Hi everyone. I would like to use Picard to look up the album cover to some albums I’ve got. I have clustered them neatly, but they are not being recognized. It seems they are not in the MusicBrainz database. My question is: is there a way for me to use Picard to look up album art for clusters that are not in the database?
I want to use the Cover Art Providers listed in my settings (which include the Deezer, Amazon and FanArt plugins). The albums I want the art for are genuine releases. I’m sure Picard would find the album art if I could tell it to look for it. The tracks all have the following meta data:
Title
Artist
Album
Track number
Album artist
Date
(generated) AcoustID fingerprint
I have found this old topic asking a similar question, however that question is about appending local files to clusters. I want to use Picard to look them up online and append them automatically.
Side question
I’ve also considered adding the albums to the MusicBrainz database. When I started, it seemed simple, but as I continued it seemed like I needed to provide a lot more information than the meta data that I’ve got. So, side question: would it be okay for me to add the releases as-is with the limitation in the note? I don’t want to bloat the database with low quality data.
Album Art Downloader searches multiple sources for artwork.
One problem with adding releases to MusicBrainz you don’t have much data for is you can’t add artwork to the new release as you don’t know what the correct artwork is.
Adding a basic release with limited data is kinda acceptable. Adding guessed artwork to that release is against guidelines.
If you have incomplete info in your files, I would ignore them as a starting point.
Pick your preferred source for the album (e.g. CD, digital media, etc), and then import that, from a source with as much data as possible. Or, if you prefer digital, from the original source.
For digital release data, use the Harmony import tool:
For physical you’ll probably want to use the Discogs importer, or another database that has a good import script:
These tools will probably be easier and faster to add releases, rather than from your own files, as well as having the satisfaction of adding something “complete”! Not to mention that when you then tag your files, your file metadata will transition to that same high quality as well
