[skyking376]

Been reading a lot about music library, music artwork, musicbrainspicard, etc as I’m attempting to add Music to my Kodi library for the first time. Please do a sanity check for me before I go down this bunny trail!
 
I purposely have my media center (Unraid OS with all movies/tv shows data stored on it) on an internal WIRED network and not connected to the internet. I “can” connect to internet if needed but prefer not to. I have 2 Media boxes (in 2 different rooms) to run Kodi on same internal wired network to access movies/tv/etc. Box 1 is Minix Neo U9H (CoreElec) and Box 2 is ODROID-N2+ (CoreElec). Movies are each in their separate folders with all artwork/nfo files stored inside each movie folder locally. Same for TV shows. This setup has worked flawlessly for many years. Time to add music…
 
Check my understanding please:
1) Get all your music labeled and tagged using musicbrainspicard correctly. (music filenames aren’t important but tagging definitely is)
2) Structure folders like: Artist->Albumname(year)->Songs. Not required but not a bad idea (I already have most this way).
3) Not 100% sure on compilations any/or any playlists I want to make? (Think… “100 classic rock songs” from a compilation CD or a playlist I would want to make “Classical Music” or “Christmas Music”). Need guidance on these issues.
4) Create an “Artist Information Folder”, since I want to have all the pretty pics and nfo files to be stored locally? Correct? Yes/no?
5) Connect to internet…Scan first to take embedded tags and artwork into internal Kodi database, then additionally scrape (using Kodi’s built in music scrapper? Yes/no/not sure?)  any stuff that was missing and it will download from internet.
6) How to get all artwork/nfo’s for music that was pulled from internet and then store it locally? I read about Artwork Dump but was confused about which version this works on,  it is outdated, or Kodi’s can now do this as default? Kinda lost on this issue. Need guidance please.
7) Disconnect from internet now that all artwork is stored locally.
8) For future onesy-twosey additions of songs or albums, repeat steps 1-7, correct? Yes/no?

I tried doing my homework first. Thank you for helping out a noob.

[Karellen]

I don't use music a lot on Kodi, only because of my setup being in a dedicated room, so can't hear it in the rest of the house. So music is really an "in the car" thing for me.
But some answers for you, and the power users can correct me.

1) Get all your music labeled and tagged using musicbrainspicard correctly. (music filenames aren’t important but tagging definitely is)

Yes!! And be careful using MusicBrainz Picard. Don't just blindly accept everything it offers. Check the match actually matches your album. Not uncommon to match with the wrong version and songs are out of order, or songs are missing.
I assume you have found the wiki pages for Music? If not see My Signature below.

2) Structure folders like: Artist->Albumname(year)->Songs. Not required but not a bad idea (I already have most this way).

Correct. Not strictly required, but you'd be silly not to, otherwise you will have problems with local info/artwork.

3) Not 100% sure on compilations any/or any playlists I want to make? (Think… “100 classic rock songs” from a compilation CD or a playlist I would want to make “Classical Music” or “Christmas Music”). Need guidance on these issues.

I keep a separate Source for compilations. Another for Soundtracks, Classical and Audiobooks.
All songs in a compilation (eg the Ministry of Sound albums) are kept in one folder per album.
...\Compilations\Ministry of Sound- 2002 Annual\<all album songs>
Also in the folder I will have the fanart.jpg, folder.jpg, discart.png and lrc lyric files
Each song artist will have an entry in the Artist Information Folder.

4) Create an “Artist Information Folder”, since I want to have all the pretty pics and nfo files to be stored locally? Correct? Yes/no?

Yes.
Keep the AIF outside of any of your source folders. Don't put it in with your album folders.
All Artist related items go here. All Album related items go in the album folders.

5. Connect to internet…Scan first to take embedded tags and artwork into internal Kodi database, then additionally scrape (using Kodi’s built in music scrapper? Yes/no/not sure?)  any stuff that was missing and it will download from internet.

Scan only first!!! Don't enable scrape additional info at the same time.
Once you scan, check what was scanned. You might end up with duplicated albums each holding a subset of songs from that album.
So, fix all the mistakes first. Once done, then you can run the additional scrape, otherwise it is a nightmare to delete the scraped data and then force Kodi to rescrape as it is already marked as scraped (works different to video library)

6) How to get all artwork/nfo’s for music that was pulled from internet and then store it locally? I read about Artwork Dump but was confused about which version this works on,  it is outdated, or Kodi’s can now do this as default? Kinda lost on this issue. Need guidance please.

I've never used Artwork Dump for music, but that should do the job. It works on v21 as I use it all the time for videos.
No, Kodi cannot download original artwork by default.

8) For future onesy-twosey additions of songs or albums, repeat steps 1-7, correct? Yes/no?

Yep.

Maybe run through a test setup with a handful of albums first? Or use a Portable Install and test the full scan before building your main library.

[jjd-uk]

Maybe run through a test setup with a handful of albums first? Or use a Portable Install and test the full scan before building your main library.

I'd advise exactly this. Create a test folder somewhere that contains only a few ablums of each sort that you possess, so only a very few artist albums, compilations, soundtracks etc etc. That way you can get to the know process and how it works for your music & tagging, and with a test folder with only a small subset of music. This will allow you to experiment and if things get in a mess, then you can simply delete everything to start over from stratch without too much wasted effort.

[scott967]

Also highly agree that it's best to scan music first, without scraping the artist and album info.  In my experience I can get artist name or less common album title "collisions" that I need to fix (mostly this involves getting or verifying the musicbrainz ID).

If your music includes classical, as with every music library implementation I have tried, you need to make some decisions of your own as to how to handle the composer, performer, title of the classical work vs title of the album.  There's threads here on the forum to give some ideas.

scott s.
.

[skyking376]

I plan to follow all recommendations and report back in multiple weeks when I'm stuck with questions. 

Thank you for replies.

[manfeed]

About number 6 you don’t need to use Artwork Dump, when you’re perfectly happy with your library just make an export fo folders, this option is in the Kodi settings. That way if you need to reinstall Kodi in the future you’ll only have to use local scraping and will have everything just fine in a matter of minutes without using internet at all.