[revalex]

Thank you very much for tips on a database editor. I like the idea of using an extension in Firefox (for Windows OS).

It is frustrating to see that XBMC (Kodi) does not recognize an artist "Various Artists" and put everything to a "Compilation" node under a "Library" view or rename an artist name using lowercase letters, ... but I live with that for now.

I noticed that once I attempted to scrap info for a newly added album, all those strange Musicbrainz IDs got inside *.nfo files and artist name "Various Artists" is renamed to "Various artists". When I think about it, there might be some code within XBMC that inserts all those Musicbrainz IDs into a *.nfo file and redirects all albums with "Various Artists" as an artist into a "Compilation" node. So, modifying MyMusicxx.db file might not be enough.

In summary, I use Musicbrainz as a basis for my *.nfo files, but I modify those files to my needs. I also need to create my own *.nfo files, because many non-English albums are not in their database (while e.g., discogs.com has those albums). Especially, I do not want Musicbrainz take over my *.nfo files and ignore changes made in my *.nfo files.

I plan to check all my *.nfo files and manually remove all associations with Musicbrainz IDs from inside of all *.nfo files. However, with over 600 albums it will take time, so maybe I will be done when Kodi 14 will be released, doing a clean install and new scanning of all music to the library.

[scott967]

Keep in mind that using the album artist tag of "Various Artists" is just one of several ways that a compilation album is determined.

As as far as the MBIDs, I guess you would have to turn off all scraping to stop from getting MBIDs.

scott s.
.

[Mbee]

IMHO users shouldn't have to "hack" anything or "mod" anything for a software (any) to read 'properly tagged' music files. It should just be the standard functionality of the software to do just that from the beginning. If the user so chooses he/she can then use a fancy service like e.g. MBID to add/enhance to their library experience.

@scott967 - I truly appreciate your effort and insightful info to edit the database, I just don't think it's the way to go though

@revalex - I don't think that XBMC (kodi) not recognizing the "Various Artist" lables from "Album Artist" is the problem. I think it's the fact that it doesn't "fully" recognize it's own set of rules, see the wiki

here and here (section 6.1)

...and although it seems to detect the "compilation" tag just fine - as you see when you go into your Compilation menu. It just doesn't group those "compilaton" tagged albums by their "Album Artist" tags, in the Artist menu - with the "include artists who appear only on compilations" turned OFF - like it did prior to Gotham.

You should be able to call your compilation artists whatever you want ...e.g. various artists, crazy artists, awsome bands, misc, whatever.
XBMC should then detect that if you have more than one "Album Artist" with the same specific name you entered, they would be grouped together, IF your album is already tagged as "compilation".


...and just to add. I started Gotham with a clean setup and imported only a "controlable" amount of Music albums to test all this. and my .nfo's contain no MBID information either.


cheers!

[scott967]

IMHO users shouldn't have to "hack" anything or "mod" anything for a software (any) to read 'properly tagged' music files. It should just be the standard functionality of the software to do just that from the beginning.

It appears to be that it is most likely a requirements issue, and the software is working as designed. That is, it is the intent that "Various Artists" not appear in an artist listing, rather it is strictly intended to flag that an album is a "compilation" to be handled differently.

I think you would have to ask the devs for a requirements change/feature to get Kodi to work differently.

scott s.
.

[LeKnain]

Hi Everyone!

Sorry to bump this thread but I do have a question about Various Artists and Compilation.

90% en my music is tagged with MBPicard. 10% is tagged manually with MP3Tag (mostly home-made compilations & singles).

Well anyway, I have scraped all my music (using the overide tags with online info option) and one of the problems I'm facing is regarding the compilation node:
- All my compilations tagged manually (using Various Artists as Album Artist) are there (under the french name Artistes Divers since my GUI is in French)
- All my compilations tagged with MBPicard are under an Artist "Various Artists" but not in the Compilation Node.

I suppose that when Xbmc scraps my home-made compilations and sees Various Artists under Album Artist it changes the Album Artist name to the local name (Artistes Divers for my case) and thus can be seen under the compilation node. But when Xbmc scraps my MB Compilation it just keeps what MusicBrainz tells him to keep as Album Artist (i.e. Various Artists).

So does anyone know how to put all my Compilations (homemade & MusicBrainz) in the same Node without changing the language of my XBMC (to english) and without hacking into the db??

[Pander]

+1 for supporting ID3 "Album Artist" as a completely different/independent view from "Artist" for compilations albums et cetera. This is also supported by music players such as Nightingale http://getnightingale.com and iTunes.