I was trying to tag one song.
lookup & scan came back with nothing.
lookup in browser gave a list of similar (but not totally right) tracks.
so I just edited a few tags myself and wanted to save - but can not.
How do I enter the correct information and save it ?
I finally get it.
use the middle pane of MBpicard - not the right side one.
then its possible to edit tags and save.
I guessing there were conflicting tag info on the right (as there were so many more tags listed).
I still haven’t figured out how to get the new save - correct info - up to main database…
Hi, welcome to MusicBrainz.
To add or correct info in the databse, you’d edit the database via the web interface @ musicbrainz.org. The beginner’s guide should get you up and running.
The left side panel represents your file on your hard drive.
The right side represents a entry in MB’s online database.
Scan, lookup, lookup in browser are all ways of populating the right hand panel and matching your files (you can also manually drag and drop your files from the left to right, trying to match your track to the same track on MB).
The panel at the bottom will show you old tags, and new tags (that will be applied if you hit save). What is written (and deleted) depends on your Picard settings and the information we have in our database for that track.
Clicking on the new tags values at the bottom and editing them (and then saving) will work for files on the left hand panel and the right hand panel.
It’s pretty normal for items matched to our database to have heaps of new tags added - after all, that’s what MB is for, all that great info! There’s no such thing as ‘conflicting’ tags, it just overwrites old tags when you hit save.
You probably knew most of that already, but Picard’s not that intuitive so thought I’d quickly go over the basics just in case!
Let us know if you have any questions re tagging or editing stuff on MB 
Thanks for the reply. I tried the website, with reading the manual, and after WAY TOO long I reached a point where a message said something about ‘correct the tabs in red’ - except there were no red tags. It was all way too complicated and time consuming so I just gave up.
Its a shame as I have tens of thousands of songs i’d like to standardise, and everyone says MBPicard is one of the best tools.
So far I’ve been really disappointed with it.
It is just wonderful that you are willing to add thousands of songs to Music Brainz and I am really sorry to hear from you @BigJonMX that so far, you are disappointed with our app Picard. Please make separate forum posts about the specific topics in Picard that you have difficulties with and/or like to improve, so we all can have a look at it and if necessary send in a ticket to improve the app!
It is the best tool if you’re after comprehensive control over your files and tags via a database.
However there are other tools that are simpler to use. I’m afraid that will always be a tradeoff.
If you want to give it another shot you can check out this tutorial video:
Or skip up to the part where you had trouble.
And don’t hesitate to leave the editing window open and ask us questions if you don’t want to have to noodle it out on your own (again, we know it’s not that intuitive, sorry about that)
Thank you for the frank reply - that is refreshing.
I will persevere with this tool as I see the potential (just don’t have the experience).
And as I have 9,488 songs to classify/label correctly, I better get started…
When you have an album which is not listed in the Musicbrainz Picard database, how do you add your own data? I have songs in the middle panel which I tried Look up and Scan, yet no corresponding album appeared in the right panel (or online), So far I’ve been able to type in new values in the right-hand fields at the bottom, but I don’t know how to save these new values. Do I have to change my settings?
If you’ve tried searching the database manually, by hitting ‘Lookup in Browser’ (or just gone to www.musicbrainz.org and searched for the release) and the album isn’t findable through there, it’s quite possible we don’t have it yet!
You can add a new release following these instructions:
You can save any values you change by clicking on the file/s or album/s and hitting ‘save’ at the top. Nothing will change until you hit this button, which is actually a very good feature!
However changing your tags manually defeats the point of Picard a little bit, which is geared towards using the database (the right hand pane) as much as possible. MP3tag is a bit better for manual changes but your files wont be as flexible in the long run and it doesn’t have as much automation if you have a lot of files. But it’s also a very useful tool.
Hi, welcome to MusicBrainz!
If you’ve tried step five in How to tag files, manually looking up files or recordings in your web browser, and still couldn’t find what you’re looking for, then the next step would ideally be adding the missing information to the MusicBrainz database.
If editing the database is not something you’re interested in, you can edit tags manually as you’ve described and click the Save icon in the tool bar. Doing this, you’re missing out on the benefits of MusicBrainz data.