[.Erich]

Hi

I'm just curious how kodi gets the information about 'play count' for albums.
Does kodi add each track play count and divide it through the number of total tracks of the album?

Thanks for your time.

[Klojum]

I'm just curious how kodi gets the information about 'play count' for albums.

That information is stored in the music database, in the song table, in the iTimesPlayed field.

Does kodi add each track play count and divide it through the number of total tracks of the album?

That would sound illogical to me. It would get you an average play count per album. That wouldn't be very useful to me.

[DaveBlake]

I'm just curious how kodi gets the information about 'play count' for albums.

Album playcount is determined as the rounded average of the playcounts of all the songs on the album.

[Klojum]

Album playcount is determined as the rounded average of the playcounts of all the songs on the album.

So when you play one very popular song of an album, say, 60 times, and the other songs you play never, the album playcount could still be 2 or 3 for example?

Shouldn't at least all album songs be played at least once for an album to be 'played'?

[DaveBlake]

Shouldn't at least all album songs be played at least once for an album to be 'played'?

No.
This has been talked around many times @Klojum, with all kinds of complex algorthims being suggested and they all have one weakness or another. Hence this simple and pragmatic approach of using average for play count.

I suspect you are thinking of this like videos, and somehow songs on albums are like episodes of TV shows. Don't do that, users access music in a very different way to TV Shows and movies. For starters average duration is very different - each song as 3 mins while video is often 30mins or much more, listening to a whole album is usually less than an hour whereas watching a TV show takes days even if you binge. Users will add to a TV Show as new seasons and episodes are released, albums are much more static - they either have a whole album or they don't. Consequently video has a separate watched/unwatched flag to show where the unwatched seasons/epsodes are located, or even hide something has been watched completely, but music doesn't need that.

Users tend to either play their music as albums (in entirity) or as song lists (with album being irrelevant). Users may want to know what songs are unplayed (although it happens far less than it would with unwatched video) or played the most, and can see that by sorting a songs node by play count, or make a custom node or smart playlist with a rule on playcount.

Those that (mostly) play albums want to be able to see at a glance how often they have "played" each album. It matters less that they played it completely every time, not skipping a track or being interrupted part way through etc., than that most of it was at least started. Using average suits this well.

Yes average could be misleading - play one track of a 10 track album 60 times and the rest never and the album playcount will be 6 - but it is still a reasonable way to compare that album to another where you have played all 10 tracks 6 times. Both have songs from them played 60 times, which songs need not come into the comparison. It is not perfect, but it is a reasonable.

[Klojum]

No.
This has been talked around many times

Okay, I guess I missed those memos :-)

[.Erich]

Thank you @DaveBlake and @Klojum for clarifying the situation.
IMO the approach with the rounded average of the playcounts is good enough.

[dm21912]

Album playcount is determined as the rounded average of the playcounts of all the songs on the album.

So when you play one very popular song of an album, say, 60 times, and the other songs you play never, the album playcount could still be 2 or 3 for example?

Shouldn't at least all album songs be played at least once for an album to be 'played'?

So playing 6 songs on a 10 song album will be enough to trigger an album as being played?

6 / 10 = .6 which rounds up to 1?

[DaveBlake]

So playing 6 songs on a 10 song album will be enough to trigger an album as being played?
6 / 10 = .6 which rounds up to 1?

If you play 6 songs on a 10 song album once each then the album playcount will be 1

Expressed in math functions as ROUND(AVERAGE(song.iTimesPlayed))