Following several months of banging my head against walls and clogging up these forums with several threads on the subject, I have come to the conclusion that the Kodi behavior I’m encountering might actually be a bug. But before I file a bug report I’d like for someone more knowledgeable than me on Kodi’s internals to tell me if that would be correct.
Consider a track with the following MP3 tags (only relevant tags shown):
- Title: Concrete Angel
- Album: A State of Trance 1000: Celebration Mix
- Artist: Gareth Emery feat. Christina Novelli
- Artist Sort Order: Emery, Gareth feat. Novelli, Christina
- Album Artist: Armin van Buuren
- Album Artist Sort Order: Buuren, van, Armin
- MusicBrainz Release Artist ID: 477b8c0c-c5fc-4ad2-b5b2-191f0bf2a9df
- Artists: Gareth Emery; Christina Novelli
- MusicBrainz Artist ID: 73549455-66cb-4570-b0bf-caf3d8d631fe; a610de1a-3a61-48d3-b0fd-1d89151ac96a
When I scan the above track in an otherwise empty music database (delete MyMusicXX.db file; then reboot to create a new database file) the Artists list as shown under Main Menu -> Music -> Artists is ordered as follows:
- Armin van Buuren
- Christina Novelli
- Gareth Emery
As you can see, the artist sort order is not interpreted by Kodi as Emery, Gareth feat. Novelli, Christina. If it were, Gareth Emery would appear before Christina Novelli, not after. Adding more tracks shows where the problem may lie.
- Title: Big Sky (Agnelli & Nelson remix)
- Album: A State of Trance 1000: Celebration Mix
- Artist: John O’Callaghan feat. Audrey Gallagher
- Artist Sort Order: O’Callaghan, John
- Album Artist: Armin van Buuren
- Album Artist Sort Order: Buuren, van, Armin
- MusicBrainz Release Artist ID: 477b8c0c-c5fc-4ad2-b5b2-191f0bf2a9df
- Artists: John O’Callaghan; Audrey Gallagher
- MusicBrainz Artist ID: 8c0a04b6-8a33-4f6b-9cc5-bc2bbec03d31; ba65a099-8d5f-4605-bdbd-559c23d39570
After scanning this track into the database as well, the Artists list now looks like this:
- Audry Gallagher
- Armin van Buuren
- Christina Novelli
- Gareth Emery
- John O’Callaghan
Both these tracks are by more than artist. So let’s add a third track by only one artist:
- Title: For an Angel (E-Werk club mix)
- Album: A State of Trance 1000: Celebration Mix
- Artist: Paul van Dyk
- Artist Sort Order: Dyk, van, Paul
- Album Artist: Armin van Buuren
- Album Artist Sort Order: Buuren, van, Armin
- MusicBrainz Release Artist ID: 477b8c0c-c5fc-4ad2-b5b2-191f0bf2a9df
- Artists: Paul van Dyk
- MusicBrainz Artist ID: 092ca127-2e07-4cbd-9cba-e412b4ddddd9
Now the list is as follows:
- Audrey Gallagher
- Armin van Buuren
- Christina Novelli
- Paul van Dyk
- Gareth Emery
- John O’Callaghan
So what I’m seeing here is that the “Artist Sort Order” works as per the contents (i.e. sort the artist by last name rather than by first name) only for the first artist in the Artist Sort Order tag, while second and subsequent artists are sorted by their first name (i.e. the contents of the Artist Sort Order fields is ignored for anything but the first artist).
As a result of this, the Artists list contains a mixture of entries sorted by last name (as per the Artist Sort Order tag) and entries sorted by first name (i.e. ignoring the Artist Sort Order tag). The result is (I’m sorry but there’s no other word for it) a mess.
Now from everything I read in the Wiki and elsewhere, this is not supposed to happen that way. Am I right in concluding that this warrants a bug report? If not, what am I missing and what should I do to ensure that when a track by “Aard Vark feat. Some Dude” is scanned to the database, both artists are listed sorted by last name, i.e. as follows:
- Some Dude
- Aard Vark
Because that is the behavior I would expect, not only based on what it says in the Wiki but also from what I understand about the philosophy behind having an Artist Sort Order tag in the first place.
(Note: Settings -> Media -> Music -> Use artist sortname when sorting artist is set to ON.)
All thoughts and insights on this would be helpful!!
(PS: I haven’t had a chance to test this with albums that have multiple artists in the Album Artist an Album Artist Sort Order fields but this would bear looking into, I believe.)
// FvW