[azido]

Hey there,

this one drives me crazy. I Have an Album from Artist "Dance or Die", so naturally i want to bring it into the library. So far atm i added 1272 artists, all going well. But Dance or Die does not appear where it belongs to:


That artist goes between AND ONE and ANDROID LUST!

This is where it should go:

 

Of course, i triple-checked file tagging, it's tagged with nearly bare minimum information:



This is the only album of this artist so far, so there is no interference with another one tagged wrong. There is no artist.nfo nor album.nfo that could have wrong informations in it.
Using ALBUMARTISTSORT does not change anything, tested. There is no sorting rule defined in advancedsettings.xml. Library view is set to sort by artists ascending. Nothing special on my side.

What's the problem? Does Kodi have a problem with "or" ?

I can't imagine the logic in putting it between "and one" and "android". PLease enlighten me

[DaveBlake]

Very weird! A look at your database might reveal what is happening, if you can upload your mymusic82.db to the cloud and post a link here or PM me it then I will take a poke about. Hoping that your using a local SQLite database, if client server then send an export from MariaDB/MySQL (just more messy for me to work with)

[azido]

Very weird! A look at your database might reveal what is happening, if you can upload your mymusic82.db to the cloud and post a link here or PM me it then I will take a poke about.

Yeah indeed. Thanks for looking into it. I've zipped it (yes, it's local) and put it on my google drive - here's the link: Music Database on GD [Edit: link removed now I have data - DaveBlake]

lemme know when you got it.

Edit: found a relationship to AND ONE - there is a best of album where on disc 2 there is a track from DANCE OR DIE. Dunno if it has something to do with the placement near AND ONE, but just so you know what you might see. And One best of album shows up too, when i enter Dance or Die lib. On the other hand, i have several cross-relations with artists albums appearing on another artists page, but no displacement happens.

[Fuchs2468]

Kodi has written an incorrect SortName in the database.
If you delete SortName for „Dance or Die“, it should be displayed in the correct order.

[azido]

Kodi has written an incorrect SortName in the database.
If you delete SortName for „Dance or Die“, it should be displayed in the correct order.

Thank you.

The question still remains: why does Kodi do that?  I have a certain feeling that this has to do with the fact that "Dance Or Die" first appears on "And One" Best of, where i set all tracks belonging to "And One" instead of tagging Disc 2 as "Various Artists". Looking at this section leads to this conclusion:

These are all artists on that Best Of album i'm referring to. 
On the other hand, Oomph! is also in that list, but appears correctly as it should in my library.

Still not logical to me

Edit: used DB Browser to change strSortName to Dance or Die for that entry, worked perfectly. Thanks again.

[azido]

I have an idea: Oomph! is the second artist that appears on And One Best of and has an own entry in my library. But that one works perfect.
Here is the difference:

Oomph! has 2 entries in the db (line 71 as part of that best of album, no MusicBrainzArtistID and assigned to And one, and line 1493 with a MusicBrainzArtisID and no assigned sortname.)
Dance or Die only has ONE entry, line 77, the one that is part of that best of album, with a MusicbrainzArtistID attached and assigned to And one.

If i'm right, entries with a MusicBrainzArtistID dominate all other entries for the same artist and will have their position based on whatever sorting name is given to that entry.

Remaining question here: why doesn't Dance or Die get it's own second entry like Oomph! got?

[DaveBlake]

Yes I had you database, and I have hidden the link in the post so only mods can see it.
Yes having the wrong artist sort name will be the cause of the behaviour you see. Changing the database is a short term work around, but if you rescan your library the problem will reappear.
However all these artists (and more) have the wrong sort name: "Static Icon", "Ashtrayhead", "Think About Mutation", "Oomph!", "Meathead", "Coptic Rain", "Cubanate", "Dance or Die", "Static Icon", "Snog", "Syntec", "The Northern Territories",
"Nuyorican Soul", "Courtney Pine", "Scarface", "Metalheadz", "Ultra Nate", "Focus", "Shade Of Soul", "Pre Ymo", "Terry Callier", "Shaun Escoffery", "Marcos Valle", "Leæther Strip", "HausHetaere", Mike Ink, Asynton, "Lisa Carbon", "The Bitniks", "Silver Sound", "BASS", "Brown", "The Lisa Carbon Trio", "Superficial Depth", "The Roger Tubesound Ensemble", "Naturalist", "Erik Satin", "Los Sampler's",
"Midisport" etc.

I have a certain feeling that this has to do with the fact that "Dance Or Die" first appears on "And One" Best of, where i set all tracks belonging to "And One" instead of tagging Disc 2 as "Various Artists".

Yes it will be the tagging of this album (and others) that is creating the issue.
It is also the only album with artist "Oomph!", the second artist entry is for "Oomph" (notice no "!") hence the database entries.

My guess would be that you have ARTISTSORT or ALBUMSARTISTSORT tag data that does not relate to the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST values. Can you share your tagging in detail, maybe some of the music files if you can't see a cause when looking yourself.

Other albums to check include: "Aporia", "Prey (Original Game Soundtrack)", "The Remix Album Volume 1", "The Enemy", "Projects" and albums by "Atom".

[azido]

Yes I had you database, and I have hidden the link in the post so only mods can see it.

Thank you.

Yes it will be the tagging of this album (and others) that is creating the issue.
It is also the only album with artist "Oomph!", the second artist entry is for "Oomph" (notice no "!") hence the database entries.

Aah damned, i thought i were close to the solution

My guess would be that you have ARTISTSORT or ALBUMSARTISTSORT tag data that does not relate to the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST values. Can you share your tagging in detail, maybe some of the music files if you can't see a cause when looking yourself.

Maybe i don't get you here. What you mean with that? Like "Albumartistsort" not the same value as an existing "Artist"? So it's like David Bowe as an artist and Bowie, David as albumartistsort, right? And simply no albumartistsort as long as it would be the same as the artist.

Lemme explain on the example of And One what my intention was:

Best of is a double cd. Disc 1 contains best of songs. Disc 2 is a bonus and contains remixes done by And One for static icon, oomph!, snog, dance or die, you name it. It's still work by And One and of course part of that release. I wanted to make sure Disc 2 will not be recognized as a standalone compilation but as a product by And One. That's why i intentionally added And One as Albumartistsort criteria for it.
What about using ALBUMARTISTORT tag like eg. "And One Remix Static Icon"? Will it still be recognised as a product by And One AND not confusing Static Icon as an artist?

That would be the same approach i had for my Harthouse (Label) releases where i simply used "Harthouse HH (catnr)" as ALBUMARTISTSORT. All tagged as those are inside the Harthouse lib entry.

Seems like being too much (not really needed) work. Same would go i.e. for that 4hero album which indeed is a 4hero double cd but all tracks are just remixes for other artists (like Nujorican Soul you found)
Would it be easier to not use any ALBUMARTISTSORT tag for that situations and instead just set MusicBrainzAlbumID tag with the correct value (if that exists)?

Other albums to check include: "Aporia", "Prey (Original Game Soundtrack)", "The Remix Album Volume 1", "The Enemy", "Projects" and albums by "Atom".

 Thanks for your deep exploration That soundtrack i might have missed, normally i used composer / soundtracks as ALBUMARTISTSORT as here i wanted to make both entries visible in the library view. Remix album is explained above (4hero) and Atom is the complete discography of that artist released by himself as atom but includes all other projects he ever made but now re-released as "atom". Seemed logical to me to group them together by ALBUMARTISTSORT.

Finally: say i don't have a musicbrainz ID but an album like that And One Best of with 2 cds, one being a compilation of remixes. What would be your decision how to tag it?
Would you use artist = And One, trackname = original artist - nameoftrack? I think if i do this, i'll break the way Kodi shows on which albums my artists are also available beside their own ones.

Thanks again for your participation.

[azido]

Okay. Maybe my thoughts were too complicated?

Tried the And One - Best of tagging way simpler now: The artists are the real ones, but simply Albumartist became And One. Nothing else added, no SORT option at all.
Scanned in, went to the correct place, both discs show up under And One - and all included artists like dance or die, snog, static icon stay where they are.

Is that the correct approach?

So, if i get you right i should only use ARTISTSORT or ALBUMARTISTSORT if i plan any sorting that differs from the default ARTIST / ALBUMARTIST entry, correct?

That makes much more sense now.

[DaveBlake]

Okay. Maybe my thoughts were too complicated?

Yes, just a bit
Forgive me but I decided not to try and make sense of that previous post!

Tried the And One - Best of tagging way simpler now: The artists are the real ones, but simply Albumartist became And One. Nothing else added, no SORT option at all.
Scanned in, went to the correct place, both discs show up under And One - and all included artists like dance or die, snog, static icon stay where they are.

Is that the correct approach?

So, if i get you right i should only use ARTISTSORT or ALBUMARTISTSORT if i plan any sorting that differs from the default ARTIST / ALBUMARTIST entry, correct?

Let me try to give you a different way to look at it. The music library isn't just a copy of tag data from music, it processes the tag data and intelligently builds a relational database of artists, albums and songs (not music files). So when music file has ARTISTSORT or ALBUMARTISTSORT tags values these are used along with the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags to populate artist data, not song data nor album data. A relationship is also created between that artist, album and song and those relationships are what Kodi uses when you browse your music library.

So with tagging you are providing unique information about the song, and lots of repeated information about the artist e.g. sort name, and repeated information about the album e.g. year, genre. When creating an artist or album Kodi takes the first value it is given for sort names or album year, which does make the library slightly dependant on file scanning order, but that is worth the end result of the power of a relational database as a library (over a collection of files).

It is absolutely fine for ALBUMARTIST and ARTIST to be different on a music file, that is different number of artists e.g. having a track with a guest artist or completely different, as you want to do with the bonus mixed tracks. ALBUMARTIST and TITLE that are taken to identify the album (or Musicbraind Release Id tags, but mbids is another matter entrely). What Kodi expects is that the values of ARTISTSORT or ALBUMARTISTSORT tags relate to the artists named in the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags.

So on "Dance or Die" I would tag those mix tracks with for example:
ALBUMARTIST: "And One"
ALBUMARTISTSORT: - no value as "And One" is fine for sorting
ARTIST: "The Northern Territories"
ARTISTSORT: "Northern Territories, the" (although the article handling in Kodi will deal with the "The" depending on language settings)

When tagging use the ARTISTSORT and/or ALBUMARTISTSORT tags to provide sort names for the artists named in the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags respectively. You don't have to do so in every file, but Kodi will apply the first non-empty values it is given as the defining sort name value for that artist across the entire library.

I hope that makes things clearer.

[azido]

Forgive me but I decided not to try and make sense of that previous post!

Wise decision

When tagging use the ARTISTSORT and/or ALBUMARTISTSORT tags to provide sort names for the artists named in the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags respectively. You don't have to do so in every file, but Kodi will apply the first non-empty values it is given as the defining sort name value for that artist across the entire library.

I hope that makes things clearer.

That bold line is the one i never was aware of. I thought the "boundary" is inside that one album and does not affect the next one. I got for example 2 different artist entries for the artist "The Neon Judgement" where the first album simply has no ARTISTSORT tag, so kodi puts it to N (as per setting "The" was ignored), but the second one has ARTISTSORT "Neon Judgement, The" tag. Then i had "The Neon Judgement" and "Neon Judgement, The" side by side in my lib. So i thought i have to use ARTISTSORT on both or none to get that fixed.

So basically you say if i apply a sorting tag to the very first release of an artist, i can skip adding that tag to all follow ups as they will "automatically" be assigned to the 1st sorting definitions? (of course, for data consistency i won't do this, but theoretically?)
What defines an entry as "first"? 1st release scanned into the library, 1st(oldest) album of an artist, 1st appearance in the database? Can i force one to be the 1st, hence be the "definer"?

[scott967]

This might be in the category of TMI, but the Kodi library might be better thought of as a list of
"contributors".  A contributor has a name string and a role as minimum, with a many to many relation to songs and albums.  ARTIST is one possible (and important) role, as is ALBUMARTIST (again important) but also various other roles are defined, based on historical tag definitions such as ENSEMBLE, CONDUCTOR, COMPOSER etc. and also user defined roles.

During a scan (not sure but sources might be scanned in order of sources.xml definition? and then within source by alpha folder order recursively depth first) tags are retrieved and attempted to be matched to those understood by Kodi.  Unmatched tags are logged for possible review.

Kodi uses the musicbrainz interpretation of an artist tag as a "credit" (string as found on a release documentation) so Kodi attempts to extract an artist name string (or names) from the tag credit.  To assist in this, Kodi allows use of a non-standard tag named ARTISTS with a strict format to ensure the correct name strings are obtained.  This also applies to ALBUMARTIST, there is available an ALBUMARTISTS tag to help Kodi find album artist name strings.  There is no such capability for other roles, so you need to be careful in what name string you use in these other roles to prevent mis-matching or dupes.  Note that Kodi library does not have a notion of "alias" names.

Because of the importance of the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST roles, a global unique ID can be assigned in tags to prevent mis-matching or dupes for these two roles.  The assumption is that you will use the ID as assigned in the musicbrainz database but that isn't strictly required (using the musicbrainz ID is key because the online database api that Kodi scrapers access use that ID for constructing queries).

Mistaken IDs is one way the library can get messed up.  The library will never allow multiples of a particular ID, but you can have any number of identical name strings, each with a different ID (as a consequence of this second situation, if you have multiple artists with the same name you must use the desired ID in every song file with that artist as having an artist name with no corresponding ID will not guarantee that the correct artist is associated with that song file).

The ARTISTSORT is an "attribute" of an artist, just like birthdate.  Each artist has a single artistsort, just like birthdate (either may be null), and there is no requirement that artistsort is unique library-wide.

scott s.
.

[azido]

This might be in the category of TMI,

For me it can never be too much information Thanks for your post.

(as a consequence of this second situation, if you have multiple artists with the same name you must use the desired ID in every song file with that artist as having an artist name with no corresponding ID will not guarantee that the correct artist is associated with that song file).

Understood. One question though: let's use John Williams as an example. We all know there is more than one artist with that name. If i don't want to use musicbrainz IDs beforehand, which tag can i set as that unique id for each of the "contributors" to seperate them? ARTISTSORT will naturally be the same for both - "Williams, John". Same for ALBUMARTISTSORT. Do i need to add something to the sort tag, i.e. "[2]" (the way discogs does it if i remember right) or can i use another tag to differentiate?

[azido]

Other albums to check include: albums by "Atom".

For god's sake, now i got you!

I had about 15 or more different "artists" (project names or better aliases) assigned to one ARTISTSORT entry "Atom". This is why i.e. The Lisa Carbon Trio will never get it's correct entry in the lib even when i scan in more albums, as it is already assigned to (or more precisely defined as) Atom.
All i had to do is to only set the ALBUMARTIST to Atom for all that releases under the name Atom and then as soon as i insert more Albums by The Lisa Carbon Trio there will also be a reference to the releases that are made under Atom in the information page.

Pooh. You guys enlightened me, thank you.

[azido]

I have to admit musicbrainz database might have grown "a bit" since my last try in 2008 or so.. Using it right now i don't have so much trouble with it as i had before.