I am new to musicbrainz picard and need some starting out advice please

MusicBrainz Picard
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Here is what I have done starting out.
(1) I have downloaded several Artists>Albums/Group>Albums
(2) I’m pretty sure I have downloaded a few thousand songs and so far have just added “Artists/Groups” image as “Coverart”
(3) I have decided to use “Artist/Group Image” rather then coverart since some coverart is hard to read because there a bit blurry on my phone if I add the images themselves.

Here is the issues I’m having:
(1) I would like to use “Album Coverart” but when I need to find and add them myself they look blurry I normally use a different program to add the “Tags” and coverart
(2) I would like to be able to add “Genre’s” as well to the albums based on the “Album genre” not the “Artists/Groups” Genre. Some groups or artists have Country or rock or Country/Rock. It all depends on the “Album” for me personally.
(3) When editing .mp3 files on “Musicbranz Picard” is there a way to just make a copy of the original “Albums” so that way nothing gets changed on the “Original” until I see the end results. And then I can delete the “Original” after I like the way things look. I would not want to have to lose all the work renaming my “Songs” to look the way I want just to get the incorrect “AlbumArt” or have the files names messed with later on. For example “The Thunder Rolls by Garth Brooks” if there was a ’ between the ls sometimes things have & or different marks in the titles. I hate that. I would prefer to make sure the tracks and albumart look correctly on the phone before deleting the originals. Is this possible to save as a copy without deleting the originals.

I hope these questions make sense to all that are reading them. I have not used “MusicBrainz Picard” much in the past I have always used “Mp3Tag” which I’m currently still using. I was going to use “Mp3Tag” to make “Albums” and Add “Artists/Groups” and then “Coverart” but if “MusicBrainz Picard” can help by added correct “Genres” and “Years Release” and actual “AlbumArt” to the .mp3 files I would just use “Mp3Tag” to all “Albums” “Artists/Groups” and then have “MusicBranz Picard” scan the albums and add all the finer details. I hope this makes sense.

Are the (3) things above possible to accomplish with “Musicbrainz Picard”.

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welcome to the forums, @BerserkerQueen!~

I can answer at least two of your questions

  1. Picard can automatically download artwork from several sources*, but if you want to manually pick the artwork, I might recommend:
    https://covers.musichoarders.xyz/
    …it searches many different sources (including MusicBrainz!) for high quality cover art (note, I haven’t used it myself, but it comes highly recommended)
  2. genres are pretty tricky with MusicBrainz and Picard. I know there’s some genre plugins which can get genres from different sources, but I’m particular about my genres, so I haven’t used them myself
  3. I’d recommend making a copy of a selection of files for this. that way you can see what it changed, see what you might want to change with your setup, etc.

*I can go into further detail about the different sources Picard can get artwork from, if you’d like~

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And there’s always the Piacrd User Guide to give a bit more information. :wink:

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