[DaveBlake]

The current Album Info dialog can display a scraped track list, does this have any use for anyone? Personally in the current form it seems pretty useless, and just a wate of database storage and scraper traffic. If you agree or disagree please let me know.

I would prefer to see simply the list of songs from that album in your collection. I know some skins already show that. And to have the facility to either see the song details for a song, or a play/add to queue.

Does scraping a list of track names and durations for an album actually have any use?

[braz]

In Mimic, I replaced the scraped list with the album tracks, meaning they are playable and the context menu allows info lookup.

I say go ahead and remove the scraped track list.

[tkgafs]

I would also agree remove it and replace with the tracks from the album which have been scanned into database.

for this end user at least, I find it very confusing that some albums show tracks and others dont,

[ronie]

+1 i'm in favour of this as well.

[malvinas2]

Does scraping a list of track names and durations for an album actually have any use?

Yes, if there was an appropriate scraper... ATM I don't know of any scraper writing this information in a local nfo-file.

I would also agree remove it and replace with the tracks from the album which have been scanned into database.

for this end user at least, I find it very confusing that some albums show tracks and others dont,

....but even if a scraper downloads the necessary information, what would be the benefit? The user is informed that his tracks do not coincide with the original album?

Maybe it could be realized as an option in the set-up: Use mp3-filenames / tag information to build a list of track names = Yes / No

[DaveBlake]

@malvinas2 you seem to be saying there is a use for a scraped track list (and you can scrape track lists). What is that use?

We can already list the songs that we have from an album, just don't do it at the moment on the album info dialog with the default skin. So there is no question of making that optional.

I'm not understanding your view point, so do clarify if you can.

[scott967]

I have no use, but then 95% of my albums don't return anything anyway.

scott s.
.

[malvinas2]

@malvinas2 you seem to be saying there is a use for a scraped track list (and you can scrape track lists). What is that use?

Use? Well, not really, that's what I outlined in the second paragraph.

But I remember having asked a similar question some time ago when I was wondering why my local nfo-files don't contain information about track numbers and names. The language definition used within the nfo-files indeed supports the appropriate tags, but none of the known programs like MediaElch, TinyMediaManager etc. makes use of them.
These programs could scrape the information from musicbrainz or they could gather them from the id3-tags, but none of this is realized in practice.
And before one has to take a detour using these programs, it would be better if Kodi itself does it.

(it's just that I prefer having all album and artist information within a 'centralized' nfo-file, including the track names, inspite of the information being scattered across various mp3-files . But I know that most of the users and the Kodi-Team prefer using the id3-tags)


EDIT: Just discovered the discussion about discographys http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=297750.

It would be nice, if track names and discographies were handled in the same manner: At the moment I fill in manually the albums published by an artist (at least this music feature is supported by MediaElch) and Kodi compares this information with the locally existing albums (well, don't know if Kodi really does). Maybe track names could be treated the same way, information in the nfo-file about track names is used, which Kodi compares with available tracks.
Probably, it won't give you additional information at all, but I don't like to maintain some part of information saved in a nfo-file, and other parts of information within the id3-tags. This way it gets convoluted, unclear and unmanageable.

[Gade]

I absolutely agree that only showing a list of tracks from your local library makes a lot of sense in album info (tracks with a DBID).

And let the onclick action be playing the focused track.

[Hitcher]

Yes, finally a proper list of the tracks you actually have in your collection.

[braz]

It's already possible to display a custom list of the album tracks in the database. Would be nice if this was provided by the info dialog though, I guess.

[DaveBlake]

OK, consensus so far is that the scraped tracks have no useful value and we can drop them.

Except for

But I remember having asked a similar question some time ago when I was wondering why my local nfo-files don't contain information about track numbers and names. The language definition used within the nfo-files indeed supports the appropriate tags, but none of the known programs like MediaElch, TinyMediaManager etc. makes use of them.
These programs could scrape the information from musicbrainz or they could gather them from the id3-tags, but none of this is realized in practice.
And before one has to take a detour using these programs, it would be better if Kodi itself does it.

(it's just that I prefer having all album and artist information within a 'centralized' nfo-file, including the track names, inspite of the information being scattered across various mp3-files . But I know that most of the users and the Kodi-Team prefer using the id3-tags)

Sorry @malvinas2 I don't understand what you are saying.
If you have scraped album tracks from online sources then export will put them in NFO, if they are in NFO the scraping will populate the AlbumSongInfo table for them to be displayed. But what use does that data have? It has no connection to the songs in your collection. No wonder that media managing software does not bother to populate it.

With the brackets part are you saying that it is still your preference for NFO files to contain a list of track names (that you may or may not have as songs), and if so can you explain why? Or are you wanting a new feature where Kodi lists in the album.NFO the songs in your collection with that album?

EDIT: Just discovered the discussion about discographys http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=297750.

It would be nice, if track names and discographies were handled in the same manner: At the moment I fill in manually the albums published by an artist (at least this music feature is supported by MediaElch) and Kodi compares this information with the locally existing albums (well, don't know if Kodi really does). Maybe track names could be treated the same way, information in the nfo-file about track names is used, which Kodi compares with available tracks.
Probably, it won't give you additional information at all, but I don't like to maintain some part of information saved in a nfo-file, and other parts of information within the id3-tags. This way it gets convoluted, unclear and unmanageable.

Discography - I can see why you might want to know about other albums by an artist that you do not own. And kodi does currently try to match up with albums in your library, but it does so in the wrong way and place. That needs improvement. Discography for say Beethoven or London Symphony Orchestra is also a mess - lots of items but not enough data to identify the recording and never the ones you own.

For albums yes if scraped tracks have a use then I would tie them at time of scraping to those songs in the library in a similar way. But unlike discography I really have to wonder if having a list of track names has any merit at all.

I do think the divison between what album and artist data is scraped from NFO, and what is determined from music file tags needs to be made clearer. But it isn't as convoluted as it may at first seam.

@malvinas2 since you are saying something different to others, I think, I just want to be clear on your view.