[elra]

Could anyone help me identify why Kodi finds less songs than Musicbee with the same rule for a smart/auto playlist? (It's auto playlist in Musicbee).

I've put my name in the comments of the mp3tag of the songs I want in this playlist and the rule is contains name, it's a big nr of songs and the formats vary. Could there be formats or tags that Kodi does not support but Musicbee does?

Musicbee finds 8k+ songs, while Kodi finds around 300 less. I haven't been able to find anything by exporting the playlist from musicbee and opening it in mp3tag and looking for this nr of songs via tags/extensions.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[DaveBlake]

Could there be formats or tags that Kodi does not support but Musicbee does?

There could be, but not sure this is the issue. If is was then Kodi library would have fewer songs in the library than Musicbee. Have you compared total song count (not playlist with rule filter)?

Using "contains" Kodi will be fetching all songs with "%text%" in the comment tag, don't know what Musicbee does.

[elra]

Could there be formats or tags that Kodi does not support but Musicbee does?

There could be, but not sure this is the issue. If is was then Kodi library would have fewer songs in the library than Musicbee. Have you compared total song count (not playlist with rule filter)?

Using "contains" Kodi will be fetching all songs with "%text%" in the comment tag, don't know what Musicbee does.

Thanks for your reply! Silly me, I didn't think of comparing those numbers at first. The total songs seem to have a smaller difference, which is confusing me even more! There's a difference of 23 songs compared to the 300ish difference of the playlist.

Musicbee does the exact same thing as kodi: comment contains name.

[DaveBlake]

Any chance you can spot which songs are missing from Kodi compared to Musicbee?

[elra]

Any chance you can spot which songs are missing from Kodi compared to Musicbee?

I would love to but I've no idea how to start looking for the difference in songs wether in playlist or library, it's a total of 26k-ish songs and I've a condition that only allows hands/arms usage for a couple of minutes before inflammation sets in unfortunately so I'm afraid I can't do a slow-but-thorough longterm check of everything

[DaveBlake]

Sorry about your health problem, but I really can't tell what's happening from here!

Let's start with some more basic informatiom: what version of Kodi, running on what OS, with music files located where? What format of music files mp3, FLAC? If mp3 then what kind of tagging 2.3, 2.4 or APE?

[elra]

I appreciate your continued support!

I am running kodi 16.1 on windows 10, the music files are on a local harddisc in the same machine. I fixed the tagging with mp3tag and in Musicbee.

If I load my entire music folder in mp3tag, there's 26098 files, in Musicbee there's 26096 and in Kodi 26073.
The comment playlist in Musicbee finds 8038 songs, in Kodi 7889. So 149 songs difference.

I've got a majority of mp3, and a bit of flac, m4a, and even a few old wma's. I've already checked the non-mp3 extensions and they are in both libraries and playlists.

here are all the tags used (checked in mp3tag), I checked songs of each of these tag types and they can be found in both programs and playlists:
flac (id3v2)
flac (flac)
mp3 id3v2.3 (Id3v1 ID2v2.3 APEv2)
mp3 id3v2.3 (Id3v1 ID2v2.3)
mp3 id3v2.3 (Id3v1 lyrics3v2 ID2v2.3 APEv2)
id3v2.3 (id3v2.3)
mp4 (mp4)
Vorbis comment (Vorbis comment)
wma (wma)

There is not a nr of a certain extension, codec or tag type that corresponds to the 149 playlist difference or 23 library difference. I'm pretty stumped as to how to proceed to be honest.

[DaveBlake]

So the missing songs are all mp3 with v2.3 tags?

I did wonder if the FLAC files with id3v2 tags could be the issue (I think that is what your tag type reply says you have some of). Could you confirm that those songs are there?

Could you also paste the xml for the comment playlist, a .xsp file found in Kodi userdata on win10 that is in
AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\playlists\music

Hope it inspires me!

[elra]

So the missing songs are all mp3 with v2.3 tags?

Not sure what prompted this response but no, there's loads of those and I did check a few of them and they're in both programs/playlists.

I did wonder if the FLAC files with id3v2 tags could be the issue (I think that is what your tag type reply says you have some of). Could you confirm that those songs are there?

there were only a few and they are all in both programs and playlists as well

Could you also paste the xml for the comment playlist, a .xsp file found in Kodi userdata on win10 that is in
AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\playlists\music

Hope it inspires me!

Sure here it is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="songs">
<name>Radio Ringo</name>
<match>all</match>
<rule field="comment" operator="contains">
<value>ringo</value>
</rule>
<order direction="ascending">artist</order>
</smartplaylist>

I just came up with something, I have these sub-playlists made by Genre, for instance if I check the Electronic playlist with name comment in kodi I have 393 items, in musicbee 411 so that's a more managable nr to browse, will see if I can find which is missing and what the properties of one or several of those files are!

[DaveBlake]

So the missing songs are all mp3 with v2.3 tags?

Not sure what prompted this response but no, there's loads of those and I did check a few of them and they're in both programs/playlists.

Deductive reasoning. You said "I've already checked the non-mp3 extensions and they are in both libraries and playlists.". So it is mp3 files that are missing, and then in your tag format list all the mp3 files have v2.3 tags (along with others). Of course that does not tell us which ones.

Unfortunately the playlist looks uninspiring

I just came up with something, I have these sub-playlists made by Genre, for instance if I check the Electronic playlist with name comment in kodi I have 393 items, in musicbee 411 so that's a more managable nr to browse, will see if I can find which is missing and what the properties of one or several of those files are!

Good thinking. I wasn't sure what common things Musicbee and Kodi could do to devide the music consistently. let me know what you find, I'm curious what is happening here.

[elra]

Ok I just found something, let's take Empire of the Sun for example. Musicbee had 4 tracks, Kodi had 1. I checked them with mp3tag and only one was tagged. So it seemed somehow Musicbee tagged them in its own program but not in the files, I retagged them in Musicbee and this time the change was visible in mp3tag, so I'm doing this now with my entire library. Re-confirming the comment tags and reloading the kodi library, and the Empire of the Sun tracks appeared in the playlist in Kodi, so far it seems to be working!

For any googlers that might have a similar issue: Mine was an issue with Musicbee tagging not being saved in the files but only in the program apparently! Thanks for your help Dave!

I'll do a follow up post to confirm all is working.

[elra]

Those Empire of the Sun tracks were indeed mp3's of the ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3) tag variety!

[DaveBlake]

So basically the files weren't tagged so Kodi ignored them. Would you are to edit the OP to show status [solved]

[elra]

Yes!

Pretty funny, after retagging everything in Musicbee, rescanning the music library in Kodi, now the Kodi playlist has 31 more songs than the Musicbee one. But screw it haha, problem solved!