User:Karellen/scratchpad

Steps to create your Music Library
1. Music File Tagging
2. Scanning Music Into Library
3. Scraping Music Into Library
4. NFO Files Movies TV Shows Music Music Videos
5. Music_artwork Report NFO corrections: [https:// here in the forum]

Video library Music library

scratchpad

Requirements

As the Music section of Kodi has many differences to the Video section of Kodi, please read this section to ensure your music and artwork are correctly scraped and displayed.

Music nfo Specific Requirements

Some general notes from discussions between @daveblake and @karellen. To be created into wiki notes

• There exist peculiarities with some XML tags in the nfo files:
  • <releasedate> is required as part of the internal function of the online scraping processing. It does not map directly to any db field, and nothing (currently) happens with it. Exporting the library to nfo files will create an empty XML tag. It is not used during import.
  • <artistdesc> tag in the album.nfo file is related to the strArtists field of the album table of the database. It is derived from ALBUMARTIST and ALBLUMARTISTS tags from the Music Files. If those two tags are empty, then it will be derived from ARTIST and ARTISTS tags. It is exported to album.NFO as <artistdesc> but the value is not imported/scraped.
  • <releasetype> appears in the album.nfo by mistake. It is an internal flag that, in NFO files, will always be output as <releasetype>album</releasetype>, and is ignored during import/scrape of the nfo file. It relates to the strReleaseType field of the album table in the database. It does not relate to the RELEASETYPE tag in the MusicFile, which connects to <type> in album.nfo.
  • There is no tag for votes of individual Songs. Album votes can come from either online or local nfo scraping.
• There are MusicFile Tags that are not saved to the database, therefore there are no NFO Tags for them. The MusicFile Tags are accessed by the player at the commencement of playback.

MusicFile Tags not saved by Kodi
CUESHEET
LYRICS
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK
METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE or COVERART or COVERARTMIME

• In music the only XML tags with a qualifier is Rating and User Rating. It limits the maximum score that is possible for the given rating. This is relevant as Kodi switched from a maximum 5 rating to a maximum of 10 rating.
• FLAC rating contained within the Music File Tag is scored out of 100. Kodi converts this value to its equivalent value out of 10. Values less than 10 in the FLAC MusicFile Tag will return a rating of 0 in Kodi.

• A number of database fields can be populated initially by MusicFile Tags, but then be overwritten by online or nfo scraping. Whether this occurs depends on the setting Prefer Online Information in Settings>Media Settings>Music. If disabled, these fields will remain with the data from the MusicFile Tags. If enabled these fields will be overwritten. The affected fields are shown below in the section Available nfo Tags
• When the PERFORMER tag is used from MusicFiles, Kodi will automatically insert the Orchestra tag.

Work in Progress

• Also a FLAC file can have the cuesheet embeeded as a CUESHEET tag instead. Because of that v17 and before has a Cue table in the DB just to make replaygain handling possible during playback for those kinds of file. Ugly solution, that slowed down Kodi for everyone even when no cuesheets in your music collection. Disabled in v17 (no replay gain applied for songs from FLAC with embedded cue - boo hoo! but songs node 30% faster!!!) , and implemented differently in v18. If I perform an export to nfo, is any of that cue sheet data exported? - NO. It is considered to be re-derivable from the music files (+ cue)

• https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=320887&pid=2641709#pid2641709

• Yes music is different (better actually) because it is not dependant on online sources in the way video is. But be great to have both documented well.

• In artist.nfo <name> can overwrite the name of the artist in the artist table (if "prefer online info" enabled") but does not change that name anywhere else
• In album.nfo the top level <artist> tag is deprecated
• The NFO data should all go to/come from somewhere in the db, just not always a single db field. The source of data field content can be diverse, scanning is not just about reading data but processing it too. Also some fields are initially set from tags and then can be overwritten by nfo data, there is a merge process involved in scraping.
• Art table is indirectly populated from both scanning and scraping

nfo Placement

Music will fetch additional album and album artist information from nfo files.

For additional album information each album needs to be in its own unique folder, and have a separate album.nfo file located there. See the first table below.

For additional album artist information each artist needs a separate artist.nfo file located in what Kodi determines as the unique common folder for that artist. Kodi does not fetch additional artist data for artists that only feature on songs, either on compilation albums or as guest artists on songs in albums by others, and you do not have any albums by them in your collection.

Note: There are weaknesses in the way that Kodi determines the location of the artist folder. It looks for the folder that is common to all the songs with that album artist, the name of that folder is irrelevent. If you have multiple albums by an artist all under an artist folder then this works perfectly. However the algorithm does not work for collaboration albums, those that have more than one album artist e.g. "Riding with the King" by Eric Clapton and BB King, or classical music with composer, orchestra and conductor given as the album artist. Also if you have not kept all songs by an artist under a unique folder, then the artist directory will probably be mis-identified. The result is that Kodi can find the wrong artist.NFO file, and give the artist some other artist's information, or fail to fine the artist.nfo you created

Naming & Saving conventions for your Music Artist *.nfo files:

Saved Artist as	File Name	Save Location
Artist\Album\Songs	artist.nfo	f:\MyMusic\Stevie Nicks\artist.nfo

Naming & Saving conventions for your Music Album *.nfo files:

Saved Album as	File Name	Save Location
Artist\Album\Songs	album.nfo	f:\MyMusic\Stevie Nicks\Crystal Visions\album.nfo

Available nfo Tags

The following two tables list the available tags that can be used in each nfo file.

Artist NFO

NFO (xml) Tag	Required	Overwrites	Multiple	Notes
<name></name>	Yes	Yes	no	1
<musicBrainzArtistID></musicBrainzArtistID>	No	No	No	1
<genre></genre>	No	Yes	Yes	1 2 3
<style></style>	No	No	Yes	2 3
<mood></mood>	No	No	Yes	2 3
<theme></theme>	No	Yes	Yes	2 3
<yearsactive></yearsactive>	No	No	Yes	2 3
<born></born>	No	No	No
<formed></formed>	No	No	No
<instruments></instruments>	No	No	No	2 3
<biography></biography>	No	No	No
<died></died>	No	No	No
<disbanded></disbanded>	No	No	No
<thumb preview="path"></thumb>	No	No	Yes	4
<path></path>	No	No	No
<fanart></fanart>	No	No	Yes	4
<album> <title></title> <year></year> </album>	No	No	Yes	5
<art> <fanart></fanart> <thumb preview="path"></thumb> </art>	No	No	Yes	5

Notes
1	Will overwrite when prefer online info is enabled in Kodi settings
2	Multiple entries allowed
3	When no data exists, NFO tag will not be created on Export
4	Path to available online artwork
5	Path to artwork in use

Album NFO

NFO (xml) Tag	Required	Overwrites	Multiple	Notes
<title></title>	Yes	Yes	No	1
<musicBrainzAlbumID></musicBrainzAlbumID>	No	Yes	No	1
<artistdesc></artistdesc>	Yes	No	No	4
<genre></genre>	No	Yes	Yes	1 2 3
<style></style>	No	Yes	Yes	1 2 3
<mood></mood>	No	Yes	Yes	1 2 3
<theme></theme>	No	Yes	Yes	1
<compilation></compilation>	Yes	Yes	No	1 2 3
<review></review>	No	Yes	No	1
<type></type>	No	Yes	No	1
<releasedate></releasedate>	No	No	No	4
<label></label>	No	Yes	No	1
<thumb preview="path"></thumb>	No	No	Yes
<path></path>	Yes	No	No
<rating max="10"></rating>	No	Yes	No	1
<userrating max="10"></userrating>	No	No	No
<votes></votes>	No	Yes	No	1
<year></year>	No	Yes	No	1
<albumArtistCredits> <artist></artist> <musicBrainzArtistID></musicBrainzArtistID> </albumArtistCredits>	Yes	Yes	Yes	1 2 3
<track> <musicBrainzTrackID></musicBrainzTrackID> <title></title> <position></position> <duration></duration> </track>	Yes	Yes	Yes	1 2 3
<releasetype></releasetype>	No	No	No	4

Notes
1	Will overwrite when prefer online info is enabled in Kodi settings
2	Multiple entries allowed
3	When no data exists, NFO tag will not be created on Export
4	XML Tag created on Export, not used on Import

Sample nfo Files

An example of the artist.nfo and the album.nfo are provided. Use these as a guide to create your own nfo files, or to determine errors in your own files.

Artist nfo

Sample Music Artist nfo. Click the Expand button, to the right, to view

Music Album nfo

Sample Music Album nfo. Click Expand, to the right, to view.