[DaveBlake]

[Edit]This thread has been split out from the main testing thread for clarity. Discussion of Musicbraiz Ids arose from test feedback from deveng24, so we start with that posting


Thanks deveng24 for the tests and feedback .

Results;
Duplicate artist
Artist not recognized (show as musicbrainz album artist id)
Artist in wrong folder
all issues seem to be caused by musicbrainz album artist id field.... removing this field solved all my issues listed above.

also, noticed that the genre tags do not separate multiple tags when separated by a semi-colon

As well as a log I would like also to see the tags if you can pin down what files are associated with the duplicate artist and mbid as name.

Not sure what you mean by "artist in wrong folder", can you expand on that?

Have not changed genre processing, it is only split using the default item separator. But it does raise the point that a bit more flexibility using ";" in genre as well could be an improvement. I'm guessing ";" is what MusicBee expects?

Thanks for assisting with this.

[deveng24]

As well as a log I would like also to see the tags if you can pin down what files are associated with the duplicate artist and mbid as name.

Not sure what you mean by "artist in wrong folder", can you expand on that?

Have not changed genre processing, it is only split using the default item separator. But it does raise the point that a bit more flexibility using ";" in genre as well could be an improvement. I'm guessing ";" is what MusicBee expects?

Thanks for assisting with this.

I went back and looked at the tags.... here are my findings;

it looks to be an issue of musicbrainz placing multiple ids in "musicbrainz album artist id" and multi "musicbrainz artist id"
for an album.

One instance caused the artist to show up three times.
Another instance (part my fault) i remove all traces of feat artist on my tags... however, i think its encoded in the musicbrainz album artist id. this caused an artist folder to have the musicbrainz album artist id as the artist name.

So, it seems to be an issue in how kodi handles multiple musicbrainz album artist id.

also, fyi musicbrainz album artist id uses " ; " to separate ids...

as for the log file i don't see how to post the text file

[DaveBlake]

I went back and looked at the tags.... here are my findings;

it looks to be an issue of musicbrainz placing multiple ids in "musicbrainz album artist id" and multi "musicbrainz artist id" for an album.

Indeed, that and what is in the ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags, and if there is ARTISTS and ALBUMARTISTS tags. I really do need to see what you have there that 17 is not handling.

One instance caused the artist to show up three times.
Another instance (part my fault) i remove all traces of feat artist on my tags... however, i think its encoded in the musicbrainz album artist id. this caused an artist folder to have the musicbrainz album artist id as the artist name.

Ah, so you have changed the ARTIST tag but not the MUSICBRAINZ ARTIST ID tag, that mis-match will always cause issues. By "artist folder" you mean the entry in the artists node (how it appears in the list of artists)?

So, it seems to be an issue in how kodi handles multiple musicbrainz album artist id.
also, fyi musicbrainz album artist id uses " ; " to separate ids...

The separator used in multiple Musicbrainz ID tags does not matter, Kodi is ready for that. But it does sound that you have edited tags and caused a mismatch in artist names to mbids. Part of what you are testing are changes to Kodi to handle that kind of thing better (although it can never handle everything) so if will be particularly interesting to see both tags and debug log for those files being scanned into the library.

as for the log file i don't see how to post the text file

Just find somewhere on the cloud for it. To quote the wiki:
"Use a pastesite such as http://xbmclogs.com , http://pastebin.com , or http://pastebin.ca on when posting on the forums. Simply visit one of these sites, paste or upload your log and hit submit. After a few seconds you'll have a nice short URL to paste in your post. Be sure to select an appropriate time to keep your paste around when submitting"

Real world music files make for the best testing, thank you for participating.

[deveng24]

Dave,

here are my thoughts about what the issue is;

Kodi is handling the MBids i think just just fine (as designed)...

the problem is Kodi using MBids and not my tags. this is causing multiple artist nodes because, whoever submitted info for an album to MB may had capitalized a letter in an artist name and in another instance didnt (as an example).

*****************************
my rant...

let me just say this is going to be mostly about using MBids (random users input) over my id3 tags (multiple decades of organization/editing) to organize my library.... and why MBids should only be used as a last resort to organize a collection. I think we can agree that MBids are user submitted and not a controlled item? this causes multiple ids for artist and albums, creating multiple artist folders "artist nodes" in a library with slight variations of that artist name. In some cases no noticeable differences. then with the inability to edit/overwrite the artist nodes in the kodi app/program becomes the biggest frustration...

As i see it the issue is the normal user is not going to even see the MBids without an adv tag editor and are not going to understand why their collection is so disorganized even though all their id3 tags are correct. As you stated i edited the id3 tags but not the MBids ( please.. what program allows the editing of the MBid tags... i do not know of one) and it is causing one of my issues. The reason i remove featured artists, i dont want extra artist with one song to show in my library.

like scott said above MBids should only be used if needed (id3 tags are missing).

Done
*******************************


OK back to issues....
Ive noticed that album dates (from MB) are now becoming not just year but month/day/year or combination of, this is causing the year sort to have issues because of European vs USA formatting. I have a few years nodes are displaying the month or day and not the year.

I will upload log file sometime this weekend when i get a chance to sit down in front of my media computer...and just to be clear I dont think its a Kodi problem per-say but MBids not being uniform for artists.

BR,
Troy

[deveng24]

attached is the log of a single album that creates 3 artist nodes because MBids having 3 different ids for the same artist;

log file

MBid Tags for the album

MB album Id is Bcb95908-5c6e-453a-97fc-D69003d250ff; Effc1e36-6a9f-40c5-946a-3112e2053f1c; F121deb7-0668-4ace-B36e-4b3a9e804b4f
MB artist id is Bcb95908-5c6e-453a-97fc-D69003d250ff




BR, Troy

[DaveBlake]

Ah yes Troy, nothing like a good Friday evening rant

Sorry you find this aspect of Kodi frustrating, and thanks for testing regardless. But dare I say I don't think the issue is what you think it is, hopefully the logs will show me more.

You seem to think that what you are seeing is the result of the same artist having many different mbids. That is not something I have come across yet. I don't know how big it is but could you possibly upload your MyMusic60.db into something like Dropbox too, so I can take a look.

I promise that Kodi is not ignoring your other carefully applied tags, but if the mbids are present then Kodi will use them too. I am not on commission with Musicbrainz, I have no connection with them, and a chunk of my library is not tagged with mbids. So I have not drunk the coolade, and have no reason to defend their use, but I can see their value too. There is no good reason for them to cause disorganization in the library - there were some problems with eariler version of Kodi, but they have been addressed.

I also need to be clear mbids alone, no artist, title etc., are not sufficient to make a library. If essential tags are missing then the song is not loaded into the library. I don't think that Scott was saying only use mbids if other tags are missing.

For editing tags I use Mp3tag and you can delete/edit any mbid tags like any others. Picard also shows mbids of course. But no editing just yet, what you have is good test data and a valid user experience that deserves resolution. Out of interest how did the mbids get into your music files in the first place?

I really am interested to know for sure what it causing what you see so I hope you will be able to send the information for me to investigate.

I will take a look at the date issue too if I can.

[DaveBlake]

Cross posted guys, and about to eat, but will digest all your data later.
Cheers

[DaveBlake]

Troy a quick comment on that one album, and would still love to see your db if possible.

attached is the log of a single album that creates 3 artist nodes because MBids having 3 different ids for the same artist;

Musicbrainz sees the album "Bowling for Soup Presents: One Big Happy!" as a collaboration between 3 artists: Bowling for Soup, The Dollyrots & Patent Pending. Thus it provides 3 mbids for the album artists.

However the mbid tags got into your music files at some point (did you tag with Picard?), it should have set both album artist and Musicbrainz AlbumArtist Id tags to these 3 matching values. From the log it seems that somehow the albumartist has subsequently been set to a single artist name leaving a mismatch.

Before I do some testing, and without seeing the tags in detail, I'm not sure exactly what happens next, but the irreparable mismatch is going to cause problems.


I guess we could discuss what to do when such a mismatch is irreparable i.e. Kodi can't get 3 names out of the artist tag but has 3 mbids. Ignore all the mbids? Reject that music file?

I need to get my head around the fact that users tag with mbids (from Musicbrainz) and then mess with artist names etc. creating inconsistencies.

And finally how did the mbids get into your files?

[deveng24]

Troy a quick comment on that one album, and would still love to see your db if possible.


Musicbrainz sees the album "Bowling for Soup Presents: One Big Happy!" as a collaboration between 3 artists: Bowling for Soup, The Dollyrots & Patent Pending. Thus it provides 3 mbids for the album artists.

However the mbid tags got into your music files at some point (did you tag with Picard?), it should have set both album artist and Musicbrainz AlbumArtist Id tags to these 3 matching values. From the log it seems that somehow the albumartist has subsequently been set to a single artist name leaving a mismatch.

dave,
yes the MBids tags came directly from picard (older ver back in 2012 when album was released) but, im sure ive may have removed the other artist and album artist from the id3 tags some where along the lines.

if i re-run the album today it list 3 album MB artist ids and when i clear kodi and load the newly tagged album it labels the artist node with the 3 artists with the full album in each artist node.

i think however, this is what is at the heart of my issue .... kodi seems to be correctly adding the artist node associated with the MBids however, this is where some of the frustration is .... ive set my id3 tags to only show 1 artist for the simple fact i dont want to scroll 1500 artists while driving vs the 700 artist i do now. Kodi also, only has one sort option of artist... while other programs i can sort with the album artist sort tag in id3 tags... allowing me to reduce the number of "true" artist listed while not losing the MB artist Id..... and maybe that is the solution more sort options in kodi.

anyways, i think kodi will have the issue of mismatched MBids and is the true issue is.... i would offer a solution that id3 tags are the default and matched with the MBids as a check and if true use the MBids to do whatever kodi does with them. Because i see the avg end user being able to correct an id3 tag before a MBid mismatch.

as for users messing with the artist name .... its going to happen ex...special characters used in names from around the world are going to mess with the MBids... i know if i tag some of the music i have from my time in italy with MBids and then tag the same artist with MBids from usa cd, the artist names are different. this is just one more reason to use id3 tags vs MBids

Troy

[DaveBlake]

yes the MBids tags came directly from picard (older ver back in 2012 when album was released) but, im sure ive may have removed the other artist and album artist from the id3 tags some where along the lines.

if i re-run the album today it list 3 album MB artist ids and when i clear kodi and load the newly tagged album it labels the artist node with the 3 artists with the full album in each artist node.

i think however, this is what is at the heart of my issue .... kodi seems to be correctly adding the artist node associated with the MBids however, this is where some of the frustration is .... ive set my id3 tags to only show 1 artist for the simple fact i dont want to scroll 1500 artists while driving vs the 700 artist i do now. Kodi also, only has one sort option of artist... while other programs i can sort with the album artist sort tag in id3 tags... allowing me to reduce the number of "true" artist listed while not losing the MB artist Id..... and maybe that is the solution more sort options in kodi.

anyways, i think kodi will have the issue of mismatched MBids and is the true issue is.... i would offer a solution that id3 tags are the default and matched with the MBids as a check and if true use the MBids to do whatever kodi does with them. Because i see the avg end user being able to correct an id3 tag before a MBid mismatch.

as for users messing with the artist name .... its going to happen ex...special characters used in names from around the world are going to mess with the MBids... i know if i tag some of the music i have from my time in italy with MBids and then tag the same artist with MBids from usa cd, the artist names are different. this is just one more reason to use id3 tags vs MBids

Troy

Troy, just to be sure you are aware, you can reduce the number of artists Kodi lists to just the album artists, rather than the artists on every song, by disabling the "Include artist that only appear on compilations" setting. This setting is badly named (and I will try to get it changed before 17 is released).

That being said you may still feel that you have more album artists than you want to see. Filtering by genre is one way to make this list more manageable, or you could create artist playlists based on other criteria. Just suggestions in case you had not thought of that.

The ability to sort by the artist sort tags is something I am currently working on as a new feature in Kodi. I would like to get that into Krypton, but I don't know if I will get it done in time. It will help to have volunteer testers to expedite things once I get something to that stage.

Meanwhile back at mbids....
The real world always comes up with situations I had not anticipated, that is the great value of user input. Thank you for that.

You have tagged using Picard, mbids were added, then at some later time (with those mbids possibly not on view or maybe oblivious to their significance) you have edited the artist and album artist tags. Changing the spelling of a name is no big deal, but removing some artists or replacing one artist with another, and not keeping the mbids inline with these changes, does cause issues. You have done that, other people will do that too.

The common examples are
a) replacing artist1, artist2, artist3 with "Various Artists" or just "artist1"
b) replacing "Various Artists" with "Telstar Classics" or some other general name intended for just some albums not all VA.

So far Kodi is not designed to cope with that.

The current approach is that if mbids are found then that is the user's intension. After all they don't appear in the music files by magic, the user has added them as tags! Kodi trys to use the mbids, and if names are missing it hopes that something later will provide the name. Kodi does not have a way to know that an artist name and mbid match in the Musicbrainz database, all it can do is get them from the same music file and hope the user knows what they are doing and they go together.

It could help if the wiki was clearer on the way mbids are used, and the need for users to take care when making changes to tags in files that have mbids.

But I need to give more thought to what can reasonably be done internally, if anything. The mis-count of a) can be detected but b) is harder. It is tempting to ask users to be responsible for consistent tagging, but probably unrealistic.

[deveng24]

[quote='deveng24' pid='2351844' dateline='1465069395']


Troy, just to be sure you are aware, you can reduce the number of artists Kodi lists to just the album artists, rather than the artists on every song, by disabling the "Include artist that only appear on compilations" setting. This setting is badly named (and I will try to get it changed before 17 is released).

That being said you may still feel that you have more album artists than you want to see. Filtering by genre is one way to make this list more manageable, or you could create artist playlists based on other criteria. Just suggestions in case you had not thought of that.

The ability to sort by the artist sort tags is something I am currently working on as a new feature in Kodi. I would like to get that into Krypton, but I don't know if I will get it done in time. It will help to have volunteer testers to expedite things once I get something to that stage.

Meanwhile back at mbids....
The real world always comes up with situations I had not anticipated, that is the great value of user input. Thank you for that.

You have tagged using Picard, mbids were added, then at some later time (with those mbids possibly not on view or maybe oblivious to their significance) you have edited the artist and album artist tags. Changing the spelling of a name is no big deal, but removing some artists or replacing one artist with another, and not keeping the mbids inline with these changes, does cause issues. You have done that, other people will do that too.

The common examples are
a) replacing artist1, artist2, artist3 with "Various Artists" or just "artist1"
b) replacing "Various Artists" with "Telstar Classics" or some other general name intended for just some albums not all VA.

So far Kodi is not designed to cope with that.

The current approach is that if mbids are found then that is the user's intension. After all they don't appear in the music files by magic, the user has added them as tags! Kodi trys to use the mbids, and if names are missing it hopes that something later will provide the name. Kodi does not have a way to know that an artist name and mbid match in the Musicbrainz database, all it can do is get them from the same music file and hope the user knows what they are doing and they go together.

It could help if the wiki was clearer on the way mbids are used, and the need for users to take care when making changes to tags in files that have mbids.

But I need to give more thought to what can reasonably be done internally, if anything. The mis-count of a) can be detected but b) is harder. It is tempting to ask users to be responsible for consistent tagging, but probably unrealistic.

Dave,
after sleeping on it I came here to post something similar about "Various Artists" and how it seems that kodi and others are repeating history on sorting....
Users like my self who have larger than normal collections and have collected since CDs first came out/ mp3s originated have always had to modify the tags....a little history lesson on "Various Artists" and why it came to be.... when only a few tags were had... users found out real quick that their compilation cds had artist nodes for almost every song.... well it was accurate but, not vary user friendly. So, most at the time said.. i never cared about artists when playing cd/tapes, lets change the artist to "Various Artists" that way the album is in one place. then when room for more id3 tags wasnt an issue artist could return and the sort artist tag could be used... and just recently have i updated my compilation cds.

Now with the resent introduction of multiple artists (only a few years ago) being used in id3 tags and MBids... we have come back to the same issue (now instead of artist nodes a,ab,ac we have artist nodes a,b,c) and before multiple artists were recognized... tags had to be modified simple to organize your music library. So, yes a lot of people are going to have mismatched tags when compared to MBids. I would guess it is part of why Apple has not implemented multiple artists/ genres tagging and are sticking to their use of the compilation flag to handle it.

Anyway, id3 tag has tried to help with the Album and artist sort fields but, not many library/ media organizers implement the use the tags because most people do.

And i think your correct .. you wont be able to get people to be consistent with tagging... just look at some of the genres MB pulls for artists.... once again it is because MB database is user built. as ZAG starts to go down the road of Style,Genre, sub Genre, Genre Categories, and Mood tags.... imagine the inconsistent tagging. But one thing it all has in common is people love to micro organize their music.

*************
I know in my case all id3 tags are filled out to my liking so that they work across 2 vehicle media players, Multiple Android and Apple products/programs, Media PCs (plex, emby...) .. etc..even working with media library organizers such as j.river, musicbee, and media monkey, (apple iTunes junked a longtime ago because of the handling of multi artists and genre) and would love to have it working with kodi.... i have some ideas down the road for its use but, i need it to organize my music correctly and is why im participating in this discussion... and yes, i know most of the solutions wont be implemented until ver 19 or 20....

that being said.... i think the biggest issue is how MBids and id3 tags interact with each other...and hope the reasons behind my tag modification may help understand why MBids are not going to if ever line up exactly with my ID3 tags and give you some thoughts as to why other users are going to have mismatches.

just one more note to be clear about my dislike for giving MBids tag info to much weight is that with music from around the world ... the tags are not always correct and i have had to modify id3 tags to correct the issues. but, if kodi is going to use MBids please give me sort functions that look at album artist sort and album sort Artist tags, then i dont care if kodi list 20000+ artist as long as i can sort by something like the album artist sort tag...

hopefully this gives you a bit of incite as to why tags differ from MBids...

BR
Troy

[deveng24]

The current approach is that if mbids are found then that is the user's intension. After all they don't appear in the music files by magic, the user has added them as tags! Kodi trys to use the mbids, and if names are missing it hopes that something later will provide the name. Kodi does not have a way to know that an artist name and mbid match in the Musicbrainz database, all it can do is get them from the same music file and hope the user knows what they are doing and they go together.

It could help if the wiki was clearer on the way mbids are used, and the need for users to take care when making changes to tags in files that have mbids.

But I need to give more thought to what can reasonably be done internally, if anything. The mis-count of a) can be detected but b) is harder. It is tempting to ask users to be responsible for consistent tagging, but probably unrealistic.

just a quick thought on a solution.... when kodi builds the music datebase and is set to use local data only OR a toggle for id3 only.... i would recommend to only use the id3 tags. my reason for this is; 1) the user can correct the issues in a basic tag editor. 2) they will be upset with them self for a miss named or forgotten tag 3) the libray will be organized how they want it...not how MB thinks it should.

Troy

[DaveBlake]

Troy thanks for the history/explanation.

To be honest I still find it odd that users add mbid tags to thier files and then expect them not to have an impact. I guess it is because so few media players actually use them? The mbids belong to your tagging just like all the other tags you edit/maintain with such care. Users are free to edit tags to their heart's content, but IMO need to take responsibility for all of them. Musicbrainz did not attack their music collection in the night!!

That was said with warmth and humour, I want you to have a good music experience with Kodi, I really do.

Out of interest what other tags in "Bowling for Soup Presents: One Big Happy!" did you edit compared to those give by Picard? I tried editing just album artist, and Kodi 17 repaired the album artist to mbid mis-match. I'm pleased, but I guess you wouldn't be. I presume you edited artist as well?

Also what do you do when artist name is not unique e.g. John Williams the classcal guitar player, and John Williams the conductor and composer or film music e.g. Star Wars etc. It is something not handled by the standard ID3 tags alone, and a great use for mbid. Artist name is far from unique if you want to go find art work or biogs etc. e.g. I just found 12 different bands called "Blitzkrieg", all from different parts of the world, let alone variations on that name. Put an artist mbid in there and we all know which band is intended.

That is the kind of thing mbids are intended to support.

[deveng24]

Troy thanks for the history/explanation.

To be honest I still find it odd that users add mbid tags to thier files and then expect them not to have an impact. I guess it is because so few media players actually use them? The mbids belong to your tagging just like all the other tags you edit/maintain with such care. Users are free to edit tags to their heart's content, but IMO need to take responsibility for all of them. Musicbrainz did not attack their music collection in the night!!

That was said with warmth and humour, I want you to have a good music experience with Kodi, I really do.

Out of interest what other tags in "Bowling for Soup Presents: One Big Happy!" did you edit compared to those give by Picard? I tried editing just album artist, and Kodi 17 repaired the album artist to mbid mis-match. I'm pleased, but I guess you wouldn't be. I presume you edited artist as well?

Also what do you do when artist name is not unique e.g. John Williams the classcal guitar player, and John Williams the conductor and composer or film music e.g. Star Wars etc. It is something not handled by the standard ID3 tags alone, and a great use for mbid. Artist name is far from unique if you want to go find art work or biogs etc. e.g. I just found 12 different bands called "Blitzkrieg", all from different parts of the world, let alone variations on that name. Put an artist mbid in there and we all know which band is intended.

That is the kind of thing mbids are intended to support.

Dave,
yes, i think your correct about the MBids most players dont use them so, they have little to no impact on the player. I use MBids as a good place to start when tagging items.

One other reason I remove the "extra" tags i find unhelpful is because of my Sonos speakers only hold/handle so much data per speaker and I start to hit the limit if albums are stored under different artist. .... just another example why i edit tags.

How i would handle the your example of John Williams.... i would use MBids to get the info i need then strip out the conflicting info... none of my soundtracks have conductor or composer (i remove that field) in them just the performer and album artist as various. If I ever did run into a situation where two artist have the same name I would probably add a special identifier to that artist. As wrong as that maybe like you said most players dont use MBids and i would still have to find a solution for the artist to show in my library correctly (how i want it displayed).

other issues ive had with MB and had to modify tags for the following artist so that other players treated the artist correctly;
Florence & The Machine
Florence and The Machine
Florence + The Machine

some player treated them as unique artist and some as two artists

While bios and art work are nice and pretty when on a PC, the only art I do have art for my albums... but once again most players dont use artist/band art, bios,lyrics, and/or music videos (yes, i have even seen this start to show up) and use up space i dont have to spare... Think about how much space i would need for 50,000 + songs pushing over 500G now... and looking to balloon when i start converting to Flac..

this is why kodi interest me so much...I have a portable wireless NAS with 1T drive for a in car media server..... and kodi is one of the only programs that can access a drive without requiring a "running Kodi server" to function.

as for your question on which tags i modify ..... here is a list i make sure all my files are tagged with (now, in the beginning with mp3 i wouldn't even keep the year or genre) ;
album artist
artist
title
year
genre
album
track
disk number
sort artist
album artist
album sort artist
album sort

some extended tags such as record company and the MBids if listed. such as asin and as of lately the artist website.

And please understand I dont dislike what MB has done but, I use it as a starting point for tags.
Also, dont worry about calling me out on something i do... ive been an Engineer to long to not take comments other than opinions. and just because i dislike the implementation, i will work with it and modify what i need to get it to act how i want.... Kodi included..

[zag]

In my opinion kodi should only support picard tagging with musicbrainz id's, anything custom is just going to create other issues.