I’m confused. I’ve tried to find this in the Wiki but if it’s there I’ve managed to miss it.
For albums with multiple artists I see that the Artist Sort Order tag provided by MB Picard (as retrieved from MB) is not what I’d expect. Take, for example, the album “Illuminations” by Carols Santana & Alice Coltrane. Picard retrieves the following from MB (relevant fields only):
- Album: Illuminations
- Artist: Carlos Santana & Alice Coltrane
- Album Artist: Carlos Santana & Alice Coltrane
- Artists: Carlos Santana; Alice Coltrane
- Artist Sort Order: Santana, Carlos & Coltrane, Alice
- Album Artist Sort Order: Santana, Carlos & Coltrane, Alice
I’d expect the Artist Sort Order and Album Artist Sort Order tags to follow the same convention as other multiple-field tags, i.e.:
- Artist Sort Order: Santana, Carlos, Coltrane, Alice
- Album Artist Sort Order: Santana, Carlos, Coltrane, Alice
But instead the ampersand is retained. How does Kodi handle the Artist Sort Order and Album Artist Sort Order tags in this case? Will this be sorted under both Carlos Santana and under Alice Coltrane, or will ‘Carlos Santana & Alice Coltrane’ be treated as a different artist entry and sorted accordingly?
Another problem is remixes. For example, I have a lot of albums with artists like “DJ Demo feat. Artist Testcase”. Since a DJ can easily have a dozen different tracks on a single CD featuring different artists, even though it’s all part of the same mixed DJ album and it’s all pretty much much of a muchness, this gives me a dozen different artist sort order entries for that single CD, many of which show up in non-intuitive (to me) places. That’s a pain (AFAIC) but I can’t see any way around it short of changing the Artist Sort Order tag from “Demo, DJ feat. Testcase, Artist” into “Demo, DJ, Testcase, Artist” manually for hundreds of separate tracks. Which, knowing the thought that has gone into Kodi’s design, doesn’t seem to be the way to go.
Advice, anyone? I’d appreciate any insights here!
// FvW