Weird sorting/tag problem
#1
I've got a weird problem with sorting of artists. Am using albumartists only and sort by sortname. All albums tagged with MBIDs.

Artist "Max Mutzke" gets sorted in between letters "F", "Klaus Lage" gets sorted in between letters "E" and artist "Max Herre" always appears as "Max" only. It doesn't only occurs with german artists, only examples. 

Yatse is doing the sorting correct!

Fresh .kodi dir. Set to german prior to scanning the source and reassured that MBIDs are valid.

Image

There are no errors thrown in debug log when scanning the source. Only "unrecognized tags", like this:
Code:
2019-11-25 21:23:18.058 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized ID3 frame detected: TBPM
2019-11-25 21:23:18.058 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized ID3 frame detected: TDOR
2019-11-25 21:23:18.058 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized ID3 frame detected: TKEY
2019-11-25 21:23:18.058 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized ID3 frame detected: TMED
2019-11-25 21:23:18.058 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized ID3 frame detected: TSRC
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:SCRIPT
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:WORK
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:ASIN
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:originalyear
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:BARCODE
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:CATALOGNUMBER
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Status
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Release Country
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:MusicBrainz Work Id
2019-11-25 21:23:18.059 T:140058841556736 DEBUG: unrecognized user text tag detected: TXXX:MusicBrainz Release Track Id
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#2
Can you provide...

1. Screenshot of listing showing the incorrect sorting
2. Your MyMusicxx.db file. Upload to file sharing site, provide link here. Paste your link in a post then immediately edit your post and delete the link if you want to keep it private. We can still see the link.
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#3
Here are the screenshots:
https://imgur.com/a/DFpkTfv

Klaus Lage = Lage, Klaus
Max = Max Herre = Herre, Max
Alligatoah = Alligatoah
Kurt Raab = Raab, Kurt
Creme de la Creme & Kinderzimmer Productions & Namika <> V
Max Mutzke <> F

and here's (was) the DB:
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#4
Thanks for the data @Uatschitchun , amazing what I can determine by poking about in it.

A lot of artists have what are clearly completely the wrong sort names, hence the odd sorting you see. The big question is how did that happen?

So let the detective work begin....
I can see from the data that you have not used any scrapers, so what it has is determined solely from music file tags (assuming that you have not done updates to the artists using JSON API, which is very unlikely).

When tagging with Picard did you use any additional scripts or plugins?

Picking just one example, Album Artist "Klaus Lage" has sort name = "Engelien, Martin", and artist "Martin Engelien" has sortname = "Lage, Klaus", so values swapped. Martin Engelien is only composer of two songs on an album by "Klaus Lage Band", but Klaus Lage is also a composer of those songs. Perhaps a smoking gun? Can you PM me a link to your music files from "Mit meinen Augen" tracks 2 and 5 so I can try scanning them myself.

Meanwhile I will continue to dig and see if I can see any other patterns. Maybe Kodi heard that you called her a "little diva" ;-)
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#5
(2019-11-26, 12:02)DaveBlake Wrote: Thanks for the data @Uatschitchun , amazing what I can determine by poking about in it.
Show me your DB and I tell you who you are. It's only one genre, so I'm not completely naked Wink

Quote:A lot of artists have what are clearly completely the wrong sort names, hence the odd sorting you see. The big question is how did that happen?
As said, it's a fresh DB with a fresh .kodi dir. Just scanned in...

Quote:When tagging with Picard did you use any additional scripts or plugins?
The only ones active and used are: Wikidata genre, BPM Analyzer and Add-cluster-as-release

Quote:Picking just one example, Album Artist "Klaus Lage" has sort name = "Engelien, Martin", and artist "Martin Engelien" has sortname = "Lage, Klaus", so values swapped. Martin Engelien is only composer of two songs on an album by "Klaus Lage Band", but Klaus Lage is also a composer of those songs. Perhaps a smoking gun? Can you PM me a link to your music files from "Mit meinen Augen" tracks 2 and 5 so I can try scanning them myself.
Link sent

Quote:Maybe Kodi heard that you called her a "little diva" ;-)
which would only confirm me Wink
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#6
Thanks for files @Uatschitchun - I should have asked for track 3 not 2, but interesting tag data anyway and track 5 demonstrated what I suspected could be the case.

For starters Mp3tag can only see the APEv2 tags in thoses files (MP3GAIN/REPLAYGAIN data) and not the ID3v2.4 values, that looks most odd (no artyist, tittle etc.) but is a Mp3tag issue. Looking in Picard I can see all the expected ID3v2.4 tag values (and not the APEv2 ones, were you even aware they were there?). What matters of course is what the taglib library reads, and it sees the ID3v2.4 ones.

The issue is the contents of the COMPOSERSORT tag compared to the COMPOSER tag - the order of artists in these need to match.  In track 5 you have:

COMPOSER = Göran Walger; Klaus Lage; Rolf Klein; Martin Engelien; Wolf Simon
COMPOSERSORT = Engelien, Martin; Klein, Rolf; Lage, Klaus; Simon, Wolf; Walger, Göran

When Kodi decoded this it would pair up the wrong artist and sortnames. As it happens it probably gets the sortname values for Klaus Lage and Martin Engelien when processing track 3, but I expect that has a similar mis-match.

If I read the current Musicbrainz values for track 5 all the tag values match those that you have saved except for COMPOSER.
COMPOSER = Martin Engelien; Rolf Klein; Klaus Lage; Wolf Simon; Göran Walger
Matching the artist name order in the COMPOSERSORT tag

I don't use any Picard plugins, never found any need, but I can't from plugin name alone see why those you listed would cause this. However something has caused the COMPOSER tag value to be in a different order from that given by default now by Picard v2.1.3 and, most significanltly, different from the artist order in COMPOSERSORT.  Any ideas what caused that?

If you lookup this album again at Musicbrainz using Picard does it return different COMPOSER tag values to those saved in the files?

The solution lies in tagging with order of artist in COMPOSERSORT and COMPOSER tags matching. Yes another fussy detail, but I don't see how else Kodi could make sense of the data in these tags, and matching artist order in these tags is the deafult behaviour of Picard.  Try not to grumble too much!

I am really interested to know how the tag values got the way they are, obviously if we can advise others to avoid the issue that would be good.
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#7
This is what Picard shows:
https://imgur.com/a/FR7lDoT
no changed values!

Am using puddletag for tagging, but only for albums without MBID. And yes, I can see all tags there (v2.4, v1.1 and APE). The APE tags could possibly come from mp3gain, but am unsure and I would have to look. But as Kodi reads v2.4, I'm only looking on them.
Quote:However something has caused the COMPOSER tag value to be in a different order from that given by default now by Picard v2.1.3 and, most significanltly, different from the artist order in COMPOSERSORT.  Any ideas what caused that?
No Wink
Only settings I have changed lately in Picard is to use 'standardized artistsnames' and sometimes 'translation if possible' (for Japanese Ska albums).
There are only a few albums/artists that doesn't fit. So if it would be some plugin or setting in Picard, that sorting mismatch would occur more often.

Yes! Found it, I guess...
There's a setting under 'Tags': "Preserve these tags from being cleared or overwritten with MusicBrainz data". Somehow, don't ask me how, there was an entry "composer". Don't know how it got there. Some right-clicking probably ... ;(
After removing it, Picard looks like this now:
https://imgur.com/undefined

What is still unsolved now, is how the mis-ordering came into the tags? Maybe the order of COMPOSERs changed and COMPOSERSORT, too, but as the COMPOSER tag was being preserved, they differed from that time on?

That means, re-tagging all music to be sure... I'll start with the ones in the DB I sent to you, for to see, if it solves the sorting.

Thx so far, will report back!
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#8
(2019-11-26, 16:54)Uatschitchun Wrote: Yes! Found it, I guess...
There's a setting under 'Tags': "Preserve these tags from being cleared or overwritten with MusicBrainz data". Somehow, don't ask me how, there was an entry "composer". Don't know how it got there. Some right-clicking probably ... ;(
After removing it, Picard looks like this now:

What is still unsolved now, is how the mis-ordering came into the tags? Maybe the order of COMPOSERs changed and COMPOSERSORT, too, but as the COMPOSER tag was being preserved, they differed from that time on?
OK, good it makes some sense even if we don't have an extact knowledge of events.
I can't see any change in the order of composers for that track in the edit history at Musicbrainz. Composer entries were made for the song in Jan 2017, but I guess there could have been a merge of data in 2018 that tied the song to that recording/release. But whatever happened it was widespeard change, as the wrong sortname does seem to effect a large number of artists. Perhaps Musicbrainz changed the order they returned composer data, but your setting meant you only pciked up the COMPOSERSORT change and not the matching COMPOSER. Who knows?


(2019-11-26, 16:54)Uatschitchun Wrote: That means, re-tagging all music to be sure... I'll start with the ones in the DB I sent to you, for to see, if it solves the sorting.
A Picard tagging refeash should not be too painful I hope, although your vast collection all tasks are laborious. It is only those tagged with Picard that are effected, oh and only those tracks with more than one composer not that I can think of an easy way to identify them.

Good luck!
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#9
Personally, I only use artist.nfo for sort names as I find MB seems to cause me more problems than it solves.

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
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#10
Ok, so after re-tagging I conclude:
There's only one way to prevent sorting and artist naming issues when tagging with picard:
Quote:Use standardized artist names: Check to only use standard Artist names, rather than Artist Credits
If not using this setting, Kodi takes the first name for a new MBID as the artist's name. If this is an "Artist Credit", this gets used as Artist name throughout your music collection.
Problem: Even if the artist appears as composer, instrumentalist, etc. with an Artist Credit, this applies.

Example:
I had the artist "Max Herre" only appear as "Max" although all his albums were correctly tagged with "Max Herre" as albumartist. I found out that there's another album where he appears as composer under the name "Max". As this album was read in prior to the album of "Max Herre", there only was "Max" as Artist in the library.

I don't really like this behavior, as using standardized artist names reduces the variability widely. Instead of "Muddy Waters & Friends" there's only "Muddy Waters" left. My suggestion would be to overwrite composers, etc. if there appears an albumartist with a same MBID, so that albumartist names have priority.
I think it's important to reflect the variety of artists names somehow as they represent epoches or styles. Example? "Prince" aka T.A.F.K.A.P, Love Symbol, etc. ...
In regard to Prince these are all "aliases", not separate artists. So when using standardized Artist names, we loose T.A.F.K.A.P & Love Symbol and only get Prince.
As another example we have "Snoop Dog". His alter ego "Snoop Lion" (his reggae side project) has an own MBID and it's not an alias or Artist Credit.
A third example would be the german Rap producer "Farholt". He started a solo-project with as "Fuchy". In my eyes its a need to separate the producer from the artist. That would only be possible when _not_ using standardized artist names.
It even is not possible to decide on an "per album basis" if to use standardized artist names or artist credits, because as soon as the artist appears on another album as composer, instrumentalist, writer, texter, whatever, one has to decide on that album, too....

So, as MB's data is all but consistent in regards to how arists or aliases or alter egos, etc. are handled, a "per album" decision is all but convenient and nearly impossible to fetch all "roles" on other releases and scanning in media in a distinct order for to get the artist name correct (like we have it with "Various artists") is even no solution.

Hm... !?
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#11
@Uatschitchun I have not dug through everything (just looked quickly while waiting for things to build) , but I think you are wrong in at least some of your conclusions.
 
Quote:I had the artist "Max Herre" only appear as "Max" although all his albums were correctly tagged with "Max Herre" as albumartist. I found out that there's another album where he appears as composer under the name "Max". As this album was read in prior to the album of "Max Herre", there only was "Max" as Artist in the library.
I think the reason you have "Max" in your library is because of how a track called "God is a Music" on "Blast Action Heroes" album is tagged. That has "Max" as the second artist value (paired correctly with mbid) and as the first time that artist entry is created that is the artist name used. It is nothing to do with composer tag, composers only get matched up on name only as no mbid is provided.

Perhaps it is simplistic to take the first artist name scanned of the many alias names you could have in your tagging, but I don't see what would be a better approach. I would not set Picard to only using standard names myself, but it is up to you what you prefer. Using Musicbrainz ids to gather the artist alias into one logical entry makes the most sense to me, but all MB data is only as consistent as the users that enter it make it.
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#12
(2019-11-30, 17:25)DaveBlake Wrote: @Uatschitchun I have not dug through everything (just looked quickly while waiting for things to build) , but I think you are wrong in at least some of your conclusions.
 
Quote:I had the artist "Max Herre" only appear as "Max" although all his albums were correctly tagged with "Max Herre" as albumartist. I found out that there's another album where he appears as composer under the name "Max". As this album was read in prior to the album of "Max Herre", there only was "Max" as Artist in the library.
I think the reason you have "Max" in your library is because of how a track called "God is a Music" on "Blast Action Heroes" album is tagged. That has "Max" as the second artist value (paired correctly with mbid) and as the first time that artist entry is created that is the artist name used. It is nothing to do with composer tag, composers only get matched up on name only as no mbid is provided.
Ok, yes, I was wrong here, sorry for that!
Otoh, if composers, etc. only get matched up by name, why do I have names showing up twice under roles?!

Quote:Perhaps it is simplistic to take the first artist name scanned of the many alias names you could have in your tagging, but I don't see what would be a better approach. I would not set Picard to only using standard names myself, but it is up to you what you prefer. Using Musicbrainz ids to gather the artist alias into one logical entry makes the most sense to me, but all MB data is only as consistent as the users that enter it make it. 
I don't like using standardized artist names either, but it's the only way I see to prevent mis-namings (like the above Max-example).
Gathering aliases under one artist name makes sense to me, too! A solution could be to replace an artists name bound to an MBID if it appears as an albumartist with a different name?
No one wants all albums of Prince be summed up under the artist "T.A.F.K.A.P" only because it was the first one scanned in...
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#13
Prefering alias name given when artist is given as an album artist is a possibility, although you still get different alias names between albums too.  Perhaps weighted use instead? Another approach would be to gather all the alias names and let the user pick/edit the one they want to use, although that could be quite involved to implement nicely and manual editing is only viable for small libraries, big ones want intelligent automation. Libraries grow organically, new music being added over time without a rescan of the older stuff, so having an artist name change after it was created could also create issues e.g. naming of folder for local art.

I would like the library content to be invariant to the order in which music files are scanned, I have managed to make it much better than it was when I arrived but it isn't perfect. The more clever the process gets the harder it can be for a user to see where the results came from, perhaps it is complex enough? One could always say it is down to consistent tagging,  Musicbrainz giving alias names within a file not withstanding.
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#14
Three ideas on that:

1.) If scanning results in one ID with different names (aliases/artist credits), Kodi could ask the user what name it should use. Possible would be to scrape the standardized artist name from MB and offer that as choice, too. Together with the possibility to enter a custom name it would lead to:
  1. use one of the aliases
  2. use standardized artist name
  3. use custom name
2.) As we have Boxsets, we have another node. Using this for aliases could result in:
Prince
 |-TAFKAP
 |      |-Album1
 |      |-Album2
 |-Love symbol
 |      |-Album1
 |-Prince
 |      |-Album1
 |      |-Album2
 |      |-Album3

So there are subnodes like CDs with Boxsets for every alias.

Adding another setting, analog to Albumartists onlý <-> Album- & Trackartists, being Standardized Artist only <-> Standardized & Aliases. If using the later, the artists node would include aliases as separate artists.

3.) Combination of 1.) & 2.)  (which would be my favorite Wink

Nevertheless, an artist credit may not be tied to an MBID as name within Kodi (if Max Herre appears credited as Max only, it should be clear to be a credit and not the name).

Thoughts?
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#15
This is a case where artist sort name can help.  Sort name is a type of alias.  If the identical sort name is used with all the variant artist names, then at least they all appear together when sorted by artist sort name.  But you need some skin support as it is confusing if the skin doesn't show the sortname.

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
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