Local Metadata Provider

The Local Metadata provider reads artist information you keep yourself, in the same folder layout Kodi uses for its artist information folder. It allows you to give your artists their own biography, genres, style, mood, type, dates and artwork. It works for every artist in your library, including artists that only come from a streaming service.

If you already use Kodi, you can point Music Assistant at the artist information folder Kodi created. You can also build the folder yourself.

When to use it

If your music is in Local files, the artist folders in your music already hold the artist.nfo and artwork of your album artists, and Music Assistant reads them from there. This provider is for the artists that have no folder of their own in your music, such as:

• Artists who only appear as a featured or supporting artist on a track
• Artists who only appear on compilations
• Artists from streaming services

Setting it up

1. Put the artist information folder somewhere Music Assistant can reach. It must be in one of the storage locations, for example the Home Assistant media folder or a network share added on the Storage page.
2. In the settings, add the Local metadata metadata provider.
3. Browse to the artist information folder and select it.

The provider only reads from the folder. It never changes or adds files.

How the folder is organised

The artist information folder holds one subfolder per artist. Each subfolder holds an artist.nfo file, artwork, or both.

Artist information/
├── Radiohead/
│   ├── artist.nfo
│   ├── folder.jpg
│   └── fanart.jpg
└── John Williams_53b1/
    ├── artist.nfo
    └── folder.jpg

Naming the artist folders

• Name each folder exactly like the artist in Music Assistant. Capital letters do not matter
• Characters that cannot be used in a file or folder name, such as / : ? *, are written as _. For example, AC/DC goes in a folder called AC_DC
• When two different artists share the same name, give each folder the artist name followed by _ and the first four characters of the artist’s MusicBrainz ID, for example John Williams_53b1. Kodi names its folders the same way. A folder named like this is used before a folder with just the artist name

Making sure the right artist is used

When both the artist.nfo and the artist in Music Assistant have a MusicBrainz artist ID, the two must match. A folder whose ID belongs to a different artist is skipped. This is the most reliable way to keep two artists with the same name apart, so add the MusicBrainz ID to the artist.nfo whenever you can. Kodi does this for you when it gets the artist information.

The artist.nfo file

The artist.nfo file uses the format Kodi describes on its artist NFO page. Music Assistant uses these fields. All of them are optional.

• biography. The artist’s biography. It is shown instead of a biography found online
• genre. One or more genres. Use a separate line for each genre
• style and mood. One or more styles or moods
• type. One of Person, Group, Orchestra, Choir, Character or Other
• born or formed, and died or disbanded. A year (1970), a month and year (12/1970, 1970-12, Dec 1970) or a full date (15/12/1970, 1970.12.15, 15 Dec 1970, December 15, 1970). Numbers can be separated by slashes, dashes or dots, and month names must be in English. In a full date written in numbers the month is always the middle number, so 05/06/1970 is 5 June 1970
• musicBrainzArtistID. The artist’s MusicBrainz ID, see Making sure the right artist is used

The biography, style, mood, type and dates from your artist.nfo take the place of the same information found online. Information your file leaves out is still filled in from online sources.

Genres from your artist.nfo are added to the ones found online. To use only your own genres when an artist has them, switch on Use local genre metadata only when available in the metadata settings.

Artwork

Put the artwork in the artist’s folder as .jpg, .jpeg, .png or .gif files with these names:

• folder, thumb, cover or artist. The artist picture
• fanart. A large background picture
• clearlogo or logo. The artist’s logo
• banner, clearart, landscape, cutout, back and discart. The other artwork types Kodi uses

Your artwork is added to the artist’s pictures next to the ones from your other sources, so you can still choose which picture to use. When you replace or remove a file, Music Assistant picks up the change the next time it updates the artist.

Getting changes into Music Assistant

Music Assistant reads the folder whenever it updates an artist’s information. Artists already in your library pick up the folder, or a change to it, at their next scheduled update, which can take weeks. To see a change straight away, open the artist and select Update metadata from the menu.

The provider also works when the online metadata lookups are switched off in the metadata settings.

Good to know

• Only artists are supported. Album folders inside the artist information folder are ignored
• When the artist information folder cannot be reached, for example because the NAS is switched off, the information already in Music Assistant is kept and tried again later
• Style, mood, type and dates are stored with the artist, but the artist page does not show them yet
• If multiple fields are found when only one is allowed then the first will be taken and a warning logged that the others were skipped
• Removing the Local metadata provider also removes the artwork it added. The biography and other information stay until the artist is updated from other sources