I loaded my music. Nothing is identified. I pressed clusters button as in tutorial (still not sure what is it for. As I read it should group music by albums but why is it essential for analysis?). All my tracks moved in “clusters > music cluster”. Nothing changed.
I’ve downloaded some plugins like tags from different sources but how do I use them? I’m sure most my tracks are on lastfm but musicbrainz does not get any data from there or from anywhere.
I’ve also downloaded acousticbrainz plugins but again - how do I use them? I read that I need to get acousticID, and to get acousticID I need to get MBID, but how do I get MBID?
I read that to get MBID I need to press scan but scanning does nothing.
So how do I do anything?
Sorry for bad english and for being stupid. I was looking all day over the internet but can’t find anything useful
First use a few of your files (best entire albums) to get familiar with the process and follow the procedure described in the Quick Start guide at
All of the plugins you mentioned add additional metadata to the data to be loaded from MusicBrainz. They only become active once you load data from MusicBrainz using either Scan or Lookup.
AcousticBrainz and AcoustId are two separate things. For the AcousticBrainz plugin you don’t need anything extra. For AcoustId see below.
Two things here:
- Scanning does use acoustic fingerprints from AcoustId. In order to use this you need to activate it in Options > Fingerprinting (there is an option to get an API key for AcoustId)
- Before using Scan the general recommendation is to try with first Cluster then Lookup. This often gives you better results if you have somewhat reasonable existing metadata. If the existing metadata is useless Scan (aka acoustic fingerprinting) is usually the better approach
How do I use acousticbrainz plugins? I have no mood/genre/bpm tags and they do not appear when I hit scan or lookup. And I don’t kave acousticbrainz plugins in context menu.
Also I have fingerprinting enabled and API key entered but no new “acousticid” entry appear when I hit scan or lookup (nothing appears). But if I don’t need fingerprints for acousticbrainz plugins, what do i need?
First thing to do is tag your music in picard and make sure it has identified the song and has the musicbrainz recording id saved in the file.
acousticbrainz.org is a website and set of tools for collecting information about recordings including details such as the bpm, key prediction as well as a lot of other algorithms.
To submit data go to http://acousticbrainz.org/download and download and run the tool.
Now this low level detail has been added to acousticbrainz.org the plugin for picard can query the acousticbrainz web service, get the bpm and write this to your tags.
What is the point of acousticbrainz if it works only for identified music which usually already has all tags?? I don’t have any music identified and can’t get musicbrainz recording id, is it somehow possible to still use acousticbrainz??
AcousticBrainz ist not a tool to identify music. The AcousticBrainz project analyses the music and with the AcousticBrainz plugins you get additional metadata like BPM and mood.
The way this works is you need first identify the files with Picard (using lookup or scan) so the files get matched to MusicBrainz data in the very right pane. Then the AcousticBrainz will give you also the additional data (if AcousticBrainz has already analyses that specific song).
If your files are in the right pane and there is no data from AcousticBrainz there are multiple things that you should check:
- The AcousticBrainz plugins are actually active in Options > Plugins
- It is always possible that AcousticBrainz does not know about the song. In this case you can submit the data, see the answer by @dns_server above for how to do that
Okay, my english might be too broken so Ill try to make it simple.
Some my music is NOT identified with Picard. I pressed all buttons no new tags appear. My tracks are NOT in musicbrainz data. How do I use acousticbrainz plugins for those tracks??
now some broken english part exuse me
I didn’t mean that, I meant if track is in Picard database it probably already has all the tags by community. Why limit acousticbrainz analysis to tracks that only are in musicbrainz database? I think Im missing something important
dns_server’s answer requers “musicbrainz recording id” but how do I get it if my music is not identified?? For me it sounds like: to upload new song to database you need to get this song’s recording id (or whatever id), to get that id you need to have song in database. wot?
Short version: Picard cannot 100% identify every track out there just by listening to it. You, the human, need to check its finding. It will get a lot of tracks, but impossible to get them all right. And some will just be plain comically wrong.
If AcoustID has never heard your track before, then it can’t identify it.
TL:DR version:
I think what you are missing is what MusicBrainz is. It is first a database of music. A database of releases. Of data typed in and uploaded by people to document all of their CDs, Vinyl, Cassette, Digital audio, etc. Checked by humans. Enthusiasts who want to make sure this data is correct.
It is huge, but not 100% complete.
AcoustID relies on software to analyse the audio and then upload signatures to fit into that same MusicBrainz database. It relies on people who own music to do the analysis and uploading. It also means that those same users need to check their data on upload.
There is nothing that can make sure EVERY recording is in MusicBrainz. There is nothing trying to listen to everything in the iTunes shop and upload AcoustIDs. It would be close to impossible to have an AcoustID for every recording out there. It is the users who add the data.
Picard is great for tagging - when a human is involved in checking.
If you are hoping that you can point Picard at hundreds of untagged files and rely on AcoustID it is potentially going to disappoint you. You will still have to do a lot of manual work. You need to listen to your music first and give it at least some kind of basic name. You, the human, need to have some idea if the AcoustID generated is the same as what Picard has found a match for in the MusicBrainz database.
The more common your music, the more people who own it, the more chance you will have of a match.
When Picard fails to recognise your music with the AcoustID it is then needing you the human to tell Picard what the music is. And then that data can be uploaded to AcousticBrainz and MusicBrainz databases. It is this stage that the database can grow based on the enthusiast.
Edit: I changed a lot of mentions of “AcousticBrainz” to properly reference “AcoustID” to hopefully lessen the confusion. Also note that there is no such thing as an “AcousticID”. —@Freso
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