[graham-h]

Just a short question on that:
If I haven't set this script, but add it later, will Picard adds this rule when reloading previously tagged albums?

Picard is very sparsely documented and although it has a very rich scripting language it appears the scripts are applied only at the stage where on-line infomation is loaded. So I think you have to re-load the album from the MB site and drag and drop your files again. Better to use mp3tag IMHO.

[DaveBlake]

Sparsely documented, like my improvemnts to Kodi....

FYI I use a mix of Picard and Mp3tag, I like them for different reasons. Picard does highlight the tags it is changing so you can immmediately see if the script worked or not. I also think there is a refresh option, rather than more dragging and dropping etc.

Mp3 tag manages embedded images better IMO, or at least I find it easier, and to edit just one tag for a lot of things.

[graham-h]

... and to edit just one tag for a lot of things.

Indeed. I had formatted all my multiple artist fields with commas before I really got into Kodi for music. One script in mp3tag generated ARTISTS and ALBUMARTISTS tags for all my files in one hit

[Powerhouse]

Currently redoing my whole library with MusicBrianz 1.4 and the add for AlbumArtists (from DaveBlake). Making MusicBrainz cry for the last few days with all my music requests (and I'm only in the S's currently).

Will remove my Music Library when this is done, and re-add it, and see if it is better.

So just think of this as a progress report.

[DaveBlake]

Indeed. I had formatted all my multiple artist fields with commas before I really got into Kodi for music. One script in mp3tag generated ARTISTS and ALBUMARTISTS tags for all my files in one hit

Comma is a bad choice of separator, you have bands with comma in the name e.g "Earth, Wind & Fire", semi-colon is good (no artist names that I know of), but slash is historic despite the AC/DC issue hence space-slash-space.

Currently redoing my whole library with MusicBrianz 1.4 and the add for AlbumArtists (from DaveBlake). Making MusicBrainz cry for the last few days with all my music requests (and I'm only in the S's currently).

Weekend is a busy time for the MB servers, people must think "humm.. what can I do this Sunday, I know I'll re-tag my music files". But keep going!

[Powerhouse]

Finally, after a 3 day weekend of going through an re-tagging all my Music (Just Artists and Albums, no Soundtracks or Mixed Compilations like Billboard Top 100), here is what I got.

1. Re-tagged all Music using MusicBrainz Picard 1.4 using ID2.4 and removing all other tags, with these add-on's (Remove Feat. Artists in Titles, Last.FM Plus - the fixed version listed in the forum). https://picard.musicbrainz.org/plugins/

2. Added the @DaveBlakes changes to add AlbumArtists in Picard ($setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%).

3. Added a new Artist without any Artwork or info (so just the tagged info, and the cover art supplied by MusicBrainz Picard).

So my results...

A. Because I have a large library, it took over 30 minutes to remove all the existing Music, and do a library clean.

B. Importing the "New and Improved" Library took nearly 4 hours.

C. Then end result, nearly the same as the original. 1400+ Artists with the "Show Song and Album Artists" turned "ON", and 759 Artists with it turned "OFF", so not really any change.

D. I did add a few new Artists without artwork for testing Album Artwork, and this worked, so that's cool. This is what probably bumped up the Total Artists. I also noticed when doing the new Picard scans, that some of my Artists had Sub-Artists in their folder. For example INXS had an Album from Michael Hutchence (lead singer of INXS) in that folder. Probably should have moved that out separately but I didn't at this time.

E. There were no more MusicBrianz ID's for Artists names. But there were plenty of Artists that were in my list, before turning "OFF" Show Song and Album Artists" that had no Artwork or info (other than the fact, they were part of another song, from another Artist on my list). If I turn on "Download additional information during updates"

F. I'm not really sure what ALBUMARTISTS effect (if any) had on my Music Library. Nothing I can see, but perhaps there is another setting I need to turn "On" to see something? I believe this is kinda what the Script to remove Feat. Artists from Track titles does (so for those people who don't want that add-on in Picard, Kodi can do it with the "Show Song and Album Artists" feature (is this correct)?

G. Next up, is to import my Various Artists (Compilations) which are in a separate folder than my Music, and see what the effect is. I'm guessing with turning off "Show Song and Album Artists" that I wont see any of these Artists that I don't have artwork for. But they should all show up under Various Artists as they are tagged that (ALBUMARTIST is Various Artists), and it worked correctly in previous versions of Kodi (fingers crossed). Let me know if there is something special I need to do within Kodi to get it ready for adding these.

[scott967]

I don't think artist art has anything to do with any tagging. AFAIK, the first album artist gets art assigned from the song file parent folder folder.jpg (thumb) and fanart.jpg (fanart). Other album or song artists or role artists get no art assigned during scans. Album art comes from folder.jpg (thumb) in the song file folder, or from embedded "cover" image in file tags.

After scanning you have to open the media container and wait for Kodi to populate the thumbnail folder from the database.

Refresh artist info will check online sources for artist art to supplement local art.

I do have a Q maybe Dave knows

When you are in the musicinfo dialog for an artist, and go to set the art it opens the file browser with a listitem for "browse...". When you select that item the file browser updates, in some cases the first listitem is "* item folder" but in other cases I don't don't get this. When you select this listitem it displays the parent folder to the song file folder. What determines when "*item folder" is shown (maybe album artist vs song artist)? I ask because it would be a lot easier for me if "*item folder" was always available, then I could put artist art in the parent folder with names like artistname-thumb.jpg, artistname-fanart.jpg and it would be much easier to assign art to song artists.

scott s.
.

[Powerhouse]

Yeah, for the Artwork, I was verifying that Kodi would actually pull the Album artwork from a song tag, which it did, so that's cool (as I didn't know it would do that, thought it would just read the tags only).

I will run Refresh Artists, but I am just reporting what the initial scan is, to help out anyone else new to Kodi 17 and the changes made.

I've also noticed that there was one Artist (Alice Cooper) that was listed twice. I'm going to assume this is an issue with MusicBrianz Picard, so I will check the tags and see if there is an extra space or something at the end of the name on some of the albums. So I guess a follow up to this is...

H. So if I make changes to a Music's Tags, after its been added to Kodi's database, how do I refresh just that Artist (or Album, or Song)? For example: in Movies or TV Shows, if I select Info, there is an option to "Refresh" and that will update just that Movie or TV Show.

[Uatschitchun]

I've also noticed that there was one Artist (Alice Cooper) that was listed twice. I'm going to assume this is an issue with MusicBrianz Picard, so I will check the tags and see if there is an extra space or something at the end of the name on some of the albums. So I guess a follow up to this is...

Exactly the same here! :-)

I've noticed, there's a band and an artist 'Alice Cooper', so that's probably the difference

[graham-h]

H. So if I make changes to a Music's Tags, after its been added to Kodi's database, how do I refresh just that Artist (or Album, or Song)? For example: in Movies or TV Shows, if I select Info, there is an option to "Refresh" and that will update just that Movie or TV Show.

I think Dave is working on this. At the moment, Kodi has to see a difference in file size or date to prompt it to rescan that directory. Changing tags does not necessarily change either. I like to keep the original file dates as it gives me clues about where I got the tracks from. There are switches in Picard and mp3tag to tell them whether to re-date the files. What would be good is a context menu item to force a re-scan of a directory. This may be just a skin tweak, I don't know.

Refresh in the information screen affects only the online scraper.

[Powerhouse]

Thanks @graham-h, yep, I've tried the Refresh (which funny thing is, if you bring up the Menu, the top option is Information, which has similar options as the Movies and TV Shows buttons (Refresh, Thumbs, Fanart, etc.), but I found doing a Refresh doesn't seem to do anything. So I believe it is like you said, changes tags doesn't seem to affect whatever it is Kodi needs to see a change with the file (file size, or date changed, etc).

So there was something else I found out. Remember in the post above where I had an extra Album under INXS that was Michael Hutchence but it didn't have any Artwork associated (as the INXS folder had the folder.jpg and fanart.jpg). Well, but running the "Refresh Artists", this made all the Artists that were missing Artwork (such as Michael Hutchence, Yoko Ono, etc), to grab the folder.jpg and fanart.jpg from the folder they were under. So in Michael Hutchence case, his poster and fanart were the same as INXS.

So tonight, I will begin the process of trying to fix the few tagging errors (I'm assuming thats what they are), that MusicBrainz Picard has introduced (Alice Cooper is one, but there were a couple of Artists that were a "featuring", that somehow made it through my tagging (and I'm not sure why).

[Powerhouse]

Ok, so the next issue I've encountered is Various Artists. This just showed up (or more truthfully I just noticed), that I had Various Artists under my Artists, yet I have all my Various Artists in a separate folder I haven't added to the Music library yet.

So when I looked inside Various Artists, I only see one Album (which is good), and it is the "8 Mile" Soundtrack, which I have under the Artist Eminem. Another odd fact is, 8 Mile is not listed under the Artist Eminem.

So I am OK with it like this for now, but there was another Movie Soundtrack that I wanted to be listed under Various Artists as well (Ghost the Motion Picture Soundtrack). However tagging this with MusicBrainz had it listed under the Artist Maurice Jarre. So I went about trying to fix this.

1. In the 8 MIle Soundtrack, there are three entries that have Various Artists in them.
Album Artist
Album Artist Sort Order
albumartists
So I changes these for the Ghost Soundtrack, and refreshed my Music library, and it then created 2 entries for Various Artists (One had 8 Mile, the other had Ghost).

2. To fix this, I had to add the following MusicBrianz ID (89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377) under the MusicBrainz Release Artist ID. If you look up this ID, it points to
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/89ad4ac3-...509c546377
which is MusicBrainz section for Various Artists.

Now I have both Albums (8 Mile and Ghost), listed under Various Artists, and the best part, I got poster and fanart from (https://fanart.tv/artist/89ad4ac3-39f7-4...s-artists/) that showed up (I believe this is from some add-on from the MQ7 skin I am using).

So Now I believe I will have to add this above to all my Various Artists compilations I have before adding them to my Library. Will test that next.

[DaveBlake]

Kodi uses tags to create the music library, not file location or folder layout (can I have a pound for everytime I repeat that).

Yes Musicbrainz and many individuals will tag a soundtrack with a single composer giving the name of the composer as album artist - it is a crossover areas between pop and Classical music.

As you have found if you edit the ALBUMARTIST or ARTIST tag then you need to ensure that the MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID (called release artist id by Picard) and MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID tags are edited to match. Not doing so is the most common reason music tagged with mbids goes wrong when scanned into the library. Likewise the ALBUMARTISTS, ARTISTS, ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT tags need to be consistent.

Also you must ensure "Prefer online information" remains disabled, otherwise scraping the album will reaply the album artists and artists Musicbrainz has for that Muiscbrainz album id.

So Now I believe I will have to add this above to all my Various Artists compilations I have before adding them to my Library. Will test that next

You don't have to. If you have not tagged with Musicbrainz id tags then Kodi will still make a reasonable job of putting them into the library, only half my music has mbids (although I am slowly adding to he MB database). It all depends on how important scraping is to you.

[Powerhouse]

@Dave I know I don't have to, but I want it all to look awesome, and work with Kodi the correct way.

So as a refresher, for those that TLDR my other posts.

1. I've upgraded MusicBrainz Picard to version 1.4 (previously all my Music was tagged with Picard 1.3.2).
2. Then I've re-tagged all my Music with Picard 1.4 (except any Music compilations that I have).
3. My Music compilations (Billboard top 100 from 1952 to 2016, Top 80's, 90's 00's, etc) were tagged with Picard 1.3.2, with some changes.
A. Artists were left intact, but the compilations were set as Various Artists.
B. Album Artwork was change for all songs to match a single Artwork image.

So my thought process is, I will import each compilation into MusicBrainz Picard 1.4, and make the changes listed above that I used to fix the Ghost Soundtrack.
Album Artist---------------------->Changed to Various Artists
Album Artist Sort Order------>Changed to Various Artists
albumartists---------------------->Changed to Various Artists
and under "MusicBrainz Release Artist ID" I will put in the MusicBrianz Picard ID for Various Artists-------------------->89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377

So the Artists will still be listed as the Actual Artist. Why you might ask? Because, as I said I use the Skin Aeon MQ7, which has some Add-on's such as Artist Slideshow, so If the Artist is listed, it will scrap Artwork for that Artist when playing that Artists music. My testing with the Album 8 Mile and Ghost have proved this (as I don't have any Albums or Artwork for the Righteous Brothers, yet when I played their tract in the Ghost Soundtrack, Artist Slideshow scrapped their Fanart, and displayed it as a Slideshow while the song played (which looks very cool).