ??

[DaveBlake]

...So yeah, improving my tagging in files has definitely improved my music library experience.

I wonder if we can have that on the Kodi banner? Motivate others to do the same.
Glad it is proving worthwhile for you.

Does the 'compilations' node in Jarvis use a directory name to build the list from ?

No. It uses a flag stored in the library album table. How that flag is determined is thus:

If all the songs have mbids and compilation = 1 tag then the album is stored as a compilation, it does not matter what the song or album artists are. Note that musicbrainz will flag anthologies (all the same artist) as compilations, or in other cases use an album artist that isn't "various artists".

Without mbid Kodi uses the following logic to determine if an album is a compilation.

1) album name is non-empty
AND
2a. the songs have different artists OR
2b. all tracks are marked as part of compilation
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.

It is worth noting that with these (historic) rules just because all the songs are tagged as compilation does not meant that the album is taken as a compilation. I think that is wrong, but it is how things currently stand.

But you could create a path rule based custom node for yourself if you really wanted. The problem is that it would not exclude those tracks from the default nodes. The above set of rules does.

I have re-tagged a couple of Now! albums (with picard) but these have now moved to a "Various Artists" directory from a "compilations" directory, (picard is set up to move files on saving) and now show in Jarvis under "Various Artists". Although I realise that that is technically correct, I would much rather list them under "Compilations", where I can keep them in a separate node and out of the artist view. It just seems to me more sensible that way, and a cleaner way to navigate.

Can I do this and do I do it through tags or something else ??

If your tagging results in album compilation flag being set then they will appear under Compilations node. If looking at artists node many people like the "various artists" entry as a way to get quickly to those mixes too, although there was a time it was excluded.

To be fair there is a certain amount of confusion in this area, what Kodi does, what people want, what is a compilation, where things get listed. Made worse by the naming of some settings.

When I started I didn't know any of this and added a "compilation" genre to my tagging. It does not keep them out of the other genre nodes, but gathered them together when I wanted. Not the best approach, but just an example of things you could do.

[black_eagle]

Right OK......

So, I have built Krypton from source an am running it in portable mode with an sqlite3 db for testing purposes, alongside my main Jarvis build.

With Krypton, the Compilations node is exactly as you describe, listing all the compilation albums & anthologies. Personally, I think an anthology should appear just under the relevant artist, but I'm happy that I can force that by changing the compilation flag in the tags.

Jarvis however, is only showing a handful of albums under the Compilations node and the vast majority of them are listed under Various Artists in the artist node. Now, I'm quite prepared to believe that this is because these albums were scanned in before I had finished correcting tags and that even though I have updated and cleaned the library since the tags were corrected, that this doesn't change any stored info for these albums.

So......(deep breath!) I'm going to drop the music database completely, and re-scan from scratch. I'm going to move those albums into a different path, clean the library & add the new path as a source. That way I can mess with the compilation stuff without having to re-scan everything.

[black_eagle]

Hmm, tried that and got several albums in the compilations node (which also list under Various Artists), but the vast majority still only appear under Various Artists in the artist view and not in the Compilations view.

Perhaps this is part of the pain involved in moving forwards and improving the music library ?

It probably doesn't really matter apart from WAF. Wife is so used to finding her collection of Now! CD's under Compilations but a few custom nodes will easily fix that until I finally upgrade to Krypton.

[DaveBlake]

Your feedback will help me with future improvements, but it is not easy as people want/expect different things.

In my view Various Artists and compilations are not synonymous - some compilations are anthologies e.g. songs by same artist(s) or have been given an albumartist name other than VA. I want to see VA and any other compilation album artists in the artist list. I also consider that tagging with "Various Artists" as the album artist is the same artist as Kodi automatically applying that album artist because the songs of that album have no artist tag common to all. But I also want to clarify when the album compilation flag gets set.

Hmm, tried that and got several albums in the compilations node (which also list under Various Artists), but the vast majority still only appear under Various Artists in the artist view and not in the Compilations view.

How are the songs of the albums that are appearing under Various Artists but not in the Compilations nodes tagged? Any common features? Do they have musicbrainz ids?

[black_eagle]

Your feedback will help me with future improvements, but it is not easy as people want/expect different things.

In my view Various Artists and compilations are not synonymous - some compilations are anthologies e.g. songs by same artist(s) or have been given an albumartist name other than VA. I want to see VA and any other compilation album artists in the artist list. I also consider that tagging with "Various Artists" as the album artist is the same artist as Kodi automatically applying that album artist because the songs of that album have no artist tag common to all. But I also want to clarify when the album compilation flag gets set.

Oh, I agree that artists with an anthology should appear in the artist list, I'm not so sure that an anthology should necessarily appear in the Compilations list, as even though I know it's technically correct, to my mind a "Compilation Album" is an album with VA. Probably this would involve quite a bit of code as MB will flag an anthology as a Compilation. Guess I could live with this.

How are the songs of the albums that are appearing under Various Artists but not in the Compilations nodes tagged? Any common features? Do they have musicbrainz ids?

Ah, well if I knew/understood the differences or common features in the tagging, it probably wouldn't be happening

I'm not at home right now but I'll update this post later with some examples for you.

[DaveBlake]

Oh, I agree that artists with an anthology should appear in the artist list, I'm not so sure that an anthology should necessarily appear in the Compilations list, as even though I know it's technically correct, to my mind a "Compilation Album" is an album with VA. Probably this would involve quite a bit of code as MB will flag an anthology as a Compilation. Guess I could live with this.

It is really easy to create a custom node that just shows albums with album artist = VA. A bit more complex if you are a multi-lingual household and have ended up with several VA in different langages (a weakness of the way VA currently implemented), but still very possible.

Some people have compilations albums with album artist set to say the publisher or collection name, odd but I have seen the data. We could implement a truely "show artists that are compilation album artists" setting (rename the current setting to album artist only). That would optionally remove VA and any other compilation only album artists from the artists node.

For me it is really useful to separate anthologies from the main release albums, but I can see why it could be nice to choose if Compilation node shows anthologies or not.

Code changes for this are not hard, it is getting consensus with others when there is so much confusion already over what Kodi does or should do that is difficult. We, I'm all for user configurable choice!

Meanwhile I am curious about those tags of yours. There is a prototype Kodi addon that exports the tags from a song to a text file if that would make it easier to communicate.

[black_eagle]

Thanks for sticking with this - Kodi runs in my living room for at least 9 hours each day, either playing music or streaming a local radio station, so the Music Library is somewhere we spend a lot of time.

watch gallery

In these screenshots you can see in the Compilation node that "Now 87" is shown, but that in the VA "Now 83, 84, 85, 86 87, 88 & 89" are listed.

There are also screenshots of the Now 87 & 88 album tags in picard.

I have also cobbled together some python that exports an albums track data to a text file.

Ex.

PHP Code:

Title:  Now That's What I Call Music! 87        Released 2014-04-07

    21/22. How Long Will I Love You

        musicbrainz_albumstatus: [u'official']
        releasecountry: [u'GB']
        date: [u'2014-04-07']
        performer: [u'Various Artists']
        musicbrainz_albumartistid: [u'89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377']
        tracknumber: [u'21/22']
        musicbrainz_albumid: [u'953b044f-0888-40f7-9c90-ee60fd554d60']
        album: [u"Now That's What I Call Music! 87"]
        asin: [u'B00IAR2CUG']
        musicbrainz_artistid: [u'33ca19f4-18c8-4411-98df-ac23890ce9f5']
        media: [u'CD']
        artistsort: [u'Goulding, Ellie']
        compilation: [u'1']
        barcode: [u'0888430412521']
        musicbrainz_albumtype: [u'album', u'compilation']
        genre: [u'Pop']
        isrc: [u'GBUM71304067']
        discnumber: [u'1/2']
        artist: [u'Ellie Goulding']
        title: [u'How Long Will I Love You']
        musicbrainz_trackid: [u'5010a57f-f407-46ea-b170-aa2bfed7e4a1']
        organization: [u'NOW'] 


The tags for Now 87 & Now 88 can be downloaded from https://www.dropbox.com/s/79rxynztf4lz3i...7.txt?dl=0 and https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqbi8ip8ynqnps...8.txt?dl=0

[DaveBlake]

Black_eagle I'm a big music user too, so let's see what we can do to improve our enjoyment of Kodi

But sorry I don't know what to suggest regarding the Now XX albums not showing in the Compilations node. I couldn't see anything odd in the tags, so I made a fake version of Now 88 (small music files and forced Picard to tag them as that album). It appears in my Compilations node. Now I only did CD1 so far, maybe it is a track in CD2 that is the issue? I will dig a bit more, see if I can repeat your experience.

Another possibility is caching is catching us out, it has happened to me before. Jarvis caches more data than before, but I am not entirely sure where it puts it. Update Library used to clean cache, or try filling it by looking at songs node and then go back to Compliations node. Do these missing albums appear?

If feeling up to it you could try the following query

Code:

SELECT idAlbum, strAlbum, strMusicBrainzAlbumID, strArtists FROM albumview  
WHERE (albumview.bCompilation = 1) AND (albumview.strReleaseType = 'album')

And finally, well let me have your MyMusic56.db again and I will have a poke at the data.

[black_eagle]

Well, the reason that they don't appear in the Compilations node is bCompilation isn't getting set for some reason.

PHP Code:

mysql> SELECT idAlbum, strAlbum, strMusicBrainzAlbumID, strArtists, bCompilation
 FROM albumview WHERE (albumview.strAlbum="Now That's What I Call Music! 86") AND (albumview.strReleaseType = 'album');
+---------+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
| idAlbum | strAlbum                         | strMusicBrainzAlbumID                | strArtists      | bCompilation |
+---------+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
|    3004 | Now That's What I Call Music! 86 | cd396567-a512-414e-bf00-0320f1d774b0 | Various Artists |            0 |
+---------+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
1 row in set (0.11 sec)

mysql> SELECT idAlbum, strAlbum, strMusicBrainzAlbumID, strArtists, bCompilation
 FROM albumview WHERE (albumview.strAlbum="Now That's What I Call Music! 87") AND (albumview.strReleaseType = 'album');
+---------+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
| idAlbum | strAlbum                         | strMusicBrainzAlbumID                | strArtists      | bCompilation |
+---------+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
|    3005 | Now That's What I Call Music! 87 | 953b044f-0888-40f7-9c90-ee60fd554d60 | Various Artists |            1 |
+---------+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------+
1 row in set (0.11 sec)

mysql> 


So I got brave and ran the following !!

PHP Code:

mysql> UPDATE album SET bCompilation =1 WHERE strAlbum LIKE 'Now%' AND bCompilation =0;
Query OK, 77 rows affected (0.08 sec)
Rows matched: 77  Changed: 77  Warnings: 0 


The only incorrect album altered by that was Now Voyager by Barry Gibb but I've corrected that one also.

Quite why Jarvis hasn't set that flag I have no idea, because I've checked those albums in picard, and they all definitely show the compilation tag set. Isengard was OK, as is Krypton.

However, I STILL have an issue with Jarvis returning Adam Ant as an artist when said artist is not actually Adam Ant. For instance, running this query

PHP Code:

mysql> SELECT idArtist, strArtist FROM artistview WHERE artistview.strArtist = 'Adam Ant'; 


returns "3025 rows in set (0.11 sec)". There is no Adam Ant album in the db, so I'm really clueless as to where he comes from. Running a query against idArtist of 2847 (the first idArtist with Adam Ant) returns me an idSong of 49121 and an associated strArtist of 'Liam O'Flynn' in the song_artist table.

49121 is a track called 'Go On Through' and is from an 'Afro Celt Sound System' album. strArtists = 'Afro Celt Sound System feat. Liam O'Flynn & Pina Kollars'. I'm getting good at digging around in these tables now

Could this be anything to do with the encoding ? The album in question here (Capture 1995-2010) is encoded as m4a. If I can sort this AA issue, I'll be one happy bunny, especially as my kids were asking me last night "Who's that man daddy, and why does he appear so often?"

Cheers for any insights you may have.

[DaveBlake]

Compilations

So you have used brute force (SQL) to get those albums as compilations, good for you!

Quite why Jarvis hasn't set that flag I have no idea, because I've checked those albums in picard, and they all definitely show the compilation flag set. Isengard was OK, as is Krypton.

Just a Jarvis issue, that really is bonkers. Unfortunately although music files have a compilation tag Kodi does not store that raw data with the songs, just a derived flag for albums, so no easy way to see if a single track is causing the issue. I will do some more testing because I just want to know what is going on.

Finding Adam Ant
There were a lot of him in your data when I looked. I would not want to have to explain that period of music to the kids
You have cleaned and started again since you first posted, and he is still there?

Could this be anything to do with the encoding ? The album in question here (Capture 1995-2010) is encoded as m4a.

Not sure but I will check that out, the TagLib DLL could be doing something different. Are the Now 88 etc. m4a files too?

Then again when I see "Afro Celt Sound System feat. Liam O'Flynn & Pina Kollars" I suspect that Picard has kindly given you 2 or 3 album artist mbids, one ALBUMARTIST/TPE2 tag and no matching ALBUMARTISTS (note the s) tags. Not sure why Adam Ant gets in there but do check the tag count match for my peace of mind. What is talked about here http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2276212 getting Picard to tag with ALBUMARTISTS could help you.

You are exporting tags well, so show me the tags for songs from that album please.

Meanwhile now you are good at digging have a go with this

Code:

SELECT song.idsong, song.strTitle, album.strAlbum, song.strArtists,
song_artist.strArtist, artist.strArtist, artist.strMusicBrainzArtistID
FROM song JOIN album ON song.idAlbum = album.idAlbum JOIN song_artist on song_artist.idSong = song.idSong
JOIN artist on song_artist.idArtist = artist.idArtist
WHERE song_artist.strArtist <> artist.strArtist OR artist.strArtist  = 'Adam Ant'
order by song.idAlbum, artist.strArtist

and this

Code:

SELECT album.idAlbum, album.strAlbum, album.strArtists,
artist.strArtist, artist.strMusicBrainzArtistID
FROM album JOIN album_artist ON album_artist.idAlbum = album.idAlbum
JOIN artist on album_artist.idArtist = artist.idArtist
WHERE album_artist.strArtist <> artist.strArtist  OR artist.strArtist  = 'Adam Ant'
order by album.idAlbum, artist.strArtist

Is it just Adam Ant that is mixed up? Things with multiple artists will show in the results too, but ignore them. Or just use Adam in the where clause if it is too confusing. Is it as a song artist or as an album artist? Is there a pattern to the albums or artists that have been misidentified as Adam? Are the mbid correct for the artists that should be there?

I promise I won't leave you and your family stuck with fake Adam Ants, especially as you don't have any music by him!

[black_eagle]

OMG, you think I can get my head around those queries ??

Well, had to export the first one as it produced so many results. I've imported it into open office and saved it as an M$ office xls file (after adding headers so it'll be clearer for you to look at). If you can't import it I have the csv file from the MySQL export.

Did the same for the second query which returned a much smaller set (36 vs 9031).

I did see that thread regarding tagging with ALBUMARTISTS and have added the appropriate code into picard's tagger script. Taking the Afro Celt Sound System track, without the ALBUMARTISTS tag, picard show it as

PHP Code:

Artist : Afro Celt Sound System feat. Liam O'Flynn & Pina Kollars
Album Artist : Afro Celt Sound System
Artist Sort Order : Afro Celt Sound System feat. O'Flynn, Liam & Pina
Artists : Afro Celt Sound System; Liam O'Flynn; Pina Kollars
MusicBrainzArtistID : 2f0baf2a-bfa7-4116-8c75-8240aed74553; ca0e1bd6-541b-4a47-851f-35750b332783; f4119202-40df-4111-a1e2-749070e56518 


Had to alter my script to read m4a tags .... think I have learnt an amazing amount in the last week !!

Links to :- 1st query, 2nd query, Afro Celt Sound System 'Capture 1995-2010'

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fg7cfwtz9z0ek0...1.xls?dl=0 , https://www.dropbox.com/s/70fcfdjy392e5g...2.xls?dl=0 , https://www.dropbox.com/s/klf6aunqh95qjk...0.txt?dl=0

[DaveBlake]

OMG, you think I can get my head around those queries ??

Yes of course, I can
If this is new to you then you are doing really well. Thanks for your positive attitude and persistence, it makes me even more determined to find you a solution.

.... think I have learnt an amazing amount in the last week !!

That makes support so worthwhile, good on you.
I have learned things too.

Looks like the xls export may have got confused, but it may be worth a quick check of the tags for Leona Lewis "Christmas, With Love", and Scouter "Who's Got the Last Laugh Now?".

But now let's try to find the source of Adam Ant. He is everywhere isn't he, never seen anything quite like it, quite funny really

Your Now XX albums are an artist disaster. Actually there is a clue there, all the corrupted artists are those that appear on compilation albums or at least are not an album artist e.g. Maurice Gibb

It does not seem to be related to album artist tags, which was one hypothesis.

Looking at the tags to Capture 1995-2010 your download is not showing ARTISTS tag, but I will assume that you have this sorted and count of artist names to mbid match. It is Laim O'Flynn, the second artist on track 9, that is the first artist to become Adam, and since he only appears on one song in your library it must have happened while scanning that song, nothing else is going to use that mbid. But I don't understand how. There is some mention of TagLib having issues with m4a files, and Kodi too historically.

Smoking gun perhaps, I am flailing about really. Going to need more infomation...

Can you confirm that scraping (extra info from online or NFO) isn't happening, that those settings are disabled?
Can you confirm that you started scanning a fresh with an empty library?
Which albums have .m4a song files?

Would you fire this at your library to locate Adam with his own ID, I'm sure he should be there.

Code:

SELECT artist.idArtist, artist.strArtist FROM artist
WHERE artist.strMusicbrainzartistid = 'e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92'

If that finds him try

Code:

SELECT song.idSong, song.strTitle, album.strAlbum, song.strArtists,  artist.strArtist
FROM song JOIN album ON song.idAlbum = album.idAlbum
JOIN song_artist ON song_artist.idSong = song.idSong
JOIN artist ON song_artist.idArtist = artist.idArtist
WHERE artist.strMusicbrainzartistid = 'e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92'

Code:

SELECT album.strAlbum, album.strArtists,  artist.strArtist
FROM album JOIN album_artist on album_artist.idAlbum = album.idAlbum
JOIN artist ON album_artist.idArtist = artist.idArtist
WHERE artist.strMusicbrainzartistid = 'e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92'

Do you feel like dropping the library (take copy) and in a new empty db just loading the Capture 1995-2010 album and seeing what we get. Do it with debug on and see if that gives anything.

Meanwhile I'll do some more digging about m4a files. I have tried a test with m4a format and the parsing/scanning to library went perfectly, but there could be issues with a particular file I guess.

[black_eagle]

Right, where to start ?

Leona. Yeah I noticed in the xls file, so I checked the csv file that I exported from MySQL. Turns out the last field in each of those records was '"N' which is what threw the csv import I guess. Digging into the database reveals this for Leona.

PHP Code:

+---------+----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------------------+
| idAlbum | strAlbum             | strArtists  | strArtist   | strMusicBrainzArtistID |
+---------+----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------------------+
|    2081 | Christmas, With Love | Leona Lewis | Leona Lewis | NULL                   |
|    2082 | Spirit               | Leona Lewis | Leona Lewis | NULL                   |
|    2083 | Spirit               | Leona Lewis | Leona Lewis | NULL                   |
+---------+----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec) 


No idea how that's happened, although I was already aware she was in 3 times. Didn't know she didn't have an MBID though.

The MySQL stuff is indeed all new to me. I've used phpMyAdmin for looking through stuff, but that's about it. Not done any command line queries before. Even setting the bCompilation flag had me worried in case it did something else !!!

I've re-written my tagdumper to dump the entire m4a tags barring the embedded cover-art and the resulting dump of Capture is here.

Can you confirm that scraping (extra info from online or NFO) isn't happening, that those settings are disabled?
Can you confirm that you started scanning a fresh with an empty library?
Which albums have .m4a song files?

Originally, when Adam first appeared I believe that extra info was indeed disabled, but then I turned it on hoping it would correct things.
Yes, I started with a fresh empty library after the upgrade from 15.2 to 16.0 appeared to lose a lot of albums. So I dropped the entire DB and started again.
m4a albums are :-

Capture - Afro Celt Sound System
Seed - A C S S
Pod - A C S S
Volume 1: Sound Magic - A C S S
Volume 2: Release - A C S S
Volume 3: Further in Time - A C S S
Volume 5: Anatomic - A C S S

Finest Selection: The Greatest Hits - The Saturdays
Living For The Weekend - The Saturdays
Salute - Little Mix
Two Lanes Of Freedom - Tim McGraw
A Perfect Contradiction - Paloma Faith

I'm going to do as you suggest and drop the DB again. Actually, this gives me a good chance to clean up the path to the Music Library, as it's currently rather convoluted and the whole thing will benefit from some tidying up on disk. Therefore, I'm going to create a new root path, and just drop Capture in there to start with. I don't normally have any logging at all turned on, but I will get a debug log of the scan. Call me sceptical, but I think it'll scan in fine

I'll get back to you shortly with some news !


---- EDIT ----

OK, so I have got Kodi to reproduce the error again where Adams details are inserted. Have a debug log of it too !!!!

Here is what I did. I scanned in capture to start with, with all the online stuff turned off. Scan went fine and album was correctly displayed. But, this doesn't give you art and biographies/discographies etc, so I turned on 'Fetch additional information'.

When the scanner get to 'Sinead O'Connor' the following happens

PHP Code:

11:15:41 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: UpdateDatabaseArtistInfo downloading info for: Sinéad O'Connor
11:15:41 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: scraper: ResolveIDToUrl returned <url>http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/c78a77fa-507c-4c07-947a-0355029453bd?inc=url-rels</url>
11:15:43 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: -- nfo-scraper: Universal Artist Scraper
11:15:43 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: -- nfo url: http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/c78a77fa-507c-4c07-947a-0355029453bd?inc=url-rels
11:15:43 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: Found matching nfo file: artist.nfo
11:15:43 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: DownloadArtistInfo Got details from nfo
11:15:43 T:139914614007552   DEBUG: Mysql execute: UPDATE artist SET  strArtist = 'Sinéad O\'Connor',  strBorn = 'London (1954)', strFormed = '', strGenres = 'Pop/Rock',
  strMoods = 'Cynical/Sarcastic;Rousing;Tense;Anxious;Theatrical;Visceral;Witty;Aggressive;Celebratory;Confident;Freewheeling;Quirky
;Rebellious;Snide;Boisterous;Detached;Eccentric;Fierce;Fun;Humorous;Playful;Raucous;Rollicking;Brassy;
Bravado;Bright;Dramatic;Earnest;Energetic;Gutsy;Intense;Lively;Sexual;Sexy;Street-Smart;Swaggering;Manic;Urgent;Hedonistic;Ironic;Irreverent;Menacing;Nocturnal;Ominous;Sleazy;
Sophisticated;Trashy;Volatile;Campy;Exuberant',
 strStyles = 'Alternative/Indie Rock;Contemporary Pop/Rock;New Wave;Post-Punk;Punk/New Wave;Dance-Rock', strInstruments = '', 
 strBiography = 'Adam Ant is best known as a singer. He led Adam and the Ants in the early 1980s. Soon after he began a solo career with hits like
 \"Goody Two Shoes\" His most recent solo album was 1995\'s \"Wonderful\", which spawned the top 40 US single by the same name.
 His biggest contribution to music was probably his pioneering use of videos in the early 1980s.',
 strDied = '', strDisbanded = '',  strYearsActive = '1970s - 2010s',
 strImage = '<thumb preview=\"http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92/artistthumb/ant-adam-500052f733720.jpg/preview\">
http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92/artistthumb/ant-adam-500052f733720.jpg</thumb>
<thumb preview=\"http://www.theaudiodb.com/images/media/artist/thumb/ant-adam-500052f733720.jpg/preview\">
http://www.theaudiodb.com/images/media/artist/thumb/ant-adam-500052f733720.jpg</thumb><thumb>http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_1080/MI0003/489/MI0003489224.jpg?partner=allrovi.com</thumb>
<thumb>http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_1080/MI0001/467/MI0001467944.jpg?partner=allrovi.com</thumb>',
 strFanart = '<fanart><thumb preview=\"http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92/artistbackground/adam-ant-4ec52aa8dfbff.jpg/preview\">
http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92/artistbackground/adam-ant-4ec52aa8dfbff.jpg</thumb><thumb preview=\"http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92/artistbackground/adam-ant-4ec52ab1e2e3a.jpg/preview\">
http://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/music/e188a520-9cb7-4f73-a3d7-2f70c6538e92/artistbackground/adam-ant-4ec52ab1e2e3a.jpg</thumb></fanart>',
  lastScraped = '2016-03-13 11:15:43', strMusicBrainzArtistID = 'c78a77fa-507c-4c07-947a-0355029453bd' WHERE idArtist = 13 


If you put the URL into a browser, it returns Sinead O'Connor's details as expected.

I'm doing some more digging with cURL debugging turned on. Hopefully that'll show something more.

[black_eagle]

An update !

With cURL debugging on, and all album.nfo's removed from the albums and artists I'm testing with, scraping 'Capture' gets me to a point where the universal artist scraper kicks in to get artist details.

PHP Code:

13:59:59 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: -- nfo-scraper: Universal Artist Scraper
13:59:59 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: -- nfo url: http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/2f0baf2a-bfa7-4116-8c75-8240aed74553?inc=url-rels
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: Thread MusicInfoScraper start, auto delete: false
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: GetArtistDetails: Reading 'http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/2f0baf2a-bfa7-4116-8c75-8240aed74553?inc=url-rels' ('Afro Celt Sound System') 
using Universal Artist Scraper scraper (file: '/home/xbmc/.kodi/addons/metadata.artists.universal', content: 'artists', version: '3.6.2')
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: CurlFile::Open(0x7f307c8420b0) http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/2f0baf2a-bfa7-4116-8c75-8240aed74553?inc=url-rels
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: Curl::Debug - TEXT: Found bundle for host musicbrainz.org: 0x7f30c803c2e0
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: Curl::Debug - TEXT: Re-using existing connection! (#25) with host musicbrainz.org
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: Curl::Debug - TEXT: Connected to musicbrainz.org (72.29.166.157) port 80 (#25)
13:59:59 T:139847750641408   DEBUG: Curl::Debug - HEADER_OUT: GET /ws/2/artist/2f0baf2a-bfa7-4116-8c75-8240aed74553?inc=url-rels HTTP/1.1 


However, later on when we want Sinead O'Connor's details, this occurs

PHP Code:

14:00:00 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: UpdateDatabaseArtistInfo downloading info for: Sinéad O'Connor
14:00:00 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: scraper: ResolveIDToUrl returned <url>http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/c78a77fa-507c-4c07-947a-0355029453bd?inc=url-rels</url>
14:00:00 T:139848727242816    INFO: CheckIdle - Closing session to https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com (easy=0x7f30c81bab90, multi=0x7f30c83310d0)
14:00:02 T:139847759034112   DEBUG: script.cu.lrclyrics: 388911 Manimals House Of The Rising Sun
14:00:02 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: -- nfo-scraper: Universal Artist Scraper
14:00:02 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: -- nfo url: http://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/c78a77fa-507c-4c07-947a-0355029453bd?inc=url-rels
14:00:02 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: Found matching nfo file: artist.nfo
14:00:02 T:139846148421376   DEBUG: DownloadArtistInfo Got details from nfo 


cURL doesn't open a URL there to musicbrainz, so I guess the only possible place this info can come from is a cache somewhere. I see you did mention caching earlier. More digging !!