[nixpix]

Hi. I am new to Kodi, I got my Chromebox a week ago and have it running with openElec/Kodi. Its been working amazingly well, loving it! Anyways, I was wondering if its possible when browsing the music library on the Android phone with Kore, to have more of a library view, like on the TV/Kodi. Specifically when browsing by genre. As it is now if I browse music by genre it lists all albums by all artists in that genre which is a bit of a mess when you have hundreds, maybe thousands of albums. Would it possible to have it sort by "Genre - Artist - Album"? Thats the way it sorts on the TV in library view.

The reason I am asking cuz my way of thinking goes like this: When I am in the mood for listening to music I start by deciding what genre I am in the mood for, and then start browsing for an artist in that specific genre, and then decide what album or song I want to hear.

Edit. Sorry I just noticed there is another section dedicated to Kore. So feel free to move the topic My apologies!

[DarrenHill]

Moved as requested

[DaveBlake]

+1 for genre - artist- album (and the albums soerted by year).

[Tolriq]

Since it's not clear for a lot of people I'll add a little reminder about that

I did try to explain during all the talks about dropping file mode.

There's no way in Kodi to filter artist by the genre you apply to them (nfo/scrapping). There's no way to reproduce a folder organization like music\Genre\Artist\Albums.

Genre data from artist are not used for filtering, songs related to artist does the genre filtering not even the albums ones. This leads to lots of miss understanding from users

And sorry Dave but user needs prevail on what Kodi currently do (You can't have Mozart returned as Techno genre because there's one remix song where he is tagged as an artist with the dj as another one)

[nixpix]

Since it's not clear for a lot of people I'll add a little reminder about that

I did try to explain during all the talks about dropping file mode.

There's no way in Kodi to filter artist by the genre you apply to them (nfo/scrapping). There's no way to reproduce a folder organization like music\Genre\Artist\Albums.

Genre data from artist are not used for filtering, songs related to artist does the genre filtering not even the albums ones. This leads to lots of miss understanding from users

And sorry Dave but user needs prevail on what Kodi currently do (You can't have Mozart returned as Techno genre because there's one remix song where he is tagged as an artist with the dj as another one)

I have only been using kodi for about a week so not really sure what you mean by "during all the talks about dropping file mode". And I dont quite understand what you mean with "There's no way to reproduce a folder organization like music\Genre\Artist\Albums" cuz, and maybe I am misunderstanding but in library mode in kodi I can browse/filter by genre and then artists and then albums to get a folder structure view. And I am not talking about in file mode, I mean in library mode. So If Kodi, when browsing via TV/Chromebox can browse like that why cant that be done in the phone app? Surely this must be possible?

Maybe I wasnt clear enough in my original post what it is I want to achieve. I will try to explain it. This is how I have my music cataloged on my PC:

Genre ----

_______ Artist ----

________________Album

And that is the way the library mode in Kodi presents my music when I browse by genre on my Chromebox. Exactly how I want it. But when I browse my music with the phone app it gets presented like this:

Genre ----

__________Albums by all artists in alphabetical order.

So, again, how come library mode in Kodi can present the albums in genre/artist/album order and the phone cant, when its using the same database/library?

[Tolriq]

Can't talk about Kore but for Yatse the main problem is the current API

There's genre for artists but they are not the genre that Kodi use. The genre Kodi use is the genre from the song tags. The problem is that to currently list artist by a Kodi known genre (the song one) you need to query all songs from the genre to find all the artist from that genre then see if all that artist have albums and not only songs if it's compilation.

This leads to something that is slow and barely usable for now unfortunately. And that if you do not have songs tags that match your folder organisation you'll have artists in multiple unwanted genre.

[nixpix]

Can't talk about Kore but for Yatse the main problem is the current API

There's genre for artists but they are not the genre that Kodi use. The genre Kodi use is the genre from the song tags. The problem is that to currently list artist by a Kodi known genre (the song one) you need to query all songs from the genre to find all the artist from that genre then see if all that artist have albums and not only songs if it's compilation.

This leads to something that is slow and barely usable for now unfortunately. And that if you do not have songs tags that match your folder organisation you'll have artists in multiple unwanted genre.

I see. I have all my music properly tagged with artist/album artist/genre etc, so that wouldnt be a problem. And I only use local info when adding music to kodi, not downloading any info. But an API restriction I can understand I thought the phone app just read whats in the kodi library and presented it as is.

[syncd]

@nixpix, Kore only has genres->albums for now. Should it be genres->artists->albums? Maybe. I'm sure some people believe so, and others don't. What i'm not sure is that it is clear as water. It's not off the table though, as i think there's merit in the argument that it should behave like Kodi.

Personally, i think you should use the search bar. Currently search only looks in the album title, but i think that it might make sense looking in the artist also (maybe with some limitations for performance reasons, when albums have more than one artist). I'll consider that. @DaveBlake want to pitch in on this?

@Tolriq, GitHub isn't enough for you to express your pet peeves? You have to spam every single place on the web slightly related to them? That won't fly with me.

[Tolriq]

@syncd do not mix things you maybe not understand

Since you have 0 history about JSON let me explain the purpose of my message :

The "genre" field returned by GetArtists is unrelated to the Genre used to filter from GetArtists, and just related to scrapping. filtering by genre requires what I said earlier or recreating some genreid data from the songs during the sync.

I did help you when you had problems before, I always give feedback about problems, this genre problem is here since way before you even register here.

So next time when I took time to give you some data you do not have, you should read, maybe say thanks, but certainly avoid such kind of answers.

[syncd]

@Tolriq Don't assume what you don't know. And you really need a (big) dose of humility, so...

1. You have 0 knowledge about me, and 0 knowledge about the team's internal discussions.

2. So you want to use GetArtists to filter by genre? What's stopping you? Just pass the genreid in the filter.
Oh, that's not what you want to do (you just brought it up because?...), you have a local database and you (mistakenly) think you need to go to the song's level to filter by genre. So, a free piece of advice: GetAlbums returns genreid (you're storing that locally aren't you?) which is the one you want (not "genres" mind you, genreid). So, just filter by that, do a inner join with artists, throw in a distinct and you're done. No need to go to the songs level. The cardinality is one order of magnitude less, feasible to do on a mobile device.

Now, say thank you and go sit in the corner, facing the wall. You got an F for putting your mouth ahead of your brain.

[Tolriq]

OMG there's some secret I'm not aware of.

What will I do ? You've just opened a new world thank you so much.

Now about song level this fact is started by the discussion with Dave that could have explained you also that albums genre can / are also overwritten from scrapping and can be distinct from song one. But that the artist genreid filter do the filter at the song level at Kodi core level.

So thank you for teaching me things that I already know, but this does not answer most user need about genre handling for music.

And BTW a free tip too : Not all JSON API and fields exist for all Kodi version, so when you claim support for Frodo you should maybe actually code to support it (Leaving this thread no need to answer )

[DaveBlake]

@nixpix, Kore only has genres->albums for now. Should it be genres->artists->albums? Maybe. I'm sure some people believe so, and others don't. What i'm not sure is that it is clear as water. It's not off the table though, as i think there's merit in the argument that it should behave like Kodi.

Personally, i think you should use the search bar. Currently search only looks in the album title, but i think that it might make sense looking in the artist also (maybe with some limitations for performance reasons, when albums have more than one artist). I'll consider that. @DaveBlake want to pitch in on this?

I have tagged my music files with genre in such a way that it splits my large music collection very nicely. I would love Kore to support a genres->artists->albums navigation applying the song genre at each level just like Kodi UI does.

Not sure how search would give me the same ease of music selection? Back in the day when I had shelves full of CDs they were split by genre and then artist alphbetically (on sort name not first name). Depending on my mood I knew which bit of shelf to look at (genre) and then scanned artists and picked a disc. I want to do the same thing from my armchair with Kore.

If you have the time to make such a mod to Kore I would be over the moon. And very happy to make any core changes you may need to support it. I will be looking at getting those sort name tags scanned in for that bit, the rest I think is there already but I don't know how Kore is implemented to be sure.

I hadn't realised that Tolriq had posted here, it seems in half response to a discussion we were having in email at the time. Confusing for everyone else, sorry Nixpix.

Tolriq says "You can't have Mozart returned as Techno genre because there's one remix song where he is tagged as an artist with the dj as another one". Well that is what Kodi does, has done so for a long time, and is just what I want it to do. I like my collection split and selected by song genre, just up to me to ensure I tag it well.

There are other approaches to navigating ones music collection, maybe we can look to offering choice?

There is also some confusion about how the various genre fields are used by Kodi and the API, but this is not the place to discuss that. The API aspects are being discussed by the dev team, mostly what is needed in improved design documentation.

[nixpix]

@nixpix, Kore only has genres->albums for now. Should it be genres->artists->albums? Maybe. I'm sure some people believe so, and others don't. What i'm not sure is that it is clear as water. It's not off the table though, as i think there's merit in the argument that it should behave like Kodi.

Personally, i think you should use the search bar. Currently search only looks in the album title, but i think that it might make sense looking in the artist also (maybe with some limitations for performance reasons, when albums have more than one artist). I'll consider that. @DaveBlake want to pitch in on this?

I have tagged my music files with genre in such a way that it splits my large music collection very nicely. I would love Kore to support a genres->artists->albums navigation applying the song genre at each level just like Kodi UI does.

Not sure how search would give me the same ease of music selection? Back in the day when I had shelves full of CDs they were split by genre and then artist alphbetically (on sort name not first name). Depending on my mood I knew which bit of shelf to look at (genre) and then scanned artists and picked a disc. I want to do the same thing from my armchair with Kore.

If you have the time to make such a mod to Kore I would be over the moon. And very happy to make any core changes you may need to support it. I will be looking at getting those sort name tags scanned in for that bit, the rest I think is there already but I don't know how Kore is implemented to be sure.

I hadn't realised that Tolriq had posted here, it seems in half response to a discussion we were having in email at the time. Confusing for everyone else, sorry Nixpix.

Tolriq says "You can't have Mozart returned as Techno genre because there's one remix song where he is tagged as an artist with the dj as another one". Well that is what Kodi does, has done so for a long time, and is just what I want it to do. I like my collection split and selected by song genre, just up to me to ensure I tag it well.

There are other approaches to navigating ones music collection, maybe we can look to offering choice?

There is also some confusion about how the various genre fields are used by Kodi and the API, but this is not the place to discuss that. The API aspects are being discussed by the dev team, mostly what is needed in improved design documentation.

Nice to have someone who understands me And share my way of thinking when it comes to selecting music. Its almost like looking in the mirror haha, my shelves of CD´s are organized in the exact same way Would really love Kore to have that feat, it would make an already amazing remote/system even greater!

[syncd]

Don't like being called out wrong Tolriq. Tough luck, I do make a point on correcting pretentious guys who pretend to know more than they really do.

So, by now you should have realized that genres and genreid are different things, and that only one of them can get overwritten by scrappers (guess which). You tried to mud up the waters by confusing the two to get a gracious exit, but that won't work with me. You're wrong, you can use genreid to behave like Kodi with a local database without going to the song level, and if you haven't realized it by now, that just shows that your vaaaast knowledge of json-rpc API isn't as complete as you make it out to be. Even with the explanations of other team members and the open code.

Next thing you'll try to mud up the waters a little more, by saying that that is not really what you want to do. Guess what, that doesn't matter. We're discussing what the OP posted, and contrary to what you've said, it is possible.

Good riddance. You still get an F, and no cookies for you today,

PS. BTW, I believe you don't understand the balance of powers here: you don't get to say when i stop posting here, whereas I... well, I do get to say when you stop posting.

[Tolriq]

Don't like being called out wrong Tolriq. Tough luck, I do make a point on correcting pretentious guys who pretend to know more than they really do.

So, by now you should have realized that genres and genreid are different things, and that only one of them can get overwritten by scrappers (guess which). You tried to mud up the waters by confusing the two to get a gracious exit, but that won't work with me. You're wrong, you can use genreid to behave like Kodi with a local database without going to the song level, and if you haven't realized it by now, that just shows that your vaaaast knowledge of json-rpc API isn't as complete as you make it out to be. Even with the explanations of other team members and the open code.

Next thing you'll try to mud up the waters a little more, by saying that that is not really what you want to do. Guess what, that doesn't matter. We're discussing what the OP posted, and contrary to what you've said, it is possible.

Good riddance. You still get an F, and no cookies for you today,

PS. BTW, I believe you don't understand the balance of powers here: you don't get to say when i stop posting here, whereas I... well, I do get to say when you stop posting.

Since you force me

Ever heard about compilations or singles ? Oups that breaks your wonderful explanation about something wrong .... Kodi works at song level, to reproduce Kodi you need to work at song level. (Even if this is not what a large part of users want, see one of the explanations in the thread about breaking of file view mode for songs and users not using library, but this is a complete other story).

And the fact that genre and genreid are different it's one of the problem of the API but also another story.

Dave that know the code, explained the song level, only you tried to show a high level of smartness by trying to find another way to try to demonstrate that you were better, just too bad you're not.
So if you have not realized that by now, that just shows ... I'll let you complete.

(And BTW despite our disagreement and the force push, Dave is also way smarter than you in his answer as he confirmed the song level too with my previous explanation that should have give you a big hint about the failure of all your great speech.... and do not jump to fast conclusions, only fast untested merge)

So thank for continuing to answer as it's only shows your ignorance and arrogance

Since you love lessons, here's the final one, when you want to try to show that you are smarter than someone, you should actually check before that it's the case and verify what you say.
Else you just show a incredible level of pretentiousness and ignorance, and this is quite fun since you seem to invert roles.

And by the way I'll expand my free tip : Kore does not work for at least for PVR for Frodo and Gotham (thanks to user reporting, why they report to me I don't know) but you known nothing John Snow.

And IMO if you think that the fact you are on the Team will make be buys your errors and arrogance you're wrong, your contributions to Kodi are far from enough (none ? how's that) to make me forget your arrogance when talking to me.