[DaveBlake]

Filter is broken in Jarvis and before, hence all you experienced (it is not just you), but I am fixing and enhancing for v17.

Yes it could provide a route from the albums with either that artist as album artist or as a song artist on an album by another, to just the album artist ones. I think something like that may have been the original intension, but it never worked. But I would not use as a replacement for having two artist nodes, that does seem the easiest to understand and the most flexible.

As for singles and EPs, no need to use names as the library does know which are which in data, just need to make it available as a user filter. At the moment you can create a playlist rule, but it creates conflicting SQL so doesn't actually work but a fix is underway.

Enjoying the ideas AnalogKid

We are getting to the realms of what Musicbrainz calls "release group type" see https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release_Group/Type Have a look and see if it inspires you.

[DaveBlake]

I am indifferent on the genre discussion. While I'd like to use genres, I always find them unusable in any player you can imagine. They are song-based, so one artist will be associated with 20 different genres. And even one album by one artist may well have 10 different genres. Not even to mention compilation albums by various artists... I am happy to learn though how others have mastered this?

Mastering genre....

I don't know how anyone with a large music collection manages without getting genre working for them. An uncategorised list of 1000s of artists, let alone even more albums is totally unuseable IMO.

Read from music file tag, can be multiple value either with v2.4 or FLAC that supports that or using the item separator (" / " by default). Forget about offically defined values, or how some online sources may allocate "genre", roll your own to suit your needs. In effect use the genre tag as a custom field that can be used to categorise your music. My use includes standard genres like "rock", "classical" or "country" but others are "female", "soundtrack", "saxophone", "wife stuff" etc. I also use it to help with kinds of work e.g. "symphony", "overture".

If you are consistent then you don't wind up with "an artist will be associated with 20 different genres", but just a few really useful ones, meaningful to you. It may not be useful in other media players, but it is very powerful in Kodi. All about how well you tag your music.

[jjd-uk]

For me Genre is for producing custom lists of songs, so when using Genre I don't care about albums. For example I will have a 80's genre to list all songs in my collection from the 80's be they album tracks or singles.

[AnalogKid]

I have a library of over 200,000 tracks. I never use genre.
I know ACDC are rock and I know Bob Marley is reggae. If I fancy a little rock, I can usually get to a known rock artist with no real problem at all.

One of the reasons I don't bother with genre is that so many artists cross so many genres, that if you want to ONLY listen to rock music and omit any easy listening tracks, then the genre has to be on a track by track basis, and that's very difficult with such a large library.

If you're happy to just think of all ACDC tracks as rock, and all Shania Twain as pop, the it's much easier.

I totally understand how some people will use genre extensively, but I don't.

I genuinely a think a lot depends on how you listen to music. I tend to be in the mood for a specific artist. Other people might be more in the mood for a specific genre (but again that reiterates the point of a genre being specific to each track rather than each album or artist).

[DaveBlake]

I just can't remember artist names, let alone find Bob Marley under "B" when I want to look under "M".

But Kodi is used in many different ways, and I will do my best to support as many of them as I can.

[AnalogKid]

I just can't remember artist names, let alone find Bob Marley under "B" when I want to look under "M".

But Kodi is used in many different ways, and I will do my best to support as many of them as I can.

Yes I agree, and I don't think Genre messes anything up - it's just another way to organise.

[scott967]

Personally, I use genre as a song filter. I don't really care that much about the grouping as long as only songs of the genre are displayed.

As far as single/album, what I see is the distinction is pretty much arbitrary. I have releases that are billed as "single albums". The only real "single" is billed as a "digital single" as I don't know too many hard-copy releases that only contain a single song. It does of course have historical meaning from the days of 78/45 records set up as A and B sides. There's also the CD/DVD bundled as a single "release". Don't know how to handle that variant.

scott s.
.

[AnalogKid]

Filter is broken in Jarvis and before, hence all you experienced (it is not just you), but I am fixing and enhancing for v17.

Yes it could provide a route from the albums with either that artist as album artist or as a song artist on an album by another, to just the album artist ones. I think something like that may have been the original intension, but it never worked. But I would not use as a replacement for having two artist nodes, that does seem the easiest to understand and the most flexible.

As for singles and EPs, no need to use names as the library does know which are which in data, just need to make it available as a user filter. At the moment you can create a playlist rule, but it creates conflicting SQL so doesn't actually work but a fix is underway.

Enjoying the ideas AnalogKid

We are getting to the realms of what Musicbrainz calls "release group type" see https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release_Group/Type Have a look and see if it inspires you.

Are you sure Kodi knows what's an EP and a Single?
Is there any documentation on how it's deducing this because I believe it's impossible to know what is an EP vs what is an Album. You 'might' be able to figure out a single based on total runtime of all tracks, but it could be a flawed assumption that runtime indicates a single. Some EP's are basically a full album, and just designated as 'EP' by the record label, there's no technical difference that I am aware of.

[AnalogKid]

Personally, I use genre as a song filter. I don't really care that much about the grouping as long as only songs of the genre are displayed.

As far as single/album, what I see is the distinction is pretty much arbitrary. I have releases that are billed as "single albums". The only real "single" is billed as a "digital single" as I don't know too many hard-copy releases that only contain a single song. It does of course have historical meaning from the days of 78/45 records set up as A and B sides. There's also the CD/DVD bundled as a single "release". Don't know how to handle that variant.

scott s.
.

Yes, that's the issue with EP's and Singles... singles are a misnomer as they are often 2-3 tracks. maybe more, similarly with EP's. A 'single' and 'EP' and an 'Album' are all the same thing in reality, just branded differently by the record label and usually with Small (single) / Medium (EP) and Large (Album) number of tracks.
However, in my own case, and I strongly suspect in many other people's case too, they still like to browse the official 'Albums' of an artist without that view being polluted with singles or EP's. In an ideal world, Kodi would be flexible enough for users to configure views that showed any combination of those 'types'. It's a messy situation for sure, since there is also an argument that 'Bootlegs' would be a valid 'type' too.

One alternative way of dealing with the mess MIGHT be via tags / categories if an album could be 'tagged' by the user as a single, ep, real album, bootleg etc, and configure views to display / filter the results based on those tags. The tags could either be arbitrary leaving the user to sort his own system out, or 'standardised' if a group of XBMC could formalise such a standard.

Custom Nodes are great but... they just give you one specific filtered view. So you have to create one node per view that you would like.
You can't create two nodes that live under Music->Artists where one node shows singles and another shows albums. THAT would be quite powerful.
If you could have nodes that appeared in the music hierarchy, then you COULD do this:

Music->Artist->ACDC->Singles*
Music->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->By This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->Featuring This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->Albums*-> By This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->Albums*->Featuring This Artist*


* = custom node

In the above case - the custom node 'By This Artist' is the SAME node / code, but it is being applied to EP's or Albums. It would basically be like a filter that takes a collection of tracks as it's input, then filters them, and passes it on to the next Node in the hierarchy.

So imagine, you choose music, then ALL your music is filtered / groups by Artist.
you then choose ACDC, and all ACDC songs are sent to a filter to detect and group EP's
Then the results of that are sent to a filter that detects EP's that feature the artist rather than by the artist and so forth.

[DaveBlake]

Are you sure Kodi knows what's an EP and a Single?
Is there any documentation on how it's deducing this because I believe it's impossible to know what is an EP vs what is an Album. You 'might' be able to figure out a single based on total runtime of all tracks, but it could be a flawed assumption that runtime indicates a single. Some EP's are basically a full album, and just designated as 'EP' by the record label, there's no technical difference that I am aware of.

I was too brief in my reply. Kodi knows the difference between "albums" (more than one song grouped together) and lone songs that it calls "singles". This is held in the releasetype field of the album table, and populated when the music files are scanned depending on if the music files have an TALB/ALBUM tag or not.

So no it does not currently know what is an EP verses and album, nor can it handle singles with more than one song. Sorry if I mislead you.

However, in my own case, and I strongly suspect in many other people's case too, they still like to browse the official 'Albums' of an artist without that view being polluted with singles or EP's. In an ideal world, Kodi would be flexible enough for users to configure views that showed any combination of those 'types'. It's a messy situation for sure, since there is also an argument that 'Bootlegs' would be a valid 'type' too.

One alternative way of dealing with the mess MIGHT be via tags / categories if an album could be 'tagged' by the user as a single, ep, real album, bootleg etc, and configure views to display / filter the results based on those tags. The tags could either be arbitrary leaving the user to sort his own system out, or 'standardised' if a group of XBMC could formalise such a standard.

What we can consider is if there is value in Kodi processing the Musicbrainz release type tag. That way those that have used Picard will already have their music files tagged with useable data. Whether we enforce the defined values or allow for user variations on this is a deeper matter, as is the question of sub-types e.g. soundtrack, remix etc.

But it is not just about reading that tag, but what nodes, smart playlist/filter rules we want to work with it. Not going to be possible in v17, but maybe beyond if there is interest.

Custom Nodes are great but... they just give you one specific filtered view. So you have to create one node per view that you would like.
You can't create two nodes that live under Music->Artists where one node shows singles and another shows albums. THAT would be quite powerful.

Bit confused here, because you can do just that (allowing for bug that is), Kodi even has a "singles" node by default and "albums" node does not show singles. What is does not do, that I think you would like, is have a "release type" node with items for every type of release in your collection e.g. albums, singles, EP, etc. and then lets you drill into those.

If you could have nodes that appeared in the music hierarchy, then you COULD do this:

Music->Artist->ACDC->Singles*
Music->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->By This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->Featuring This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->Albums*-> By This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->Albums*->Featuring This Artist*


* = custom node

In the above case - the custom node 'By This Artist' is the SAME node / code, but it is being applied to EP's or Albums. It would basically be like a filter that takes a collection of tracks as it's input, then filters them, and passes it on to the next Node in the hierarchy.

So imagine, you choose music, then ALL your music is filtered / groups by Artist.
you then choose ACDC, and all ACDC songs are sent to a filter to detect and group EP's
Then the results of that are sent to a filter that detects EP's that feature the artist rather than by the artist and so forth.

I get what you are suggesting, but what about genre? I can't be the only person that has an artist list so long it needs breaking into manageable chunks.

I think this discussion of release group types, and how Kodi future UI could use it may be beast split off from the initial discussion or album artist / album behaviour which is something I hope to implement in v17.

[jjd-uk]

singles are a misnomer as they are often 2-3 tracks

Perhaps I'm an old fart who grew up with 7" 45rpm vinyl with only a single A & B side, so for me a single is always a single track.

[AnalogKid]

singles are a misnomer as they are often 2-3 tracks

Perhaps I'm an old fart who grew up with 7" 45rpm vinyl with only a single A & B side, so for me a single is always a single track.

An A and B side is two tracks on a 'single' disc. If you wanted to add that single to your digital library in the same way you might put the 7" Vinyl on your record shelf, I believe, you'd probably like to keep both tracks.

[AnalogKid]

If you could have nodes that appeared in the music hierarchy, then you COULD do this:

Music->Artist->ACDC->Singles*
Music->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->By This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->Featuring This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->Albums*-> By This Artist*
Music->Artist->ACDC->Albums*->Featuring This Artist*


* = custom node

In the above case - the custom node 'By This Artist' is the SAME node / code, but it is being applied to EP's or Albums. It would basically be like a filter that takes a collection of tracks as it's input, then filters them, and passes it on to the next Node in the hierarchy.

So imagine, you choose music, then ALL your music is filtered / groups by Artist.
you then choose ACDC, and all ACDC songs are sent to a filter to detect and group EP's
Then the results of that are sent to a filter that detects EP's that feature the artist rather than by the artist and so forth.

I get what you are suggesting, but what about genre? I can't be the only person that has an artist list so long it needs breaking into manageable chunks.

I think this discussion of release group types, and how Kodi future UI could use it may be beast split off from the initial discussion or album artist / album behaviour which is something I hope to implement in v17.

For Genre, you'd use exactly the same filtering process:

Music->Genre*->Artist->ACDC->Singles*
Music->Genre*->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->By This Artist*
Music->Genre*->Artist->ACDC->EPs*->Featuring This Artist*
Music->Genre*->Artist->ACDC->Albums*-> By This Artist*
Music->Genre*->Artist->ACDC->Albums*->Featuring This Artist*

Alternatively, you could use the Genre filter in a different order:

Music->Artist->ACDC->Genre*



So by having filters for genre, artists, albumartist, albums, singles, ep etc then merely by rearranging those filters, you can get pretty much any hierarchy of views you like:

Genre then Artist then Albums = Choose from a list of genres, then show the artists with tracks of that genre, then the albums containing those tracks
Artist then Genre then Tracks = Show a list of artists, then list of genres for that specific artist, then show the tracks in that genre