[Solo0815]

I have tagged my music compilations manually with mp3tag like this to group them in sets: e.g.
albumartist Collection: BarLounge Classics / Various Artists
In Kodi 15 and 16 I have this Compilations under "Sampler" and Artists -> "Collection: BarLounge Classics"
This was my workaround for "music sets" (FR here: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid1512956)

Then I could easily go to Artists -> "Collection: Whatever" to have all the Compilations e.g. BarLounge Classics 1-4, Summer Edition, Sunset Edition, ... from this series

In Kodi 17 this doesn't work, even if the compilations-tag is set to "1" and albumartist is changed to "Various Artists" with mp3-tag. There are ALL artists from this compilations separately in "artists".

1. Isn't there an option to hide "artists that are only in Compilations"?
2. is it "various artists" or "Various Artists"
3. Why are they appearing under Albums and Samplers?
4. There might be a bug, when "albumartist" is containing a ":" (colon). The albumartist is cut off behind the colon. There is a artist named "Collection" in "artists" in the sample above.

btw: music grouping in albums and samplers was IMO more clear in 15/16 and should be improved for 17/18
Thx

[DaveBlake]

[Split into a separate thread as it seems a separate, and useful, discussion]
Handling of music sets is something on my long todo list. Meanwhile you may need to adjust your current work around to work well with some of the improvements in v17, or change some settings.

First, and importantly, the setting that was wrongly called "Include artists that appear in compilations only" for v17 is in Settings -> media -> music -> "show song and album artists". It does what it always did, reduce the list of artists to just album artists rather than all than those on individual songs, but now is correctly named. Is seems that you want to disable this.

I am guessing a bit, but you tag your music with the genre "Sampler"? If so then in v17 you will still see "Sampler" as a genre.

But Artist, and album artist, names are processed more flexibly than in previous versions. For these tags only Kodi can now use a variety of item separators. By default these include { ";", ":", "|", " feat. ", " ft. " }, so "artist1 feat. artist2" or "artist1: artist2" will result in both artist1 and artist2 separately in the database. Normally artist names do not include a colon, so the presence of one is more likely to be a name separator. However you have used colon in what you want treated as an artist name, hence the behaviour you experience - "Collection: BarLounge Classics / Various Artists" gets split into "Collection", " BarLounge Classics" and "Various Artists".

This default behaviour can be changed by adding settings in advancedsettings.xml. For example I use the following

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<musiclibrary>
    <artistseparators>
    <separator> feat. </separator>
    <separator> Feat. </separator>
    <separator> with </separator>
    <separator>;</separator>
    <separator> ft. </separator>
    <separator> Ft. </separator>
    </artistseparators>
</musiclibrary>
</advancedsettings>

The default artist name separators are completely replaced with the separators listed here - hence no colon, and I have added " with " because a number of songs in my collection have been tagged "artist1 with artist2" and I want to separate the artists individually.

Do something like this and "Collection: BarLounge Classics / Various Artists" will be split into album artists "Collection: BarLounge Classics" and "Various Artists" as you want.

Also, unlike v16, when all the tracks are tagged with COMPILATION = 1 the album will be tagged as a compliation regardless of the album artist being more than just "Various Artists". I don't think v16 would have flagged your albums as compliations because the album artist was not just "Various Artists" but a multiple.

The albums node by default shows all the albums in your collection including compliations, it seems reasonable that this is available to start with. But if you do not want to see the compliations then create a custom node that excludes them.

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<node type="folder">
<label>Albums (No Compilations)</label>
<path>musicdb://albums/?compilation=false</path>
</node>

Of course there is a downside to using album artist to group albums into sets, that is that the scrapers will not be able to identify your music. And you also need to avoid having musicbrainz id tags (because they don't have an id for your fake set artist). But I understand why you use this work around.

Hope that is all clear, and that you can get v17 handling your sets at least as well as v16 without too much difficulty.

[Solo0815]

Thx for the great explanation.
This would be also useful in the Wiki, btw

[DaveBlake]

Wiki, yes I know but I just don't have time. Volunteer authors are always welcome, translate my forum based explanations into something useful in wiki. I only know what needs to be written about when people ask questions or have problems.

[scott967]

BTW a way to "cheat" and use symbols that otherwise get interpreted by apps or the operating system as "illegal" or "special" is to use the Unicode HALFWIDTH AND FULLWIDTH FORMS block. These were intended for use with East Asian languages, but they work in any unicode-aware application (you also need to use a font that displays them -- for Estuary skin the "arial" font does include them).

using COLON U+003A
Collection: BarLounge Classics
using FULLWIDTH COLON U+FF1A
Collection： BarLounge Classics

scott s.
.

[Solo0815]

Another FR regarding multiple Artists including "Various Artists":
When I use "Collection: BarLounge Classics / Various Artists" with the mentioned entry in advancedsettings.xml, then Kodi adds it correctly. But there is one issue:
There are 2 Artists:
1. Various Artists (the one from "Collection: BarLounge Classics / Various Artists"
2. Verschiedene Interpreten (which is "Various Artists" in german)
the second one is a compilation with only "Various Artists" in "albumartist"

Now the FR:
There should only be "Verschiedene Interpreten" (translated "Various Artists")
if "AlbumArtist" contains "Various Artists" make it a compilation and add it to $VariousArtists (which is "Verschiedene Interpreten" in german translation) instead of making an "untranslated" artist "Various Artists"

[DaveBlake]

Indeed various artists handling and interaction with language settings is something that needs some reworking. Although the problems are well known there are also disagreements on exactly what it should do instead.

I think what we want is for Kodi to handle artist alias names, then all the variations of "various artist" - when explicitly tagged as the album arrtist, or when Kodi finds a mix of song artists and no album artist is given, or when given in whatever language, can be gathered together. But that is just my opinion, and as an English person I don't ever have this problem!

For now if you leave album artist tag empty and let Kodi deduce that it is various artists then it will use "Verschiedene Interpreten" from your language settings. But if you specify "various artists" as the album artist it will use what you tag. This leads to both entries as artists.

So I am aware of the issue, but not sure what the final solution will be or when it will happen.

[Solo0815]

OK, thx for the answer.
I don't mind if Kodi shows "Verschiedene Interpreten" or "Various Artists", but Kodi should IMO see it as a Compilation and add it to $VariousArtists and translate it later when the list is shown.

btw: I thought "Various Artists" is international for Compilations?

And if there where "Music Sets" then ALL Compilations can be tagged with "Various Artists" and the Problem is gone
Looking forward to a solution.

Edit:
Even if I switch to "English" in Kodi, there are "Verschiedene Interpreten", which is german. Shouldn't it be "Various Artists"?
I'd call this a bug (not a feature)

[DaveBlake]

What happens, or doesn't, when you switch language is part of the known issue with the way "various artists" handling was designed. All done long before me. I tend to think of bugs as unexpected behaviour, this is more a design error with faults when languages other than English are used. But whatever it is called yes there is something to improve.