[vicmanpergar]

For me the perfect behaviour would be that Kodi was able to set genres per song basis, just with the tags I saved for each song. Then to take them and set the album genres using those of the songs it contains, and then using those from the albums to set the artist genres. It is what has the most sense to me though i know that would be not possible with actual Kodi.
At the moment I'm not using scrapers nor nfo's, and looking with interest to Kodi 17, though I didn't download it yet.
Time, time, time is what I lack...lol

That is what Kodi currently does.
Well kind of. It does not set artist genre but all the filtering of artist by genre uses the genre of the songs by that artist, as if that was the genre of the artist.

Time is the problem for all of us!

Sorry to the OP, i don't want to hijack the thred, but probably will help us all.
So u mean, without scraping or using nfo's, if songs in one album got the genres:

blabla.mp3 genre A, B
blablabla.mp3 genre A
blablo.mp3 genre A, C,F

Then the album will automatically will get genres A, B, C, F

Plus... If we have these album genres:

Album1 Bla genre A, B, C, F
Album2 Blabla genre A, D

Then the artist will get genres A, B, C, D, F, right?
AND this is only usable with genre field (not styles, moods, or the famous grouping field we talked about once)

Or I'm wrong again?...lol

[DaveBlake]

No worries @vicmanpergar, this thread turned into a discussion of genre, artist, album and song filtering, and how UI works quite early on. I don't think the OP will mind.

From a general user perspective I so want to say yes what you say is right. It is reasonable from what I have said so far, but I have been simplifying a little to aid understanding, now I am going to get exact.

Those of a nervous disposition stop reading now

An example will help, let's say in our music collection we have

Code:

Artist1
  Abum1
     song1 genre A / B
     song2 genre A
     song3 genre A / C / F
  Abum2
     song1 genre D
     song2 genre A / C
     song3 genre B / E

After scanning these music files the Genres node will list genre values A, B, C, D, E, F

When you click on one of the genre values you get a list of artists that have songs with that genre. Artist itself does not have a genre value at all (we have not scraped any, but if we did it would just be displayed on the info screen).

Clicking on any of genres A, B, C, D, E, F would show Artist1.

Then if you click on Artist1, having come from genre X, you will see those albums by artist1 with songs with that genre.
So in our example if we come from genre "A" through Artist1 we will see Album1 and Album2
If we come from genre "D" through Artist1 we will see only Album2

However, just to complicate matters, unlike artists, albums do have genre(s) as derrived from the music files tags stored in the database. This is set to the genre(s) of the last song on that album.

In our example Album1 will have genres A, C, F and Album2 genres B, E stored and show on the album info dialog.

This may seem odd. There is a "Todo" comment in the code "in future we may wish to union up the genres, for now we assume they're the same". To be fair the songs from an album usually do have the same genre, so the assumtion is not too bad. Also the way song genre is used all the time this simplification practically has no impact.

If you should scrape albums from NFO (I don't think the online sources provide genre?) and fetch album genre then this gets written into one part of the database but not another. It will show on album information, but is not used in queries, and the original values derrived from music files will still be there just hidden. But remember none of these actually have an effect on what is fitered. Frankly it is a mess, but not one that users see.

Ok back to our list of albums reached from selecting a genre and then an artist (with songs of that genre). What happens when we click on an album? It show the songs on that album with that genre.

If we started at Genre "D", through Artist1 and Album2 we will see only song1 listed.
If we started at Genre "A", through Artist1 and Album1 we will see song1, song2, and song3.


If you use a remote app (Kore, Yatse, Remote for iOS) or web interface (e.g. Chorus), anything that uses the JSON interface onto Kodi then how that navigates and displays genre may be a bit different to above.

OK, it's safe to come out from behind the sofa now...

[vicmanpergar]

Thanks Dave for the enlightment, honestly, it is in fact a mess, and I would never understand these things if u were not here to tell me, lol

Ok, so , all in all, u can get what u want after all, I mean, selecting a genre will indeed lead u at the end, to the songs that belong to that genre.
What I don't like so much is the idea of an album getting arbitrarily only the last songs genres. It's no sense for me.
From my point of view, artists, even when they can be located in certain genre, they usually move among different styles during their career or even in a single album. I can think of Queen for example, that touched a wide variety of styles. I'm not really tagging each song's genres and styles one by one today (hence, as u say, i'm doing it by complete albums), but it is something I plan to do slowly in the future (HUGE effort).

Btw, genres are scraped, but not always. When I was using the scraper I had it set to Allmusic genres, and I noticed they was being scraped IF the album had an Allmusic link added in Musicbrainz, and people didn't tag it already (not sure about the last, sometimes it didn't work like that and I just quit investigating).

[DaveBlake]

What I don't like so much is the idea of an album getting arbitrarily only the last songs genres. It's no sense for me.
From my point of view, artists, even when they can be located in certain genre, they usually move among different styles during their career or even in a single album. I can think of Queen for example, that touched a wide variety of styles. I'm not really tagging each song's genres and styles one by one today (hence, as u say, i'm doing it by complete albums), but it is something I plan to do slowly in the future (HUGE effort).

Right now it wouldn't matter if albums didn't have genres set from songs at all, but it is something that needs some careful attention.

My current thinking is that initially both artist and album genres should be set as a union of the genres of the songs, and all stored relationally in the database. Anything that changes thoses values for artist or album, e.g. scraping or JSON, should also correctly update all the data entries. The question is say you add some more songs with a different genre for an artist that has had their genre set to something specific (from an NFO), does that genre get added to the artist? Perhaps it would be simpler to have artist and album genre empty until they are explicitly set? Although that means they would be blank unless you scrape.

Then there is the approach suggested by Nuentes, where song genre optionally becomes the union of artist, album and song genres. Turns things upside down, but does have some merits. What I'm not sure of with it is what happens when you have not scraped artist or album genres

Then there is UI behaviour. Current song genre driven behaviour needs to be there for backward compatibility. But would also be nice to be able to find artists or albums with songs with genre X but then see all the albums by that artist or songs on that album with other genre values (how smart playlists work). And nice to be able to see those artists with an artist genre or albums with and album genre regardless of what the songs have.

But say artist1 has genre A, an album1 with genre B and on that album all the songs genre C. Genre values A, B, and C are listed on the Genres node. When you click on genre "C" what artists do you see? Or do we only show artist genres on the artists node?

And of course provide all this without causing user's heads to explode!

[vicmanpergar]

Yeah, complicated.
From a logical point of view I don't see the sense on the last method. It would be a mess for me to search for Rock and Roll songs and be presented also as Jazz for example cause the artist plays blues-rock, rock and roll and jazz.... But I do love "ur current thinking...", the first method u mentioned. That's logic. And if u add a song with a different genre it should update the whole chain (the only problem here is where is ppl getting genres from, I don't trust user input sites, u end up with a "nice" mix of everything u can imagine). But that's another problem, and for the user himself, and how much he cares, not for Kodi.

At the moment I'm only using my tags, not scraping or nfo'ing cause I'm afraid I will need to delete my database again, lol.
But I'm following everything u say in the music thread as well as the v.17 investigations i see.

[nuentes]

My current thinking is that initially both artist and album genres should be set as a union of the genres of the songs, and all stored relationally in the database. Anything that changes thoses values for artist or album, e.g. scraping or JSON, should also correctly update all the data entries. The question is say you add some more songs with a different genre for an artist that has had their genre set to something specific (from an NFO), does that genre get added to the artist? Perhaps it would be simpler to have artist and album genre empty until they are explicitly set? Although that means they would be blank unless you scrape.

Yeah, complicated.
From a logical point of view I don't see the sense on the last method. It would be a mess for me to search for Rock and Roll songs and be presented also as Jazz for example cause the artist plays blues-rock, rock and roll and jazz.... But I do love "ur current thinking...", the first method u mentioned. That's logic.

It mostly makes sense. I think there should be some fault tolerance though. If an album has <10%* of the songs with a Jazz genre, the album probably shouldn't receive that genre. That genre should exist for that track only. And that should trickle upwards - a genre should be listed in at least 20%* of the artist tracks in order for it to be added as a genre for that artist. I guess I'm just saying that outliers should be treated as such. Alternately, the primary genre for an album should be based on occurrences from tracks. If 60%* of the tracks within an album have a genre of Rock, and the next highest percentage is 40%* Pop, Rock should be the primary genre of that album, and Pop 2nd.
[* All percentages are completely arbitrary]

Then there is the approach suggested by Nuentes, where song genre optionally becomes the union of artist, album and song genres. Turns things upside down, but does have some merits. What I'm not sure of with it is what happens when you have not scraped artist or album genres

What I mean is that this information should be weighted. If there is a scraped artist/album genre (or NFO files), this should be the primary genre for that artist/album. The genres from the sub tracks can also be included, however, if I'm pulling a report of artists or albums, the genre should be coming from the artist/album, and not from tracks. If there is no scraped info for the artist/album, we use the method I outlined above.

[DaveBlake]

Weighted application of genre up from song.... I see what you are getting at but complicated much!

But my main question stands

But say artist1 has genre A, an album1 with genre B and on that album all the songs genre C. Genre values A, B, and C are listed on the Genres node. When you click on genre "C" what artists do you see? Or do we only show artist genres on the artists node?

[vicmanpergar]

I can agree with ur interpretation, nuentes, about the %, I see the point, though it is going to depend on how exhaustive the user is, as well. I like to be as perfect as possible in the tags.
Even then, I wouldn't have a problem if as u said, there's only one song, for example, that has some jazz touches, and hence this is obviated in the album genre; yeah it's ok. But as u said in ur next example, bigger influences should show up, I really don't care if it's in the first place or second place (as u stated with Rock and Pop). So basically I agree to that point.
My point is, I don't want to "just" see the genres when I browse the music library, I wanna be able to search songs by genre or a mix of genres, in a effective way, so if i search for a mix of Pop/Rock, Blues-Rock, Jazz -Rock, I will see that specific song there.

[nuentes]

But say artist1 has genre A, an album1 with genre B and on that album all the songs genre C. Genre values A, B, and C are listed on the Genres node. When you click on genre "C" what artists do you see? Or do we only show artist genres on the artists node?

Just to be sure I'm understanding correctly - it sounds like genres A and B were scraped. These might also be included in the tags of the tracks. Or maybe not.

album 1's genre should have a primary genre of B (scraped/nfo album/artist info should take precedence) and a secondary genre of C, since more than 20% of the album tracks are tagged with that genre. And if more than 20% of all the tracks from this artist ALSO have genre C, then it should also be added as a secondary genre for artist1.

[nuentes]

I can agree with ur interpretation, nuentes, about the %, I see the point, though it is going to depend on how exhaustive the user is, as well. I like to be as perfect as possible in the tags.
Even then, I wouldn't have a problem if as u said, there's only one song, for example, that has some jazz touches, and hence this is obviated in the album genre; yeah it's ok. But as u said in ur next example, bigger influences should show up, I really don't care if it's in the first place or second place (as u stated with Rock and Pop). So basically I agree to that point.
My point is, I don't want to "just" see the genres when I browse the music library, I wanna be able to search songs by genre or a mix of genres, in a effective way, so if i search for a mix of Pop/Rock, Blues-Rock, Jazz -Rock, I will see that specific song there.

I don't think most people would care if it's first place or second place. And I don't think most people would realize there is a difference. What I'm proposing is a system that uses tag info to fill in the gaps missing from scraping, rather than relying upon tags exclusively.

[DaveBlake]

Ok...
But say just one song on that album has genre "D", not significant by weighting, artist and album which have other values from scraping, maybe there are only a few songs of that genre across the entire library. Is "D" shown on the genres node, and what happens when it is clicked?

[nuentes]

I'd like to understand better what the intention of the genre node is... is it meant to create a list of tracks, albums, or artists? I feel like it's a list of tracks that is presented through the hierarchy of artists/albums.

In that example - what I'd expect would be: the artist appears on the list. Clicking on the artist would only show the albums where genre D exists on. Clicking on an album would show only the tracks that are genre D.

It could be I'm misunderstanding the genres node...?

[DaveBlake]

Nuentes you have grasped how genres node currently is just fine. For anyone that has not scraped genre values it is the only way that genre can be used.

The problem (for you and others) is that it completely ignores scraped artist and album grenres. You reasonably would like these to be incorporated, and you have described how.

However there are also people that are freaked out by genre "D" leading to artist1 being listed just because an odd song is tagged with it.

What I am grappling with is how to cover all the options and situations without becoming too complicated, or leading to unexpected results. Everyone wants what they want, being both responsive to that but also elegant and easy to understand design is not obvious.

[nuentes]

ok, you can add me to the list of people that would be "freaked out by genre 'D' leading to artist1 being listed". I would complain about it, but once understanding the rules, it makes a lot of sense. What about an option like this being made available?

How would you like genre nodes to create lists of artists?
1) Track genre (Legacy)
2) Album genre
3) Artist genre

There's probably a better way to phrase that...