[markusA]

If the powers that be considers this topic to be in the wrong place, feel free to move the thread to a proper place.
How Kodi handles/reads tags in regards to the music library appears to be a constant problem and I am curious about how something so simple could be such a problem? I'm a amateur programmer at best and I haven't tried looking into the kodi code at all, so I won't try telling anyone how to do coding properly. No hubris...
I will however ask about the underlying issues that might not be entirely transparent. What is the intent with the current strategy?
Today tags can hold several entries for artists and such. String identification is doable so identifying a "feat." in an artist tag shouldn't cause much problem.
Is there a conscious decision to list artist collaborations as a separate list item or is that a relic that shouldn't be there?
Why not use albumartist and allow for several entries? It would be easy to sort under each of the artists listed and you would avoid the mess we have today? If you have a main artist and other featured artists this could easily be handled with the artists tag on a track by track basis.
I don't want to step on any toes or trivialize anything but to me this seems like a very simple thing to handle in a database?
I've also noticed that old database entries remain even after you run a clean operation? And new tags aren't updated or cause problems together with old tags not cleaned out from the database? Maybe a refresh tags action could be added to the next generation?
So, is today's mess intentional or is it accidental?

[jjd-uk]

For multiple artists only the slash delimiter is used by default, but you can add anything you like including "feat." to the advancedsetting.xml file.

We also do use only album artist for your artist list if you so wish, to do so disable the "Show all song and album artists" setting.

[jjd-uk]

Moving thread to a more appropriate place.

[DaveBlake]

Markus what version of Kodi are you using? It seems that many of the comments you make are about issues that have been solved in v17.

I am the only dev looking at this area, so this is going to turn into a personal conversation. Much of the music library was designed by people before me, and although there is certainly room for improvement, I have respect for those people and what has been done before. I'm happy to discuss design with anyone that is interested, glance through these threads and you will soon see, but while saying "no hubris" etc. calling things "trivial" and a "mess" really doesn't start on the right foot.

So if if you want a genuine discussion then great, but if this is going to be a trolling session (and I really can't decide from your post), please don't.

[markusA]

No worries, my question is genuine. I've been using musicbrainz Picard for tagging and try as I might there seems to always be some incompatibilities. The mess I was referring to was my own library. It's quite possible that my issues can be solved by the correct settings. If so I've been unable to find how to do this.
I'm running isengard 15.2, afaik this is the latest Pi build? Maybe it's just a case of waiting for the Pi builds to catch up?
Thanks for moving the thread to the proper location.


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[markusA]

P.S My comments regarding "trivial" is based on my own limited experience with databases. If keeping each entry as only one artist, it should represent the easiest case since no extra processing is needed to sort it? I've had the most bizarre results and at times it's been close to impossible to purge the wonky entries the library. The clean operation only compounded the problem somehow?
And I keep getting double entries for multiple artist listings. And double listings of albums...
Maybe what I need is a thorough tutorial?
It's possible that what I perceive as bad is done intentional due to different taste in how the library is set up. If so, it's not broken, just a case of different preferences.
I do miss a quick and reliable way to refresh the tags, having that would help a lot when trying to figure things out.


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[DaveBlake]

I'm running isengard 15.2, afaik this is the latest Pi build?

That says it all, yes v15 had issues.

Try out LibreElec, https://libreelec.tv/ Still beta but seems stable to me, and my family haven't broken it yet. Easy to install too.

[markusA]

Thanks, I'll take a look and see if I can get it running.


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[DaveBlake]

Also trying to guess what you have done in the past.

If keeping each entry as only one artist, it should represent the easiest case since no extra processing is needed to sort it?...

Sounds like you may have tagged with Picard, but then edited some of the tags. That is fine, but there is a need for consistency between the number of artist names and the number of mbid tags. If you have edited one, but not the other then things can become confused.

v15 had issues with multiple album artists, especially with IDE v2.3 tags.

Also Kodi uses album titile and artist to identify things, if it has not got album mbid tags, I guess that could have resulted in duplicates if you didn't clean the library between that kind of tag edit and update.

Get an new SD card, and start afresh. Nothing to loose, and a clean install and clean scan should appear much better. If the new default skin (Estuary) confuses you, then you can fetch Confluence from the repo and use that for familiarity.

[jjd-uk]

I suspect a lot of your issues are probably caused by the Musicbrainz Picard tagging and the Kodi usage of Musicbrainz id's which would have been relatively new in v15, usage of Musicbrainz id's has improved a lot in both v16 and v17.

If all you had was plain id3 tags then your experience would probably have been better, however once Musicbrainz id's are introduced into the equation then things get more complicated as inconsistencies with the id3 tags can arise, for example the id3 tag may contain a different number of Artists to how many Artist Musicbrainz id's.

[DaveBlake]

I suspect a lot of your issues are probably caused by the Musicbrainz Picard tagging and the Kodi usage of Musicbrainz id's which would have been relatively new in v15, usage of Musicbrainz id's has improved a lot in both v16 and v17.

Yes, the difficulties lead to a lot of anti-mbid feeling, but there are advantages and I truely believe that with v17 there is no reason to "rip the mbid tags out" as some people wanted.

What do mbid tags provide:
1) the only way for Kodi to differentiate between artists with the same name. Name is not unique, there are lots of artists with the same name, if you have any in your music collection then without mbid tags Kodi will lump all their music togther.

2) the only way to differentiate albums with the same name and album artist(s). OK could use year for this too.

3) they improve accurate scraping of additional album and artist information. It also speeds it up - no mbid the first thing the scraper does is try and get one to use in the rest of the scraping, and the Musicbraiz servers get hammered. Also name alone is often not enough to identify what you want to scrape. Tag it, there is no confusion.

Some of my collection has mbid tags, some of it doesn't. But the only clear message is that if you start manually editing tags in file that Picard has tagged then you need to do so intelligently and consistently. Kodi trys to catch the obvious blunders, but it can only do so much.

[markusA]

I've tried doing it in different ways, both with the standard tags per MB and also editing them manually. So far there's mostly just been problems but I'm hopeful things will get resolved.
The only things I need really is being able to manually change albumartist tag artist X feat. Artist Y to just artist X / artist Y and have the album showing under both artist X and artist Y but not showing as "artist X and artist Y".
I noticed earlier that the only way to remove faulty entries was to completely delete any material by the artist before running a clean operation, otherwise it wouldn't remove the wonky listings.
I've installed libreelec, the beta with kodi 17 and I'm currently updating the music library. I have a fairy big little Barry so it'll take a while. Hopefully my issues will be gone once the update is complete.

[jjd-uk]

See http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2504464

[DaveBlake]

The only things I need really is being able to manually change albumartist tag artist X feat. Artist Y to just artist X / artist Y and have the album showing under both artist X and artist Y but not showing as "artist X and artist Y".

That issue is solved. Kodi can translate " feat. " as a separator if you want, and/or you can have ALBUMARTISTS tags - a Picard thing but sadly not default, needs a script setting to create tag automatically. No need for manual edits

I noticed earlier that the only way to remove faulty entries was to completely delete any material by the artist before running a clean operation, otherwise it wouldn't remove the wonky listings.

It depends, I'll admit sometimes that is the easiest way to unscamble everything.

You need to know that "Library Update" allows for removeable media sources, so does not remove songs it doesn't find just assumes they are temp unaviallable. To really clean, after removing some music files from a source folder, you need to go to settings>media>music and do library clean from there.

I've installed libreelec, the beta with kodi 17 and I'm currently updating the music library. I have a fairy big little Barry so it'll take a while. Hopefully my issues will be gone once the update is complete.

Yes, if not come and talk.

Oh yes, be prepared to get some settings wrong to begin with and therefore need to drop source and try again. It is almost worth having a trial run with just some of your library to tune things. I would love to promise all will be just right first time, and for some people it will be, but tagging can be very diverse, and Kodi can do lots of different things, it depends what you want.

[markusA]

This is getting silly, I really don't have a clue what to do now?
I'm running libreelec, the latest beta with kodi 17.0
I'm adding the album Showdown with Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland.
I'm using Musicbrainz picard for tagging.
First I look the album up -> picard downloads the tags from musicbrainz.
I manually edit Albumartist to Robert Cray, edit the musicbrainz albumartist ID to Robert Cray, edit album artist search order to Cray, Robert.
I scan the album into the library and it gets listed under John Lee Hooker & Robert Cray?

Now, I'm a no0b with this so I accept that a lot of the time the user is at fault and there sure is a lot I could learn in order to do everything right, but this just doesn't make any sense to me?

For reference
Artist: Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland (Not edited)
Artist ID: Not edited
Release ID: Not edited
Artists: Albert Collins; Robert Cray; Johnny Copeland (Not edited and ";" indicating picards way of showing a separate artists field)

If I'm correct it should sort under Robert Cray but once you're in the Robert Cray listing it should display Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland?
I also tried a multi albumartist entry looking like this: Albert Collins / Robert Cray / Johnny Copeland, but it didn't get sorted under any artist or album at all. It would only be found using latest album added.
To be absolutely anal I specifically added the / as item separator ("space"/"space") even though it's supposed to be the default option in advancedsettings.xml.

What am I doing wrong, this is driving me nuts?