[DaveBlake]

While I like the idea of two default nodes to replace the setting, and that the kind of artist node you use dictates what albums you see, what do we do from genre?

Select a genre and see the artists with songs of that genre... but is that just album artists or both album and song artists? At the moment the global setting controls it, so do we therefore need to keep that setting or can someone come up with an elegant solution that avoids it?

At the back of my mind is another use for roles.
Maybe even a Roles > Genres > Artists > Albums > Songs navigation? That is treat album artist as just another role. But could be too much of a change?

[AnalogKid]

While I like the idea of two default nodes to replace the setting, and that the kind of artist node you use dictates what albums you see, what do we do from genre?

Select a genre and see the artists with songs of that genre... but is that just album artists or both album and song artists? At the moment the global setting controls it, so do we therefore need to keep that setting or can someone come up with an elegant solution that avoids it?

At the back of my mind is another use for roles.
Maybe even a Roles > Genres > Artists > Albums > Songs navigation? That is treat album artist as just another role. But could be too much of a change?

I think you have to accept that Artists and Album Artists are two distinct fields which will produce two different sets of albums and song, so:

Genres > ArtistType > Artists > Albums
Genres > ArtistType > AlbumArtists > Albums

That would mean after choosing 'Genres' you have to choose ArtistType (Artists or AlbumArtists) - is that theoretically possible thought?

[DaveBlake]

I think you have to accept that Artists and Album Artists are two distinct fields which will produce two different sets of albums and song, so:

Genres > ArtistType > Artists > Albums
Genres > ArtistType > AlbumArtists > Albums

That would mean after choosing 'Genres' you have to choose ArtistType (Artists or AlbumArtists) - is that theoretically possible thought?

Yes possible to implement but that seems unnecessary clunky to me. The option to limit to just album artists or not from the library, rather than the settings, is good but users are not going to enjoy making that choice every time. It is very helpful to discuss it though.

An alternative could be
Genres > Album Artists > Albums
and
"(all artists) Genres" > artists > Albums

But that is 4 nodes replacing 2 and things getting foggy when it comes to naming.... The genres listed are song genres (not the scraped artist genre values we do nothing with). Later I hope to extend things to make use of those artist genres for people that want to, so want to avoid confusion now. And that leads me back to genre having some default behaviour controlled by settings.

Perhaps we could utilise the context menu in some way? Default navigation from Genres node is always the Album Artists, but context menu offers seeing the song artists too (and on down to include those albums by other artists)?

[AnalogKid]

I think you have to accept that Artists and Album Artists are two distinct fields which will produce two different sets of albums and song, so:

Genres > ArtistType > Artists > Albums
Genres > ArtistType > AlbumArtists > Albums

That would mean after choosing 'Genres' you have to choose ArtistType (Artists or AlbumArtists) - is that theoretically possible thought?

Yes possible to implement but that seems unnecessary clunky to me. The option to limit to just album artists or not from the library, rather than the settings, is good but users are not going to enjoy making that choice every time. It is very helpful to discuss it though.

An alternative could be
Genres > Album Artists > Albums
and
"(all artists) Genres" > artists > Albums

But that is 4 nodes replacing 2 and things getting foggy when it comes to naming.... The genres listed are song genres (not the scraped artist genre values we do nothing with). Later I hope to extend things to make use of those artist genres for people that want to, so want to avoid confusion now. And that leads me back to genre having some default behaviour controlled by settings.

Perhaps we could utilise the context menu in some way? Default navigation from Genres node is always the Album Artists, but context menu offers seeing the song artists too (and on down to include those albums by other artists)?

It's clunky I agree.

If the global setting is kept, it feels quite neat - especially if you think of it as 'would you like to use the Album Artist, or Song Artist to determine which albums the are attributed to an artist' (too many words, but that's the real question being asked).
However, it also feels bit to drastic and inflexible to have this as some global setting, because there's a use case were people want to browse their music in either mode without having to keep going back to some global setting.

Another way to look it might be this:

Artist > Albums > By Artist
Artist > Albums > Featuring Artist
Artist > Albums > Both

I guess this way, any Albums view might let you choose? or filter in some way? Would / could such a preference be possible and saved as part of the view settings? i.e. If the user browses to Music > Artist (ACDC) > Albums > By Artist then they only see albums with ACDC as the Album Artist and that preference is saved.
But if the user chooses Music > Genre (Rock) > Artist (ACDC) > Albums > Featuring Artist then they see albums with ACDC as the Song Artist and that preference is saved for THAT view.

I've no idea if that is possible, but I quite like the idea of at least in an album view being able to quickly choose to show 'By Artist / Featuring Artist / Both' without having to set some global preference.

[steve1977]

Having two nodes is fabulous. No clue why nobody came up with this idea before. This makes it very nice. Below sounds great:

*** Album Artists -> Albums By This Artist
*** Song Artists -> Albums Featuring Any Song With This Artist

From what I remember though that this is not as easy to create? Or have things advanced with all the efforts by DaveBlake and others?

With regards to other improvement discussions, I'd prefer that not another "layer" is included until the user reaches the songs. What's the issue with genre? I thought genre is anyways associated to a song and not to an artist and also not to an album? If this understanding is correct, we can only display albumartist, which will include only the albums by this artist, which includes all artists that include at least one song by the specified genre?

[DaveBlake]

Steve two nodes is easy, no worries there. I don't know why it took so long to come up with either, but it shows why discussions like this thread are so useful for people like me. Thanks guys for contributing, and I hope that you will keep doing so.

Correct about genre, we use a property of song(s) to decide what albums and artists to show. But we can show album artist and/or song artists (with songs of that genre). The question is if we don't have a global setting , and I would love to get rid of it, then how to dictate what list of artists is shown for a selected genre.

Now AnalogKid suggests using a last used approach. That could work, but could also be confusing - I can't remember what I last looked at, am I seeing song artists or just album artists? But I appreciate the ideas, keep them comming.

My thoughts this morning, encouraged by Steve's comments, are that we make Genre > Artists default to showing only album artists (with songs of that genre) i.e. click on a genre you see a list of album artists. But that we also add a context menu items on the genres node that let the user go to either album artists (same as just clicking the item) or to the bigger list of song and album artists.

Perhaps I need to create a local branch that does this and get it user tested?

[jjd-uk]

It might be best to what end points we want as default, that is what exactly do you want to see after all filtering has been carried out, then work backwards to determine how best to carry that filtering out.

If we still need a property or even properties set to govern the type of node displayed then I'd prefer it to be on the side blade menu, then the nodes could be displayed or not display based on that property using the visible condition.

[jjd-uk]

For the Artist node, could we perhaps have:

Artists->
- All Artists (virtual folder that would open to show all song artists)
- Album Artist 1
- Album Artist 2
- Album Artist 3
- etc

Mock up

[jjd-uk]

Actually thinking about it more, the above could be confusing as to where the artists below "All Artists" come from, would people get these are album artists, so two node approach might be better.

[DaveBlake]

Worse than that Jeff, we already have an optional "* All Artists" item that appears at the top of the artists list. Check global settings to enable it, but don't ask me exactly where any more. It leads to all the albums with songs of that genre, compared to just the albums for that artist with songs of that genre when you click an artist. I think it best to keep the consistency that clicking on an item in the list of artists gives you albums of some kind.

I also spotted all those combined artists like "Alexandra Burke Feat. Erick Morillo" . The flexible artist separator in v17 should be able to identify the individual artists e.g. "Alexandra Burke", "Erick Morillo" for you.

[steve1977]

This is great. Looking forward to have two nodes. What I thought from previous messages to be complicated is not to have two nodes (only challenge was to come up with the idea), but to only list albums with albumartist XXX when selecting albumartist XXX. This is different from the current behavior and I thought there was some roadblock to make this happen?

I am indifferent on the genre discussion. While I'd like to use genres, I always find them unusable in any player you can imagine. They are song-based, so one artist will be associated with 20 different genres. And even one album by one artist may well have 10 different genres. Not even to mention compilation albums by various artists... I am happy to learn though how others have mastered this?

[AnalogKid]

One thing that's sticking in the back of my mind, is Singles / EPs etc.
Now I know this isn't the thread, but I'm just mindful of making any assumption that once the user clicks an artist, that the next view should be albums. I can definitely envisage a point in the future when the user faces an intermediate choice of:

Albums by this artist
Albums featuring this artist
Either / Both of the above
Singles
EP's
Other

We already know that anything that doesn't quite fit the Album structure becomes a real problem for Kodi (and for most other library systems too!)

Just a reminder to keep it in mind! - although sometimes, you just have to tackle the problem in hand, and accept it might all have to be undone further down the line! (i.e. you can over think it too!)

[DaveBlake]

Singles, EPs, compilations (inc antholgies) they could all do with some thought I know. I find that hard as I don't have any singles in my music collection. I have some fake ones in my test data, but it ieasy for it to slip from my mind so thank you for the reminder.

One thing that does hold true is that albums and singles want to be separated, but what about EPs? Can I think of them as albums with multiple album artists?

[AnalogKid]

I've just been playing with the Filter feature in the Album view for an artist. It looks like it could actually be quite flexible and allow a user to filter the albums in order to show ONLY albums by the artists, ONLY albums featuring the artist, or a both at the same time...

However, it doesn't appear to work properly for me!

In my specific case, I have the following:


1) Albums by Adele (Album Artist and Artist are 'Adele'
2) Some compilation albums featuring Adele (Album Artist is 'Various Artists' and Artist is 'Adele').

When I choose 'Filter' in the album view I can filter based on Artist and I have two options: Adele and/or Various Artists.
If I choose Various Artists, the applied filter shows no albums. If I chose Adele, the applied filters shows all albums (inc compilations).

The filter's certainly not working as I would have expected, but that could be me. Regardless, it looks like it could be a potential route to solving the issue...

i.e. Music -> Artist -> Albums view just finds ALL albums, including compilations, and then applies the user's choice of filter?

It's an alternative to the two node solution, but might also be more flexible in the future ie:

Music -> Artist (just collects ALL music featuring that artist), then a filter can display Albums by artist, albums featuring artists, EP's (albums with the string '(EP') in the name, Single (albums with the string '(single') in the name) etc. Not a perfect solution, but it's something!

I really don't like using string searches in this way, but Kodi does it elsewhere, so it's not without precedent!

p.s. When viewing 'Albums by artist', that would really be albums without '(EP)' or '(Single)' in the title

[AnalogKid]

Singles, EPs, compilations (inc antholgies) they could all do with some thought I know. I find that hard as I don't have any singles in my music collection. I have some fake ones in my test data, but it ieasy for it to slip from my mind so thank you for the reminder.

One thing that does hold true is that albums and singles want to be separated, but what about EPs? Can I think of them as albums with multiple album artists?

Singles are a bit of a misnomer, as actually a 'single' typically has more than one track (I know, I know!).
So to my mind, an EP, and a Single are still a collection of tracks - effective a type of album.

The key thing is that in people's minds and probably in the UI views, an 'album' represents the same album you'd buy in a store on a CD and called an album.
A single or an EP (although it can have multiple tracks) probably needs to be differentiated in the UI (or at least filterable).

I can only speak for myself here, and others may disagree, but I would not like countless singles 'cluttering up' the Album UI. However, I would still like access to them, and perhaps on occasion still be able to see ALL media by an artist (Albums, singles, EP's) etc.

The way I've handled this in the past is using a custom node that searched for 'Singles' in the path (not the title) and I had my structure like this:

ACDC\
ACDC\Back In Black\
ACDC\Back In Black\01 - Track 01.mp3

ACDC\Singles\
ACDC\Singles\Single 1\
ACDC\Singles\Single 1\01 - Track 01.mp3
ACDC\Singles\Single 1\02 - Track 02.mp3


It's not ideal though, because most tagging software and Kodi expect Artist\Album\Track structure.