[Warner306]

Can someone explain to me how to consolidate two or more entries from the same artist. I have an artist (Jay-Z) who shows up twice in the list of artists in library view. Different albums are sorted under each entry, all coming from the same artist. Checking the MBID# using the cdArt Manager, the MBID is identical for each yet I have two entries. Even the fanart for each is identical but distributed across two separate folders.

[Warner306]

I found a solution myself...Using iTunes>>Get Info I am able to edit tags related to the music files in my iTunes media folder (the one XBMC is reading). From there, I can change the Sort Album Artist to any that I please (this is the tag XBMC uses to determine the artist). No more duplicate artists!

[Roadie2000]

Yeah, double check your tags. Make sure your artist and album artist are exactly the same for all tracks. Sometimes just an extra space or something will throw it off.

[scott967]

I don't see anywhere in the code that sort album artist (soaa) is used at all. What I see in the code is artist (©ART) and album artist (aART). But it also will read iTunes
----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Artist Id
----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Artist Id
----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Artist

and you need to ensure these are all consistent (and if you have MusicBrainz data for an artist in any file, make sure it is set in all files consistently).

scott s.
.

[Pankookis]

I also have a funny problem which introduced itself when switching to Gotham from Frodo (I think).

In my music library (which I've tagged with Picard) I have several artists which are the same. It's not that I have (just an example) both "AC/DC" and "ACDC" but I have three "AC/DC", in other words the exact same spelling and tags.

Have re-done the tags on the artists with this problem and the "albumartist", "albumartist sort order" and "artist sort order" are the same on all the files. The only thing different is the artist tag, which XBMC doesn't even use to sort after. (correct me if I'm wrong)

I even double checked in other tagging programs and the "albumartist"tag is the same on all the files.

Have I missed some new setting when switching to Gotham or am I doing something else wrong?



Here is my log: http://pastebin.com/rHC2tLci


The artist in this example is Aidan Baker, which i get two exact copies of in the artist view.

artist - Aidan Baker
albums - Fantasma Parastisie

and

artist - Aidan Baker
albums - Lost in the Rat Maze

Any help would be much appreciated

[Warner306]

This is an old thread, but I thought I'd bump it for an answer. I still occasionally run into an issue when artists are misplaced or repeated despite having identical artist and album artist tags for each artist. Updating the tag version with a program like Mp3tag fixed some of these issues in the past, but I would like a technical explanation as to why artists names are sometimes duplicated for specific albums even with the correct tags.

[scott967]

You must also check musicbrainz artist id and musicbrainz album artist id. In particular if some have ids and others don't it can cause dupes.

[Warner306]

You must also check musicbrainz artist id and musicbrainz album artist id. In particular if some have ids and others don't it can cause dupes.

Can you clarify that? Are you saying the two ids must match or that an id must be present in all instances of the artist? How can I prevent this with tagging software or with simple interfaces such as iTunes?

[scott967]

The pair of artist or album artist (name string) and mb artist id or mb album artist id is treated as a unique identifier, unless you use the setting to "auto-correct" the name string, in which case the mb artist id or mb album artist id will be used to obtain the name string from mb database (I don't use this setting and I'm not sure if this can cause dupes or not -- would need to do some testing). I use mp3tag to set or review mb ids.

My rule of thumb is that if you have any file with mb artist or album artist id for an artist, you must ensure that all files with that artist also have the same mb artist or album artist id. There was a bug where the tag scanner was not reading the id properly when there were multiple artists (and multiple mb artist ids) in a file tag and that was causing problems, but that is fixed. Note that the order that artists appear in a file tag must match the order of the mb artist ids -- there isn't any other pairing mechanism so first artist is paired to first mb artist id, second with second, etc.

scott s.
.

[Warner306]

The pair of artist or album artist (name string) and mb artist id or mb album artist id is treated as a unique identifier, unless you use the setting to "auto-correct" the name string, in which case the mb artist id or mb album artist id will be used to obtain the name string from mb database (I don't use this setting and I'm not sure if this can cause dupes or not -- would need to do some testing). I use mp3tag to set or review mb ids.

My rule of thumb is that if you have any file with mb artist or album artist id for an artist, you must ensure that all files with that artist also have the same mb artist or album artist id. There was a bug where the tag scanner was not reading the id properly when there were multiple artists (and multiple mb artist ids) in a file tag and that was causing problems, but that is fixed. Note that the order that artists appear in a file tag must match the order of the mb artist ids -- there isn't any other pairing mechanism so first artist is paired to first mb artist id, second with second, etc.

scott s.
.

So to summarize, the Album Artist and Album Artist ID must match and be in the same order for every file for that artist. Similarly, the Artist and Artist ID must match and be in the same order for every song. I use mp3tag, but any similar tagging program such as Picard can be used to correct individual tags. The tags in question come from MusicBrainz.