First post here, but very long time user of digital music with carefully curated tags throughout my music collection. I’d like to embed MBIDs in my files so that I can push my collection through AcousticBrainz, but in doing so I don’t want any additional metadata changed / written to my files.
Is there a way to configure Picard to only write MBID’s?
You know the “Preserve Tags” list of Picard?
Unfortunately you have to mark all possible tags by hand.
Or maybe you can add them directly in you config file “Picard.ini”.
acoustid_id, albumartist, albumartistsort, album, albumsort, arranger, artist, artists, artistsort, asin, barcode, bpm, catalognumber, comment:, compilation, composer, composersort, conductor, copyright, date, discid, discnumber, discsubtitle, djmixer, encodedby, encodersettings, engineer, genre, grouping, isrc, key, label, language, ~length, license, lyricist, lyrics, media, mixer, mood, movement, movementnumber, movementtotal, musicbrainz_albumartistid, musicbrainz_albumid, musicbrainz_artistid, musicbrainz_discid, musicbrainz_originalalbumid, musicbrainz_originalartistid, musicbrainz_recordingid, musicbrainz_releasegroupid, musicbrainz_trackid, musicbrainz_workid, musicip_fingerprint, originalalbum, originalartist, originaldate, originalyear, musicip_puid, performer:, producer, r128_album_gain, r128_track_gain, ~rating, releasecountry, releasestatus, releasetype, remixer, replaygain_album_gain, replaygain_album_peak, replaygain_album_range, replaygain_reference_loudness, replaygain_track_gain, replaygain_track_peak, replaygain_track_range, script, showmovement, subtitle, title, titlesort, totaldiscs, totaltracks, tracknumber, website, work, writer
There’s a list that can be pasted into the tags dialog.
Remove what you want first 
Pretty comprehensive list (which also includes tag fields added by various plugins) but you forgot to add originaldate and originalyear
I believe these two are also missing from your list:
originalalbum
originalartist
Proof reader asks - @tdiaz - is that list still okay? or has the forum prettified it?
Just wondering why some are bold (work, movement, language, grouping, etc) and why length and rating have a ~ added to them.
The coloring and emboldening come from the markup. It still copies as plaintext. The ~length and ~rating are how picard refers to them.
I got the originalxxxx ones ‘confused’ with some of my own data and removed them, otherwise that list is purely derived from core Picard code. No plugin influence.
I’ve fixed the post to add in the originalxxx tags within the string.
Thanks for the replies, looking at Picard documentation I see the tag names are also case sensitive, so if my tagnames happen to have a different case they’ll still be overwritten. Whilst I appreciate the workaround I think users would be better served by being able to provide Picard with a whitelist of tags it is allowed to modify/add. In this use case the whitelist would only contain: acoustid_id
You are correct, and that can indeed be somewhat annoying, and it has been raised before by other users. I am guessing it is a complicated matter to solve.
But if I recall correctly, for as far as it pertains to ‘preserve tags to be written’, it will be fixed for Picard 2.3.0
Here we are, years later at 2.8.3 and the stupidity persists. This is true r/assholedesign illustrated. Not only is populating the list laborious (I resorted to editing the config file directly to bypass the pathetic one-tag-at-a-time UI), but you’re still unable to stop Picard writing spam tags.
Patches are welcome.
What do you suggest as better UI?
Seeing as it’s just a comma separated list, why not let users simply paste a list into the dialogue, have Picard parse and validate it removing tags it doesn’t handle and be done with it.
Even better, enable users to list only the tags they actually want written.
Hi. Thanks for the program - just installed and looks great. I’m in the same position as OP - would like to populate missing date/year tags, but nothing else (for the time being, while I’m scared of my lovely tags getting ruined).
As a suggestion for a better UI for that specific section: how about all tags listed out with check boxes next to them, column headers “tag” and “allow Picard to edit this tag”. All tags selected by default. And a “select all/none” button to quick switch them all on or off.
I’m not a UI designer but I figure this might be something that could be generated relatively easily with standard libraries?
Thanks for all your work on this!
