[mister_eff]

This isn't a criticism of Kodi's implementation or a feature request or anything. This is just stuff I noticed.

I thought Kodi would only use MusicBrainz ID's for information (like scraping), but it turns out that it organizes its internal database with the MusicBrainz Artist and Album IDs. This may seem obvious, but it has implications that I didn't realize when I added MusicBrainz tagging to my library. I browse music by folder because I have everything organized a specific way, so I was surprised to run into issues with my collection, even when I wasn't browsing via Kodi's library function.
 

• Because Kodi organizes its database with MusicBrainz Album IDs, it requires that the Album tag and MB Album ID have a 1:1 relationship/be unique to each other. i.e., files with different Album tags can't have the same MB Album ID and vice-versa.
  • If there isn't that 1:1 relationship, Kodi will mix up album art and album titles, and I believe Kodi will also crash more frequently (I still have to troubleshoot logs but I've instead spent my my time cleaning up my collection).
    
  • At the bottom, I'll list the various ways I ran into this issue with my library (I understand modifying my tags from the MB/Picard standard can be... atypical)
    
• Kodi similarly requires a 1:1 relationship with the Artist tag and the MB Artist ID. If there are inconsistencies, the MB Artist ID will show up when browsing artists names. This doesn't cause crashes, but does make browsing via the library kind of impractical
  • I ran into this issue because for my classical music, I put the performer in the Artist tag, which is contrary to the MusicBrainz Classical Style Guide. So because of that, for my entire classical music collection, the Artist tag doesn't match the MB Artist ID.
    
  • I don't think this causes Kodi to crash though
    
• I haven't noticed any negative repercussions to having multiple tracks with the same MB Track ID
  

The different scenarios in my library where the Album tag didn't match the MB Album ID:

View Spoiler

Many things I do are probably sacrilegious, but I had been ripping and organizing my music for over a decade before I heard of MusicBrainz so I have developed a system that I like.

• One philosophy I have is that I try to minimize the number of subfolders in the library.
  
• Another philosophy I have is that I think cataloguing music by release makes sense, but that isn't necessarily the way I want to browse my music. I think sometimes music is grouped to fit onto a single CD instead of separated by work, and on a digital collection, I feel that I shouldn't be obliged to group everything as if it was a group of digitized CDs.
  

Anyway, here are some of the instances I had to correct to get Kodi to not mix up albums and be more stable.

• SACD's/DVD-A's/Blu-Rays with different mixes in the same release
  • MusicBrainz treats the different mixes as different discs within the same release
    
  • I prefer to treat the 5.1 mix as a separate album from the stereo mix so they each show up on the same level, right below the artist
    
  • I don't like: "Artist\SACD Release\5.1 mix\" and "Artist\SACD Release\Stereo mix"
    
  • I prefer: "Artist\SACD Release - 5.1 mix\" and "Artist\SACD Release - Stereo mix"
    
  • I differentiate between the mixes in the album title, but then they have the same MB Album ID unless I change/delete that
    
• Many SACD's/DVD-A's with different mixes in the same release are missing the mix information on MusicBrainz
  • Single-disc albums released on SACD can have up to 3 layers
    • CD
      
    • SACD Stereo
      
    • SACD Multichannel
      
  • A complete MusicBrainz entry has 3 discs and 3 unique sets of track IDs
    
  • Many MusicBrainz entries do not have the layers separated into discs and only contain 1 set of track IDs
    
  • Because I treat multichannel mixes as different albums as the stereo mixes, I again end up with different albums having the same MB Album ID
    
  • I also have multiple tracks with the same MB Track ID, but I haven't noticed problems with that
    
• I really dislike the disc numbering that Multidisc SACD's are stuck with
  • Say you have an SACD compilation of multiple discs
    
  • In a correct MusicBrainz entry:
    • the CD stereo layers for discs 1, 2, 3, etc will be assigned discs 1, 4, 7, etc
      
    • the SACD Stereo layers for discs 1, 2, 3 etc will be assigned discs 2, 5, 8, etc
      
    • the SACD multichannel layers for discs 1, 2, 3 etc will be assigned discs 3, 6, 9 etc
      
  • For an SACD compilation of 17 discs.... the assigned disc number counts get kinda high and confusing if I followed MusicBrainz's standard
    
  • That's one reason I just group each layer together with its own kind and have each one have its own album tag
    
• Classical music that features different but complete works, especially by different composers
  • Often if the individual works are big enough (like complete symphonies), I'll put each one under the appropriate composer
    
  • Again, I end up with 2 different albums with the same album ID
    
• For compilations of an artist's entire discography, I don't want to browse the subdiscs to reach each album
  • I'd rather treat each album as its own release, but the obvious thing is to run the entire compilation under MusicBrainz's compilation's release, so I ended up with multiple albums with the compilation's MB Album ID
    
  • I had to go back and put each album under the re-release album ID to separate things out
    

[scott967]

I would say your music is probably more complex than typical user, so you are going to have to do some work.  There's some things in MB not supported in Kodi, but would be nice if they were, in particular "work" and "recording".  We have to work around that limitation.

MB "release" corresponds to a physical medium, or discrete downloadable.  Physical media can have different characteristics, like mix, but use the same "title" string.  Album ID will treat these as separate entities within the Kodi concept of "album".  If you provide an album MBID for one album, then all albums with the same title must also have unique MBID assigned for Kodi to keep them separate. Without any MBID, album title string is considered as definitive.  Kodi also will capture the MB "release group" ID, but that does nothing for library management.

Artist and Album artist behaves about the same, except for the option of using "album artists" and "artists".  With this option, the MBID corresponds to the artists tag, while the artist tag is simply a display string, format of it is immaterial.  Of course, you have the additional option of also using "roles" such as ensemble, conductor, composer etc.  Like album titles, once you relate an artist (or optional artists) string to an MBID, any other artist with the same string must have his/her own ID to be treated as separate entities.

scott s.
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[HomerJau]

@mister_eff It’s the AlbumArtist tag that groups albums not Artist that’s why you have problems with Artists.

AlbumArtist is used if no MB AlbumArtistID is used to assign Albums to Artists.
Artist and MB ArtistIDs are used to assign songs to artists.