I’ve been using Kodi (then XBMC) for more than a decade now (yup, “XB” did stand for X Box alright, but now LibreELEC on a WeTek Core). I’ve also had the library in MySQL for more than half of it. Across migrations, it had developed some quirky content, such as duplicate albums, and some rarities, such as this version of 21, by Adèle, where the description reminds us that her previous album, Ixnay on the Hombre, was only moderately successful on launch; go figure…
As suggested, pretty much everywhere, as the solution for duplicate content in Kodi, I first tried cleaning the library, repeatedly, to no avail. The duplicate albums were still there. One of their noticeable characteristics, though, was that there was always some copy of the album (and in Adèle’s case, the one following Ixnay), that did not have any associated tracks. This felt like it could be a good angle to help me clear those up. Enter some SQL.