[bilgepump]

I've been trying to get my music displayed in Kodi and have made a lot of progress, but I'm having some issues that I can't really figure out and would appreciate any help.

1. My download computer is separate from my media computer. With the artist information, if I export the music library to separate files, then I get "fanart" and "folder" .jpg files and an artist.nfo in the folder for the artist. My download computer shows everybody who has a song on the (many) compilation albums. Where does the information and photo for those artists go? Is it exported? If so, where to?

2. Some of the albums haven't "gone right". I've used musicbrainz picard successfully with a lot of albums, but some have "sucked up" the wrong information (as in right person, but wrong album, or they've left one of a multi-cd set out) and I've managed to save it without realizing it was wrong. I've fixed the tags where it's wrong using the MP3Tag program, but Kodi doesn't seem to pay any attention to that, but is still using the musicbrainz tags. Is there a way of "nuking" the musicbrainz tags and getting kodi just to use the basic tags that I've corrected? I tried deleting the value for the disc id in musicbrainz, but it won't delete.

3. Using musicbrainz, sometimes I've found the album manually and have the discid, but in "lookup" it says no matching releases are found and I have to search in the browser. I do that, then I'm supposed to drag over my files and they are supposed to match up. When I do that, instead of just finding the track name, it's returned about a dozen with the same track name, none of which is green, they are all partly red/pink. I've found the exact album, and all the tracks are correct, is there a way to get it to just "suck up" the information using the disc id? Also, the instructions for musicbrainz says to use the "tagger" icon when you've found the album, but if I press on that it says "nothing to see here".

4. When I've gone "refresh" on an artist on my download computer, it's refreshed to somebody else. (for example, sarah vaughan is now verdi, and mozart is cliff richard). How can I "nuke" the wrong information and get it to have the right person again?

If anyone can help, I'd be grateful. I'm a bit (lot) confused as to tags and thumbnails and where everything is. The video section of Kodi seems much more straightforward.

[DaveBlake]

1. My download computer is separate from my media computer. With the artist information, if I export the music library to separate files, then I get "fanart" and "folder" .jpg files and an artist.nfo in the folder for the artist. My download computer shows everybody who has a song on the (many) compilation albums. Where does the information and photo for those artists go? Is it exported? If so, where to?

I take it that you mean that Kodi is running on a different device to where the music files are located.

Only those artists that have sucessfully scraped online or NFO data get exported. Kodi tries to identify a unique folder for each one (that folder underneath which all music by that artist is contained), however the algorithm can not cope with song artists on compilations or featured on albums by other artists, or albums with multiple artists. The artist.NFO, fanart and art for different artists ike this all tend up with the same folder, so the files get overwritten and end up with the data for the last artist.

It is a long standing design flaw.

2. Some of the albums haven't "gone right". I've used musicbrainz picard successfully with a lot of albums, but some have "sucked up" the wrong information (as in right person, but wrong album, or they've left one of a multi-cd set out) and I've managed to save it without realizing it was wrong. I've fixed the tags where it's wrong using the MP3Tag program, but Kodi doesn't seem to pay any attention to that, but is still using the musicbrainz tags. Is there a way of "nuking" the musicbrainz tags and getting kodi just to use the basic tags that I've corrected? I tried deleting the value for the disc id in musicbrainz, but it won't delete.

When you say " fixed the tags" what did you do? It is better to retag these files using Picard and ensure that you get the right album, and if it is missing from Musicbrainz then contribute to the community resource.

If there are Musicbrainz id tags in your music files then Kodi will use them.

If you are going to manually edit in Mp3tag instead then you need to be careful and ensure that you remove all the Musicbrainz id tags, or that what you change names and ids match.

The library contents is cumulative, using mbids once it has them. If tagging has been messed with then to unscramble the library once the tags have been sorted out you may need to drop the source, clean the library, and add the source scanning from scratch.

3. Using musicbrainz, sometimes I've found the album manually and have the discid, but in "lookup" it says no matching releases are found and I have to search in the browser. I do that, then I'm supposed to drag over my files and they are supposed to match up. When I do that, instead of just finding the track name, it's returned about a dozen with the same track name, none of which is green, they are all partly red/pink. I've found the exact album, and all the tracks are correct, is there a way to get it to just "suck up" the information using the disc id? Also, the instructions for musicbrainz says to use the "tagger" icon when you've found the album, but if I press on that it says "nothing to see here".

Picard question: FWIW I always use browser lookup to ensure Picard finds the exact album I want. With Picard running, the web pages show a green "tagger" icon by items, and click on it populates Picard with that item. Then drag from the left hand list to the right...

Somewhere there is a nice tutorial for Picard with screenshots, but I can't find it today. There must be some small detail that you aren't quite getting right, but I don't know what. Maybe look on youtube for Picard guide.

4. When I've gone "refresh" on an artist on my download computer, it's refreshed to somebody else. (for example, sarah vaughan is now verdi, and mozart is cliff richard). How can I "nuke" the wrong information and get it to have the right person again?

I would guess from the above that you have messed up the tagging especially the mbid tags, and so the library is scambled. Drop the music source(s), clean the library (from settings), and start again. But first get the taging sorted, especially those that you have manually edited.

[bilgepump]

Thanks Dave

I take it that you mean that Kodi is running on a different device to where the music files are located.

Kodi's on both and a copy of my music files too, but I don't use the download computer for listening or using other than "internet stuff".

Only those artists that have sucessfully scraped online or NFO data get exported. Kodi tries to identify a unique folder for each one (that folder underneath which all music by that artist is contained), however the algorithm can not cope with song artists on compilations or featured on albums by other artists, or albums with multiple artists. The artist.NFO, fanart and art for different artists ike this all tend up with the same folder, so the files get overwritten and end up with the data for the last artist.

Ok, thanks. I'm not too bothered, I'm just trying to understand how things work and to get my library looking "pretty". (If there was was a folder for each of the "compilation artists", would their info be exported too?)

When you say " fixed the tags" what did you do? It is better to retag these files using Picard and ensure that you get the right album, and if it is missing from Musicbrainz then contribute to the community resource.

I had some cds that didn't have the track names on them when I copied them into the computer. I figured out the titles, named the files, then used the mp3tag program to put the titles against the songs as tag, and the album name and artist, what track number, what disc they were on. The basic things that are in mp3tag program.

If there are Musicbrainz id tags in your music files then Kodi will use them.

That's the thing, for one of the titles, it doesn't seem to have done that, after I edited the musicbrainz tags with the serial numbers for the disc id.

If you are going to manually edit in Mp3tag instead then you need to be careful and ensure that you remove all the Musicbrainz id tags, or that what you change names and ids match.

That's the thing, I couldn't get rid of the musicbrainz id tags, it didn't delete them when I tried by editing the value and deleting. It just stayed there.

The library contents is cumulative, using mbids once it has them. If tagging has been messed with then to unscramble the library once the tags have been sorted out you may need to drop the source, clean the library, and add the source scanning from scratch.

It tried that, but it still stayed "wrong". Somehow it seems to "remember" that a cd that has "no artist" and "no title" even though I've filled in the tags with its information. Maybe I need to nuke the whole music database table?

Picard question: FWIW I always use browser lookup to ensure Picard finds the exact album I want. With Picard running, the web pages show a green "tagger" icon by items, and click on it populates Picard with that item.

That's the thing, it doesn't. It just says "nothing to see here". I have looked at the tutorial/how to, but it doesn't seem to be working for me (on the "problem" entries, it worked fine on the "non-problem" ones) as it is meant to.

I would guess from the above that you have messed up the tagging especially the mbid tags, and so the library is scambled. Drop the music source(s), clean the library (from settings), and start again. But first get the taging sorted, especially those that you have manually edited.

It's only a couple of albums that are "messed up". Most of them are ok. I thought I had fixed the tagging, but it's still thinking it was how it was before.... Amending the tagging doesn't seem to be recognised by my computer. Once it's in, the computer seems to stop looking at the tagging and if it's different, it doesn't change anything. It doesn't seem possible to "refresh" a title and get it to look again at the amended tags and you can't set a folder to "none" clean the library, then reset it, the way you can with videos when the library gets it wrong/won't scan.

[DaveBlake]

Well I am confused if your problem albums have mbid tags or not (and perhaps so is Kodi?)

In Mp3tag deleting a tag is different from deleting the value of that tag, and I suspect that Picard does not let you delete mbid tags at all (don't know I have not tried).

To delete tags in Mp3tag:
Select the track(s), press Alt+ T, then select the tag to be deleted and click on the red X button.

Manually adding mbids can be fraught, do try to use Picard. What is the mb links for the ones that don't work?

Amending the tagging doesn't seem to be recognised by my computer. Once it's in, the computer seems to stop looking at the tagging and if it's different, it doesn't change anything. It doesn't seem possible to "refresh" a title and get it to look again at the amended tags and you can't set a folder to "none" clean the library, then reset it, the way you can with videos when the library gets it wrong/won't scan.

Kodi will rescan the tags from files that have changed when you click on "Update Library" on the side blade. It checks a hash of data and size, so just ensure that editing tags has changed the file date timestamp.

[bilgepump]

Thanks so much for your time Dave, I appreciate it.

I spent some time last night "fiddling". I need to "fiddle" some more today. I think the crux of my issue insofar as Kodi is concerned is that once it "sees" muscibrainz info, it defaults to that, and won't let it go even if it's wrong. I noticed that the album.nfo files list all of the musicbrainz info, for the wrong ones that would seem to be why they "stay wrong" after amending.
I think part (most?) of it is a "picard problem" rather than a kodi problem. The "kodi problem" (if there is one and it's not all down to me) is that it "sticks" to musicbrainz info that's wrong and it's difficut to say "forget that, start again". I've learnt one thing - I need to be more careful when accepting musicbrainz info. I think part of it is that when I started "playing with it" I didn't realise it was grabbing all of this identifying information of a particular release, I thought that it was just grabbing track titles and album titles and the same basic info as in mp3tag.

Well I am confused if your problem albums have mbid tags or not (and perhaps so is Kodi?)

One of the "problem" albums has some tracks with mbid tags, and some without.

In Mp3tag deleting a tag is different from deleting the value of that tag,

Mp3tag doesn't really cause me problems. It only has a few tags. It's that there is "more info" that picard has stored "elsewhere". The mbid info doesn't display in mp3tag at all, to see "picard's stuff", I have to open picard. It's Picard that won't drop the wrong identifying information.

and I suspect that Picard does not let you delete mbid tags at all (don't know I have not tried).

Yes, it won't let me remove the values that are wrong.

Manually adding mbids can be fraught, do try to use Picard. What is the mb links for the ones that don't work?

One of the "problems" is an album called "Pure" by Hayley Westenra. I found on Picard barcode 028947522027 which is correct insofar as the tracks are concerned, but my cd came with a bonus cd containing 4 tracks, which isn't on Picard. There's another with a bonus cd containing 8 tracks, but mine is the special australian edition, not that english edition. What Kodi has done is replaced track 3 on the main album with track 3 off the bonus disk and not track 3 on the main disk. The second disk just gives me 2 of the tracks. I've gone through the tags and tried to correctly identify the tracks, but Kodi won't "drop" what it's already got. (As for adding my release to Musicbrainz, I don't think I understand well enough what I'm doing to do that, yet, I'm still getting my head around how to use it at all). I'm still "fiddling" to try to get it to "fix itself". I'd really like it to just drop all the musicbrainz info and just use the basic mp3tag info (which I think now is right - or at least right enough to get it into kodi).

Another of the "problem" albums which I think is a "picard only" issue was with barcode 6007689605735, "The Essential Tony Bennett". The listing on Musicbrainz is a US recording, mine is probably an Australian edition, but all the tracks are the same. I tried "lookup" in Picard, it told me there were no matching releases. I put the album in the manual lookup, and found the barcode 6007689605735 album. I dragged over my tracks and got a list with mostly musical notes next to it. 2 of the songs came up with a list underneath of about 18 tracks with that same name. One had a green bar, so I saved that. The other only had red/pink bars. If I tried to save all the entries, it wouldn't save. It would only save the 2 tracks that I had manually selected something for. I ended up getting it into Kodi by manually tagging everything. Kodi has it in there now, that one worked, but I couldn't save it in Picard to "suck up" the tag information from there.

[DaveBlake]

I think the crux of my issue insofar as Kodi is concerned is that once it "sees" muscibrainz info, it defaults to that, and won't let it go even if it's wrong.

How is Kodi meant to know that some of your mbid tags are wrong and need to be ignored?
The music library is based on tags, so get the tagging right.

The "kodi problem" (if there is one and it's not all down to me) is that it "sticks" to musicbrainz info that's wrong and it's difficut to say "forget that, start again".

Simply edit the tags accurately, and remove or edit any album.NFO that contain mbids and click "library update". However if you have really made a mess drop the source, clean the lib, and scan to library again.

I've learnt one thing - I need to be more careful when accepting musicbrainz info. I think part of it is that when I started "playing with it" I didn't realise it was grabbing all of this identifying information of a particular release, I thought that it was just grabbing track titles and album titles and the same basic info as in mp3tag.

Yes Picard does more, and generally does it well, but it can need human intervention to choose the right release from many. Oh and of course is only as good as the community that enters the data.

One of the "problem" albums has some tracks with mbid tags, and some without.

Not going to go well.

Mp3tag doesn't really cause me problems. It only has a few tags. It's that there is "more info" that picard has stored "elsewhere". The mbid info doesn't display in mp3tag at all, to see "picard's stuff", I have to open picard.

Incorrect. Mp3tag will show all the embedded data if you tell it do do so, including the mbid tags. You can edit what columns are shown, but easier to do as I instructed before use the "Extended View" that appears for the selected tracks when you press Alt+T

Please try this, and sort out your tags.

One of the "problems" is an album called "Pure" by Hayley Westenra....
I've gone through the tags and tried to correctly identify the tracks, but Kodi won't "drop" what it's already got.

It is a different release, so needs adding to MB properly. Trying to bodge the tagging from another release is not going to work. I suspect that you have just left a mess of mixed mbid tags, and Kodi is using them, or trying to. BTW to identify MB album entries quote release id, barcode isn't searchable.

(As for adding my release to Musicbrainz, I don't think I understand well enough what I'm doing to do that, yet, I'm still getting my head around how to use it at all). I'm still "fiddling" to try to get it to "fix itself". I'd really like it to just drop all the musicbrainz info and just use the basic mp3tag info (which I think now is right - or at least right enough to get it into kodi).

I understand you feeling that way, but the community will benefit if you get up to doing it. But to delete mbid tags use Mp3tag in the way I previously described, and do so for all the tracks from an album.

[bilgepump]

I suspect that you have just left a mess of mixed mbid tags, and Kodi is using them, or trying to.

No, as I said, there are (or were, I've fixed some of them today) some "problem albums".

I had fixed the tags on some of my "problem entries", but the scanning didn't (seem to) pick up the new information from the tags. Even if you change the source to "local information only", it still scans the online scraper. I had the wrong "best of" album for one of my albums. I found the correct one, amended all the tags, scanned it in to the library. When you go to the album and open it, it is all correct, all the correct tracks, however when you go to "information", it still has the previous information. Refreshing it doesn't change it to the new information, the old information is still displayed.

I managed to get Picard to give me the right information on some of the ones that were giving me grief by manually dragging and dropping each track over and saving. I suspect it had/has an issue with my albums not being the overseas release, but i can't see why exactly the same tracks would differ in any substantial way. When updating/entering info into Musicbrainz, do people use the track length from the cd insert, or from their computers?

As I said, I'll be more careful making sure I get exactly the right musicbrainz entry from now on, having that correct would have saved all of this grief, and I'll learn how to enter any of my "weird and wonderful" lps that aren't already in there(when I get around to copying all of my ancient records and cassettes into the computer).

Thanks again.

[DaveBlake]

I had fixed the tags on some of my "problem entries", but the scanning didn't (seem to) pick up the new information from the tags. Even if you change the source to "local information only", it still scans the online scraper. I had the wrong "best of" album for one of my albums. I found the correct one, amended all the tags, scanned it in to the library. When you go to the album and open it, it is all correct, all the correct tracks, however when you go to "information", it still has the previous information. Refreshing it doesn't change it to the new information, the old information is still displayed.

Unlike video in music there is an important difference between scanning (tags embedded in the music files) and scraping (additional artist and album information from either nfo files or online sources).

On the album info dialog most of the information shown is scraped (not from tags at all) including the track information. In v18 this track listing will be replaced with the songs from your collection, but in v17 and before it is just a scraped list of text. It also sounds like you have an album.nfo file for that album with the Musicbrainz id or url in it (hence it looks online despite "local information only"). The scraper is mis-identifying your album just like Picard did, and hence has the wrong information.

So some of your issue is not about tags at all, just the limitations of the album scraper. One of the reasons for having mbid tags is so that the album release can be correctly identified, title and artist is not enough, and as you have found releases of the same album can vary in track details.

I managed to get Picard to give me the right information on some of the ones that were giving me grief by manually dragging and dropping each track over and saving. I suspect it had/has an issue with my albums not being the overseas release, but i can't see why exactly the same tracks would differ in any substantial way. When updating/entering info into Musicbrainz, do people use the track length from the cd insert, or from their computers?

As I said, I'll be more careful making sure I get exactly the right musicbrainz entry from now on, having that correct would have saved all of this grief, and I'll learn how to enter any of my "weird and wonderful" lps that aren't already in there(when I get around to copying all of my ancient records and cassettes into the computer).

Glad that you are mastering Picard, and yes do contribute to Musicbrainz it is a great free resource. For best practice with track length check the MB documentation.

[meowmoo]

Using Picard's "Add Cluster as Release" plugin, use your existing tags as a starting point for adding releases with the web interface.

https://picard.musicbrainz.org/plugins/

It saves you alot of time, drag your folder into Picard, hit the group button, so you get a folder on the left side in Picard, right click the folder, select plugins -- add cluster as releases, the mb site open in your browser, with all the basic information already added. (Artist, album, tracks, duration) just Google the release date and your good to go.

Also if you right click a album on the right side in Picard you can choose a different release, helpful if the CD Picard use did not match your release

[bilgepump]

The scraper is mis-identifying your album just like Picard did, and hence has the wrong information.

Yes, and it hung onto the incorrect information even after putting all the correct muscibrainz info in.

There's a lot going on with getting the information into the computer. Interesting, but can be a bit frustrating. I'm understanding it better and hopefully won't make any more (or too many more) rookie mistakes. Undoing a mistake is much more difficult than getting it rightin the first place.

For best practice with track length check the MB documentation.

Will do, thanks.

It saves you alot of time,

Thanks for the info, I'll hopefully figure out how to contribute to musicbrainz in relatively short order.

[scott967]

My observation is that it might be better if when scanning a file tag, if there is an mbid conflict with the database, it gets flagged to the user in UI or log, possibly with option to accept the new mbid into the db. Otherwise, only way to update an mbid is to remove all files tagged with the artist/album, do a clean, then re-add the files back into the library.

scott s.
.

[DaveBlake]

My observation is that it might be better if when scanning a file tag, if there is an mbid conflict with the database, it gets flagged to the user in UI or log, possibly with option to accept the new mbid into the db. Otherwise, only way to update an mbid is to remove all files tagged with the artist/album, do a clean, then re-add the files back into the library.

Album musicbrainz ids do not have such a conflict problem. When library update process finds that music files have changed it deletes the songs and album, and creates them anew. So to change the stored song and album mbid simply edit the tags and rescan. The op issue of "changes being ignored" was scraper related - given just title and name the scraper will keep finding the wrong info.

It is artist mbids that can be difficult to change without dropping the source, cleaning and rescanning. Mostly this is because of the cumulative way scanning s done, and because artists are often involved in more than one album. But I don't know how we spot "conflicts", nor how to fix them during automated scanning. Manually unscambling artist mbids is also tricky - replacing the value for an artist would be easy, but splitting an artist into multiples would not.

IMO it is far easier to get the tagging right in the first place. All of the users that I have helped with issues it is generally mis-use of Picard and/or manual edits to mbid tagged music that has lead to problems. But if you can devise an algorithm for tag processing that addresses this issue then do let me know.

Maybe we just need to add info lables for mbids and show them on skins, then it would be easier for the user to see what values Kodi had found and how they had been used?

[bilgepump]

The op issue of "changes being ignored" was scraper related - given just title and name the scraper will keep finding the wrong info.

Aside from the musicbrainz id, is it possible to improve the scraping by other info in the title or basic tags. For example, year of the recording (the way movies does it) or the freedb number or something?

IMO it is far easier to get the tagging right in the first place.

Yes, that's the lesson I've learnt from my "intro to kodi music" and it's how I'm going to approach it in the future (especially now I understand better what's going on with the tags and Picard.)

[scott967]

My observation is that it might be better if when scanning a file tag, if there is an mbid conflict with the database, it gets flagged to the user in UI or log, possibly with option to accept the new mbid into the db. Otherwise, only way to update an mbid is to remove all files tagged with the artist/album, do a clean, then re-add the files back into the library.

Album musicbrainz ids do not have such a conflict problem. When library update process finds that music files have changed it deletes the songs and album, and creates them anew. So to change the stored song and album mbid simply edit the tags and rescan. The op issue of "changes being ignored" was scraper related - given just title and name the scraper will keep finding the wrong info.

It is artist mbids that can be difficult to change without dropping the source, cleaning and rescanning. Mostly this is because of the cumulative way scanning s done, and because artists are often involved in more than one album. But I don't know how we spot "conflicts", nor how to fix them during automated scanning. Manually unscambling artist mbids is also tricky - replacing the value for an artist would be easy, but splitting an artist into multiples would not.

IMO it is far easier to get the tagging right in the first place. All of the users that I have helped with issues it is generally mis-use of Picard and/or manual edits to mbid tagged music that has lead to problems. But if you can devise an algorithm for tag processing that addresses this issue then do let me know.

Maybe we just need to add info lables for mbids and show them on skins, then it would be easier for the user to see what values Kodi had found and how they had been used?

Thanks. I guess in general once an album is added, that's it. But artist of course can be updated from time to time with additional releases. The source problem probably is tagging error, though there might be mb data edits too that affect tags.

I don't think 99.9% of users want to see (or know about) mbid. If it was possible to add a debug level log entry for mbid mismatch on strArtist that at least would clue user or support to the problem. As you suggest then user has to take a few steps to clean out the mbid if it is wrong in the database. Maybe something like a "force rescan" on a track-basis that would update the mbid. Would have to think if that breaks anything (might for addons that rely on mbid).

scott s.
.

[DaveBlake]

Aside from the musicbrainz id, is it possible to improve the scraping by other info in the title or basic tags. For example, year of the recording (the way movies does it) or the freedb number or something?

I am looking at improvements to scraping at the moment (it is giving me a headache!). Sources like TADB and Fanarrt.tv use Musicbrainz release groupd id to help identify albums, and artist name alone is far from unique e.g. MB has 23 bands called "Eclipse". So yes year could help identify a release, so could track count, and the scraper could be improved to use it. In the meantime it is easier to use the UI of Picard and browser lookups etc. to get the correct item, than add such user interaction to Kodi's automated scraping.

IMO it is far easier to get the tagging right in the first place.

Yes, that's the lesson I've learnt from my "intro to kodi music" and it's how I'm going to approach it in the future (especially now I understand better what's going on with the tags and Picard.)

One day someone will make it all work using audio samples (OK if you have music that someone has aleady put into the db). Until that day, it is a matter of good tagging. But people want to do such diverse things with their music collections, I suspect that manual tagging will always need to be supported.