[eagle72]

Hi there,

I'm struggeling with the multi-valued tags 'artist' in combination with 'genre'.
Apparently KODI reads both tags differently even when the seperator is the same in both tags.

I'm using MediaMonkey to add tag information to my music files.
Mediamonkey has a default "; " as seperator.

For example I tagged a song with
artist: Roger Waters; David Gilmour
genre: Rock; Prog Rock

I found that in advancedsettings.xml I can tell KODI what the seperator is.
Scenario 1:
<itemseparator>; </itemseparator>
This setting results in the KODI music library in:
artist: Roger Waters/David Gilmour   (a single valued tag)
genre: Rock   and     genre: Prog Rock (a multi-valued tag)

This '/' within the artist tag information in the KODI library is a strange result.
Where does this '/' come from? So then I tried scenario  2.

Scenario 2:
<itemseparator>/</itemseparator>
This setting results in the KODI music library as follows:
artist: Roger Waters  and artist: David Gilmour     (a multi-valued tag)  
genre: Rock; Prog Rock   (a single valued tag)

In this scenario the seperator setting works perfectly for the artist(s) but fails for the genre.

The problem with this is that I cann't get both multi-tagged tags operational within the KODI Music Library.
How can I fix this?

Thanks in Advance for any insights!

René

PS. When I read the tags in other software I get this:
MP3tag: artist Roger Waters/David Gilmour     genre: Rock; Prog Rock  (Same interpretation as KODI)
File properties Windows Explorer (Details): artist: Roger Waters; David Gilmour    genre: Rock; Prog Rock (Same content as MediaMonkey)

[HeresJohnny]

Try using additionally

xml:
		<artistseparators>

			<separator> feat. </separator>

			<separator> Feat. </separator>

			<separator> with </separator>

			<separator> ft. </separator>

			<separator> Ft. </separator>

			<separator> / </separator>

		</artistseparators>

[DaveBlake]

@eagle72 what format music files do you have mp3, FLAC or something else? If mp3 whch tagging format are you using ID3 v2.3 (single frame) or v2.4 (multi-frame)? It would help me to know and identify the issue.

There are a number of factors that could be contributing to your confiusing experience.

The way that tagging software shows tag values  and lables the tag name is not always exactly the same way it has saved entered the metadata. For example multi-frame  tags are shown by Picard as a string with semi-colons e.g "rock; prog rock" even though there are no separators in the metadata because separate values of "rock" and "prog rock" are stored. Also even if you use a multi-frame format there is nothing stopping you or the tagger from entering mulstiple values into a single string.

So when you say you tagged
artist: Roger Waters; David Gilmour
genre: Rock; Prog Rock

it is hard to know exactly what you did without seeing the music files. I don't know what Mediamonkey does, but from your results with Mp3tag it looks like you could be using a multi-frame format with artist having two values, but genre saved as one. I am curious, so if you are able to upload an example somewhere then that would be good.

Then there is the fact that while Kodi applies the <itemseparator> (a single value) to all tags it may be trying to splt ,multiple values from a single string, it also has an <artistseparator> setting that can have many values and is applied only to ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags. So you could set <itemseparator> to "; " for genre splitting, and add " / " (or even "/" if that is what Musicmonkey has done and you don't have any "AC/DC" in your collection) as an <artistseparator>

It is also possible that you have more than one tag format writen into the file, one single frame and the other multi e.g. v1 and v2.4, that could be the cause of odd separator behaviour.

Finally you could add an ARTISTS tag that definitely has two values or really is "artist 1" + separator + "artist 2", and then the artist can be set to whatever you want to see displayed when the track plays.

Provide a file if you can, and certainly the file and tagging format(s) you are using and I should be able to determine what is getting knotted up.

[scott967]

For artist in mp3 v2.3 tags, MediaMonkey shows you your defined separator (default is "; ") in the UI, but "under the hood" what actually gets stored is artist/artist as that's what the mp3 spec requires.

scott s.
.

[DaveBlake]

Ah, there you go, thanks Scott.

You have a number of options @eagle72 ,
a) Use ID3 v2.4 (multi-frame format) unless you really need v2.3 for other older players.
b) Tag using Picard (and with mbid tags that will make scraping of additional artist and album info and art more effificent) or Mp3tag using a consistent separator.
c) Manually adjust the tagging for multiple artist (album or song) music files
d) Add "/" as an <artistseparator> and avoid "AC/DC", with "; " as the <itemseparator>

[eagle72]

Try using additionally

xml:
 <artistseparators>

<separator> feat. </separator>

<separator> Feat. </separator>

<separator> with </separator>

<separator> ft. </separator>

<separator> Ft. </separator>

<separator> / </separator>

</artistseparators>

Yes! Thanks, that's it! 

<itemseparator>; </itemseparator>
<artistseparators>
      <separator>/</separator>
</artistseparators>

Took KODI a while to rebuild the library, but it works like a charm.

Dave, also thanks for your analysis. Apperently some tag-tools like Mediamonkey and Microsoft Explorer show a different seperator then that is actually saved in the mp3-file.