How can I use Music Brainz to organize my CD collection?

Hello everyone,
I really love the idea of having the "ultimate2 database to unambigiously tag CD and/or audio files. However, although there is a ton of documentation on how to enter data INTO the database, I do not really see how I as a user can extract the information i want OUT of the database.

e.g. I would like to know which recordings of the Schumann piano concerto I own.
I see I can add my CDs to my collection, and I see I can query the complete database for Schumans recordings, but I do not see how I could easily combine both. I would think this would be one of the most basic usages of this database.

I might digitize some or even a large part of the collection, and also there I do not really see how I could search for and play all 3 movements of the concerto in an easy way as it seems that also the ripped files stand only for themselves, and there is no way to “integrate” them into one “playlist” automatically.

In principle, I could clone the whole database, and add some tables of my own, but this seems to be a lot of overengineering and would also lack the possibility of easily contributing to the community the data for the recordings I own, which I would very much like to do, if I could use them myself afterwards as well.

I am looking forward very much to your suggestions.

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I don’t know if it fully answers your question, but I can see what recordings (and releases, and works) I own, thanks to my MB “owned releases” collection and:

Example for recordings (purple means owned):

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Yep pretty much use the above userscript that’s the best way :smiley:

To get a user script working you will need to install a plug-in like TamperMonkey or ViolentMonkey and then visit this URL

This will work with any modern browser on desktop or a variety of mobile browsers that support extensions (like Firefox on mobile)

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And here is a general MB guide about userscripts, with some nice info:

https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Guides/Userscripts

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Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, but just in case:

The MusicBrainz database is usually used in conjunction with other programs and/or taggers to organize collections.

  1. The “official” MusicBrainz tagger is MusicBrainz Picard.
  2. I believe that for classical music the “Classical Extras 2.0” plugin is used almost universally, for a massive amount of tagging flexibility
  3. After tagging, you will want a music player that can effectively display and sort, and possibly make playlists etc, with these tags. Here is an example tutorial of how to do so with the MusicBee player.
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thank you all. I will check this out, might take some time though

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