Itunes Macos Export Cover Art and Tags to Files

Steps to create your Music Library

1. Guide Main Page
2. Music Settings
iii. Music File Tagging
four. Scanning Music Into Library
v. Artist information binder
6. Scraping Boosted Music information
7. Update Music Library
8. NFO Files 8.1 Music NFO Files
ix. Artwork ix.1 Music Artwork
x. Import-export library x.1 Music Import-Consign
11. Backup & Recover

Music library

Music tagging

1 Introduction

This page provides the following data:

How the Music section differs from the Video department of Kodi
The recommended method to organise your music files
The recommended method for tagging your music files
Caption of some unremarkably misunderstood Music File Tags
The Sound Files and Tags that Kodi reads and uses

2 Understanding the Music Library

There is a central differences between video library operation and the music library operation:

The video library is based on using the filenames or folder names to obtain online data. If they are incorrectly named, so there are no scraper results and there will be no library entry.
The music library is based on scanning tags embedded in the music files. Information technology ignores the folder names and structure and file names. Proper tagging is essential to ensure the library is populated correctly. Having slight variations in the tags for artist and album names could mean duplicated and unwanted entries.

3 Folder and File Structure

Although Kodi ignores the folder structure and the names of the folders and files, the construction of your folders is important as it affects the operation of other functions such every bit Import/Export, nfo files and Artwork. For instance, if you have all your music files in one folder (which is possible), then you lose the power to use local nfo files, local artwork, and the import/export module will non part correctly.

The post-obit is Kodi best practice. Think employ a layout that is dainty for y'all, just tag accurately.

3.1 Files

Song files require suitable tagging for use in Kodi. While Kodi tin can scan minimal tags into the library, information technology can lead to errors in the library and subsequent scraping. We recommend music files are tagged with MusicBrainz as detailed beneath.

Remember that Kodi does not extract whatsoever information from the filename, and so the filename is your option.

3.ii Folders

Kodi is quite flexible with the folder construction. The diagram beneath is an example. Y'all should group your albums in a manner that makes sense to you.

To ensure Kodi and other improver processes tin can function efficently and correctly, the post-obit is recommended.

Songs from the same album should be in the 1 folder
If in that location is more than 1 deejay in the release, each deejay should be in a sub-folder containing the songs from that disk

The following is a typical folder structure:

f:\   ....................................(root)  |__Artist Data  ..................(Artist Data Folder)  |  |__Artist Music   .......................(source folder)  |  |__ Madonna   ........................(artist folder)  |  |   |__ Beautiful Stranger (1999)   ..(album folder)  |  |   |   |__ Song 1  |  |   |   |__ Song two  |  |   |   |__ Vocal iii etc  |  |   |__ Bedtime Stories (1994)   .....(album binder)  |  |   |   |__ Song 1  |  |   |   |__ Vocal ii  |  |   |   |__ Song 3 etc  |  |   |__ Like A Prayer (1989)   .......(album folder)  |  |   |   |__ Song 1  |  |   |   |__ Song ii  |  |   |   |__ Song 3 etc  |  |__ Simply Red   .....................(artist folder)  |      |__ Pic Volume (1985)   ........(album folder)  |          |__ Song i  |          |__ Song 2  |          |__ Song three etc  |  |__Compilations   .......................(Source)  |  |__ Essential Eighties   .............(album binder)  |  |       |__ Vocal one  |  |       |__ Song 2  |  |       |__ Song 3 etc  |  |__ 100% Hits- Best of 2005   ........(album folder)  |          |__ Vocal ane  |          |__ Song 2  |          |__ Song 3 etc  |  |__Classical   ..........................(Source)  |  |__Audiobooks   .........................(Source)

iii.iii Sources

A source is the parent binder that contains your media collection- in this case Music. This folder is then set as a Source in Kodi which enables Kodi to admission your Music.

In the diagram from the previous section Creative person Music, Compilations, Classical and Audiobooks are Sources.

Notes on naming and setting a Source:

There is no limit on the number of Sources that can be used
The Source names, which essentially is your folder proper noun, tin can exist anything that makes sense to you. The names should be unique, which makes it easier to navigate to the right source in Kodi
Larger libraries exercise benefit from multiple sources
There is no requirement on how to split up music between Sources. Many users carve up based on Genre, alphabetical listing, release type or any method you prefer
If your music collection exists on multiple drives, and so a Source binder is required for each drive
Never mix media classes. ie, ensure Tv Shows, Movies, Music Videos or Music are not in the same source, nor as a sub-folder of some other source.
Never set the unabridged difficult drive as your Source equally this will create multiple ghost entries.

Setting and Scanning of Sources is covered in detail in the next step of the guide.

4 Tagging

Nearly music files purchased or ripped by your favourite software take only minimal metadata embedded. Normally this is not a problem and works very well on uncomplicated music players.

Kodi, being an advanced and feature rich player, requires greater accuracy with the embedded tags. Any slight variance in, for example, the Album proper noun between the tracks from the same album will see multiple entries in the library for that Album. It is not uncommon to have a single anthology split into iii similarly named albums. Also true for Artists. It is for this reason that at that place is a separation of the Scanning and Scraping processes for Music. The initial scan allows you lot to find and correct errors in tagging, before scraping.

This table has examples of errors in tagging, which volition crusade duplicated entries in the library...

Similar Name 1	Similar Proper noun 2	Note
György Ligeti	Gyorgy Ligeti	Absolute and unaccented names will create duplicate entries
The Best of	The Very All-time Of	Inconsistent naming between songs of the same album and/or creative person will cause duplicated entries
Madonna	Madonnna	Spelling mistakes will cause duplicated entries for albums and/or artists
Sting	Sting and The Law	Seen as two separate and unrelated Artists

As Kodi scans your music collection, it copies the information contained in those tags into the Kodi music database. The benefits of this are:

In one case the scan is complete, the tags are not accessed over again
All information is now obtained from the database. This has the benefit of dramatically increasing efficency and speed when navigating the library.
Now that a database entry exists, you are able to scrape additional information from online sources. This is covered afterward in the guide.

4.1 MusicBrainz

Kodi has strong support for MusicBrainz tagging. It is highly recommended that users tag their music files using MusicBrainz Picard.

MusicBrainz Picard is the music file tagger software that tin can access the MusicBrainz database to locate metadata to embed into your music files. MBIDs are useful because names are not unique. The bigger and more diverse your music collection is, the more likely yous will encounter Artists with the same name.

The advantages of tagging with MusicBrainz are:

They let you to have dissimilar artists with the same name in your library e.g. "John Williams" the classical guitarist and "John Williams" the film music composer and usher.
They negate inconsistencies in creative person naming e.g. having "Peter Tchaikovsky" on some albums and "Piotr Czajkowski" on others
They allow y'all to take more than one release of an album in your library e.g. the normal and deluxe editions of an album
They clearly identify the artist and album in ways that names lonely can not. This can then be used to accurately scrape additional artist and album data and locate the correct artwork
They permit the scraping process to exist more efficient, otherwise an extra call is fabricated to try and become an mbid first to use at the scraping sites, and each request from Musicbrainz must be throttled to 1 per sec which will slow the scraping process.

Beneath is a screenshot of the primary screen of the Picard software. A brief description of the layout as follows.

Top Left Box- Folder listing of your music collection
Top Eye Box- Albums are dragged and dropped here in grooming for matching and tagging. Pressing Lookup (greyed out) will commence the lookup process
Elevation Right Box- Matching albums are displayed here and your songs are overlayed. In the screenshot, songs 01, 08 and 09 have been matched to the suggested album. If all songs match and yous agree the correct album was located, merely pressing Save will tag the album with the tags displayed in the Lesser Tag Box.
Bottom Tag Box - Selecting a song from the Peak Right Box will display all bachelor tag fields (left cavalcade), the current tags in the music file (Original Value column) and the MusicBrainz tags to be embedded in the music file (correct column).

The instance in the image below shows the post-obit:

Near tags are missing (original value column)
The elevation iii yellow entries are wrong (original value column) and the corrections are in the right column
The light-green entries in the correct column signal new tags to be embedded
The black entries at the bottom of the list indicate no change to the existing tags every bit they are correct or not used past MusicBrainz.

Although Picard is very piece of cake to utilize, you must avert blindly accepting everything offered by the software. It is important that you confirm the correct album was located. Due to the global nature of the database, there are many releases for a unmarried album. These releases differ between countries, usually due to copyright requirements. This may atomic number 82 yous to inadvertendly select the incorrect release for your anthology, fifty-fifty though it is named exactly the same. The differences betwixt releases may exist as unproblematic equally different song ordering or the inclusion of additional bonus tracks.

4.ii Clear Existing Tags

For the best tagging experience set the correct options in Picard, particularly the "Articulate Existing Tags" option in settings. This option means that whatsoever erstwhile tags that may crusade issues are wiped, preserving only the musicbrainz tagging. It will besides exist wise to tag using ID3v2.four compatibility.

4.3 albumartists

Kodi requires the albumartists tag to correctly handle multiple album artists on the same album. This tag is not a default tag in MusicBrainz Picard and other tagging software. ^[one]

To include this tag add a new script under Options > Options > Scripting > Add together new script and include the following code...

$setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%)

In one case the music files are tagged, avoid modifying the MusicBrainz tags unless yous clearly understand the human relationship of the MBID's and the other related tags. For case, embedding MBID tags, but then editing the Artist tag or Album Artist tag will result in incorrect entries in the library.

For example:

If you need to alter the artist or album creative person tag yous also have to edit the matching artist mbid tag and album artist mbid tag.
If Kodi finds a release mbid information technology will expect the artist mbid tags to also be present.

Run into: MusicBrainz Website

Come across: MusicBrainz Picard Software

The remainder of this folio deals with special utilise cases or provides information for technical interest and reference merely. It can exist safely disregarded if these do not utilize to yous

v Ripping CD's

Main folio: Ripping CDs

Kodi has integrated Audio-CD (CDDA) ripping functionality. In order to use this feature, commencement configure the CD ripping settings (to set which encoder quality to use and where to store the files). To Rip the entire CD, highlight the Audio CD from the My Music root listing and choose Rip Audio CD from the context menu. To rip a single rails, enter the Sound CD, highlight the desired track, and cull Rip Audio Track from the context menu.

In that location is no requirement to use the Kodi CD Ripper. If y'all are comfortable using other ripping software, and so we recommend you continue using that software.

vi Cue Sheets

Cue Sheets are used to provide index and playlist data for a large audio file. They are generally used in conjunction with either extracting from, or burning to, Music AudioCD. Cue sheets take the file extension ".cue", and are simple plain text files.

Kodi does provide basic support for using cue sheets to define individual tracks when an unabridged CD has been ripped into a single music file. Nevertheless the information provided past the cue sheet standard is much more express than that of standard tagging, hence to bask the full music library features it is recommended that tracks are ripped into separate files and fully tagged.
If you lot do not employ Cue Sheets you can safely move onto the next step.

7 Streams

Diverse internet video and audio streams can be played back in Kodi every bit if they were locally stored on your media centre past using STRM files. Every bit long equally the format and streaming-method (network-protocol) is supported by Kodi, stream can be added. These are basic text files that look like <name>.strm and contain a URL to the internet stream. STRM files tin can besides be added to the video library and tin have cover fine art, summaries, etc.

Some internet sites may have an add-on available that can also access these media streams, rather than having to manually create STRM files. Encounter Add-ons for more than data on how to find and install add-ons.

8 Technical Caption: File tags

For many categories, such every bit genres and artists, Kodi supports multiple values in the i field. By default it uses the grapheme sequence " / " to dissever the entry into multiple values. This divider may be changed via advancedsettings.xml.

viii.1 Resolving Compilations and Multiple Artists

Applies to v17 and below. v18 introduced the Artist information folder which solved these problems. Yous are encouraged to update to v18

Kodi reads the Album Artist tag in ID3, Ogg, APE and MP4 tags and uses it if available to assign an artist to the album (independently of the rail's artist information). This is the "Album Artist" tag (in ID3 this is represented by the "TPE2" tag; in vorbiscomment (ogg) files "ALBUMARTIST", "Anthology Artist" and "ENSEMBLE" are all supported). Multiple artists for either a track or album artist can be specified in "Artist1 / Artist2 / Artist3" format.

If no Album Artist tag exists, Kodi will utilise the outset (primary) artist from the tracks as the Anthology Artist. Essentially we practise a string comparing of all the track artists, and assign the mutual artists as the Album artist. This is more often than not the TPE1 tag in ID3.

As many users don't withal use the Album Artist tag, Kodi has an additional filter system for identifying compilation albums, where each rails normally has a different artist. As Kodi scans a binder, information technology does the following:

Identifies albums based on Album name alone in the folder and groups the songs that have the aforementioned Album name together as an album.
Runs through each anthology'southward assigned songs. If there is 2 or more tracks with the same Track number, the group of songs must come from 2 or more albums, so the Anthology proper noun is ruled out as a possible compilation.
If any of the songs assigned to the Anthology proper noun have an Album Artist tag, and then Kodi assumes the user knows what they're doing, and this anthology is likewise ruled out from being a compilation.
If 2 or more songs assigned to the Album name then have different principal artists, then the Album name is considered to be a group of songs from a compilation, and the Various Artists" tag is assigned as the album artist.
Otherwise, if all the songs have the aforementioned main artist but don't take the same total creative person listing (eg a song or ii has an boosted artist) then the album is assigned the primary artist as it's Album Artist, and we assume the additional artists are guest artists.

viii.two Ratings in ID3 tags

Ratings in ID3 tags are read via the POPM field, and (if this doesn't exist) in a custom (TXXX) field named "RATING". For the RATING field, we accept one-v equally valid ratings. For the POPM field things are more complicated, equally there is no established standard in place. Nosotros currently almost closely respect what Mediamonkey does, and also take some support for what Windows Media Player 11 does. The POPM tag takes a value from 0..255, with 0 significant no rating, 1 the worst, and 255 the all-time. We currently map these as follows:

POPM value	Star rating
0
1	* This is a special case for Windows Media Player
2-eight
9-49	*
50-113	**
114-167	*******
168-218	********
219-255	*****

9 Audio Formats & Tags

nine.ane Supported Sound Formats

Although the list of playable formats is quite comprehensive, information technology is not accurate to say that every Kodi installation will play every format. The power to play some of the more obscure formats will depend upon the version of Kodi and the operating system in use. Some formats volition require the installation of add-ons.

Default extensions for MUSIC:

.nsv .m4a .flac .aac .strm .pls .rm .rma .mpa .wav .wma .ogg .mp3 .mp2 .m3u .gdm .imf .m15 .sfx .uni .ac3 .dts .cue .aif .aiff .wpl .xspf .ape .mac .mpc .mp+ .mpp .shn .naught .wv .dsp .xsp .xwav .waa .wvs .wam .gcm .idsp .mpdsp .mss .spt .rsd .sap .cmc .cmr .dmc .mpt .mpd .rmt .tmc .tm8 .tm2 .oga .url .pxml .tta .rss .wtv .mka .tak .opus .dff .dsf .m4b .dtshd

Information technology is possible to add or remove extensions for Music, using the following XML tags. Useful if you proceed, say, FLAC and mp3 versions of music in the aforementioned folder. The <remove> tag can be used to remove mp3 from being listed in the library, leaving only the higher quality FLAC beingness displayed.

<musicextensions>   <add together>.ex1|.ex2</add>   <remove>.ex3|.ex4</remove> </musicextensions>

9.2 Supported Metadata Containers

The following metadata containers are supported by Kodi

Metadata Container	Note
APEv2 tag
ASF
Generic Tag	A generic tag for basic data from other odd file types
ID3	v1, v2.iii and v2.4
MP4
Xiph.org	Vorbis Comments

9.iii Common File & Tag Combination

Y'all will notice that not all the tags listed in the section Supported Audio Formats above are listed in the following table. Those formats that are ommitted exercise non have provision to support embedded tags. If your drove contains any of these unsupported formats, yous volition exist unable to scan the music into the library. Your options are:

Catechumen your audio file to a supported format and tag using MusicBrainz Picard. (recommended)
Admission your music via the File Manager or via File View

Kodi supports the following common Audio File and Tag Formats

Metadata container	Additional Filename extensions
APEv2 tag	ape, mp3, aac, wv, mpc
ASF	asf, wmv, wma
Generic Tag	it, modernistic, module, nst, wow, s3m, xm
ID3 v1	mp3, aac
ID3 v2	mp3, aac, tta, aif, aiff, wav, flac
iTunes MP4	.3g2 .m4a .m4b .m4p .m4r .m4v .mp4
Xiph.org	flac, oga, ogg, opus

Notation:

FLAC files- xiph tags override id3v2 tags
mp3 files can have either id3 or APE tags
mka, dsf, dff - ID3v2 format read just are handled by ffmpeg tag reader and it does non support all tags from IDE standard)

9.4 Tags Kodi reads

Kodi volition scan the post-obit tags embedded in the music file. The column Kodi Version indicates the version of Kodi that the tag was introduced, and volition piece of work in subsequent versions.

Kodi Version	Vorbis (.Flac)	ID3v2 (.mp3)	APE	MP4	ASF
v16	Artist	TPE1	Artist	\251ART	Author
v16	ARTISTS	ARTISTS	ARTISTS	----:com.apple.iTunes:ARTISTS
v16	ALBUMARTIST or ALBUM ARTIST	TPE2 OR ALBUMARTIST or ALBUM Creative person	ALBUMARTIST or Anthology Artist	aART	WM/AlbumArtist
v16	ALBUMARTISTS or ALBUM ARTISTS	ALBUMARTISTS or ALBUM ARTISTS	ALBUMARTISTS or ALBUM ARTISTS	----:com.apple.iTunes:ALBUMARTISTS
v16	ALBUM	TALB	Anthology	\251alb	WM/AlbumTitle
v16	TITLE	TIT2	Championship	\251nam
v16	TRACKNUMBER	TRCK	TRACKNUMBER or Runway	trkn	WM/TrackNumber or WM/Track
v16	DISCNUMBER	TPOS	DISCNUMBER or DISC	deejay	WM/PartOfSet
v16	Yr	TYER	YEAR	\251day	WM/Yr
v16	DATE	TDRC, TDRL	Engagement
v16	GENRE	TCON	GENRE	\251gen	WM/Genre
v16	MOOD	TMOO OR TXXX:MOOD	MOOD	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:MOOD	WM/Mood
v16	Annotate	COMM	Annotate	\251cmt	(Annotate)
v16	CUESHEET		CUESHEET
v16	COMPILATION	TCMP	COMPILATION	cpil
v16	LYRICS	USLT	LYRICS
v16	REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN	REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN	REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN	----:com.apple.iTunes:replaygain_track_gain	replaygain_track_gain
v16	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:replaygain_album_gain	replaygain_album_gain
v16	REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK	REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK	REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK	----:com.apple.iTunes:replaygain_track_peak	replaygain_track_peak
v16	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:replaygain_album_peak	replaygain_album_peak
v16	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK	REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:replaygain_album_peak	replaygain_album_peak
v16	MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID	MUSICBRAINZ ARTIST ID	MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Artist Id	MusicBrainz/Artist Id
v16	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID	MUSICBRAINZ Album ARTIST ID	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Creative person Id	MusicBrainz/Album Creative person Id
v16	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST	MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM Artist	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Anthology Artist	MusicBrainz/Album Artist
v16	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID	MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM ID	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Id	MusicBrainz/Anthology Id
v16	MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID	UFID	MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID	----:com.apple.iTunes:MusicBrainz Track Id
v16	RATING	POPM
v16	METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE or COVERART or COVERARTMIME	APIC		covr	WM/Picture
v17	COMPOSER	TCOM	COMPOSER	\251wrt	WM/Composer
v17	Usher	TPE3	Conductor	----:com.apple.iTunes:Usher	WM/Conductor
v17	LYRICIST	TEXT	LYRICIST	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:LYRICIST	WM/Writer
v17	REMIXER or MIXARTIST	TPE4	REMIXER or MIXARTIST	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:REMIXER	WM/ModifiedBy
v17	ENSEMBLE	(TIPL) or TXXX:Ensemble	ENSEMBLE
v17	ARRANGER	(TIPL)	ARRANGER
v17	ENGINEER	(TIPL)	ENGINEER	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:ENGINEER	WM/Engineer
v17	PRODUCER	(TIPL)	PRODUCER	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:PRODUCER	WM/Producer
v17	DJMIXER	(TIPL)	DJMIXER	----:com.apple.iTunes:DJMIXER	WM/DJMixer
v17	MIXER	(TIPL)	MIXER	----:com.apple.iTunes:MIXER	WM/Mixer
v17	PERFORMER	TMCL	PERFORMER
v17	Characterization	TPUB	LABEL	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:LABEL	WM/Publisher
v17	RELEASETYPE	MUSICBRAINZ Album TYPE	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMTYPE	---:com.apple tree.iTunes:MusicBrainz Album Type	MusicBrainz/Album Blazon
v18	MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID	MUSICBRAINZ RELEASE GROUP ID	MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:MusicBrainz Release Grouping Id	MusicBrainz/Release Group Id
v18	ARTISTSORT	TSOP	ARTISTSORT		WM/ArtistSortOrder
v18	ALBUMARTISTSORT	TS02	ALBUMARTISTSORT	soaa	WM/AlbumArtistSortOrder
v18	COMPOSERSORT	TSOC	COMPOSERSORT	soco	WM/ComposerSortOrder
v18	Author	WRITER	Writer
v19	DISCSUBTITLE	TSST	DiscSubtitle	----:com.apple.iTunes:DISCSUBTITLE	WM/SetSubTitle
v19	BPM	TBPM	BPM	tmpo	WM/BeatsPerMinute
v19	ORIGINALDATE or ORIGINALYEAR	TDOR or TORY	ORIGINALYEAR	----:com.apple.iTunes:originaldate	WM/OriginalReleaseYear
v19	RELEASESTATUS	TXXX:MusicBrainz Album Status	MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMSTATUS	----:com.apple tree.iTunes:MusicBrainz Anthology Status	MusicBrainz/Album Condition

10 References

↑ https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=334729&pid=2760161#pid2760161

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Source: https://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging