# Original album? **URL:** \ **Category:** MusicBrainz Picard\ **Created:** [July 11, 2017, 9:31pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761 "2017-07-11T21:31:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 9:31pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/1 "2017-07-11T21:31:51Z")
Perhaps this question has already been answered, I find that when I do a scan some songs will get reported as coming from greatest hit or songs of the 80s as an example instead of the original album and performer for example born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen, is there a plug in or script that I can use to have the program always select the original release? I realize it is scanning and the actual recording may have come from a greatest hits or a live performance, however I would like it to be from the original album. Does anyone know how to do this? ---
**Author:** ![CallerNo6](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/callerno6/32/39_2.png) [@CallerNo6](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/CallerNo6)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/2 "2017-07-11T23:17:31Z")
Hi @markinhfx, this should help: > [@Picard tags Compilation not Albums or Single \[sliders don't seem to do anything\]](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/picard-tags-compilation-not-albums-or-single-sliders-dont-seem-to-do-anything/172276): > > I’ve got a Now That’s What I Call Music album and I want the songs to be tagged individually with their own albums. I tried [Newbie here. Picard seems to be prefering tags other than the original release](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/newbie-here-picard-seems-to-be-prefering-tags-other-than-the-original-release/89554) but the sliders don’t seem to help at all. I’ve faced similar problems with other tracks. The green TAGGER button on the lookup page does nothing when clicked. When I open it in a new tab, Chrome shows This site can’t be reached 127.0.0.1 refused to connect. Pls don’t redirect me to the abov… ---
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 6:05pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/3 "2017-07-13T18:05:24Z")
I find it inconsistent at best… was hoping to use the scan function to correctly find the song… Do you know of another way? Also is there a way to scan and tag without the album name? ---
**Author:** ![CallerNo6](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/callerno6/32/39_2.png) [@CallerNo6](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/CallerNo6)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/4 "2017-07-13T18:22:22Z")
Oops, sorry, I linked to the wrong topic above. That should have been: > [@Newbie here. Picard seems to be prefering tags other than the original release](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/newbie-here-picard-seems-to-be-prefering-tags-other-than-the-original-release/89554): > > I tried searching old topics but couldn’t find this question posted so I figured I’d create a new topic. I tried to drag into Picard the song “The Sign” by Ace of Base (Title and Artist already tagged) in order to tag the album and year of release. This song in particular was released as part of the album “Happy Nation” in 1992. Unfortunately after pressing the lookup button Picard identifies the song as part of the Album “The Sign (Remixes)” which only contains 5 remixed versions of the single… When you say “tag without album name”, do you mean that you don’t want the album name in the filename? Or that you need to identify and tag files that have no album name associated with them currently? ---
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 6:27pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/5 "2017-07-13T18:27:47Z")
actually as strange as this sounds, I was going to use the scanning feature to correctly identify the song name and artist, after that I could run the songs through the lookup feature which would then likely grab the original album based on the correct file name and artist. Hopefully that makes sense? ---
**Author:** ![WovenTales](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/woventales/32/5963_2.png) [@WovenTales](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/WovenTales)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/6 "2017-07-13T18:53:06Z")
That’s actually kind of what I want to do as well - I like having the AcoustID to be saved to the file, but Scan does definitely have spotty results. I’ve wound up doing the lookup myself (if I have the disc I use that to get the release and the Disc ID, which is best to do before hitting Scan; if Scan pulled in the proper release group for at least one track, then I use the context menu to find the right release; or finally I search the site myself and use the Tagger button to add it to Picard; but in all cases I drag the scattered recordings to the release manually), but that doesn’t really take advantage of the automation Picard is built for. Then again, it sounds like you might be operating with single tracks more than entire albums, so some of that up there might not work as cleanly for you. ---
**Author:** ![CallerNo6](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/callerno6/32/39_2.png) [@CallerNo6](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/CallerNo6)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/7 "2017-07-13T18:53:11Z")
Did you try the “Preferred Release” sliders mentioned in the second topic I linked to? That should help you get the results you’re looking for in one pass. ---
**Author:** ![WovenTales](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/woventales/32/5963_2.png) [@WovenTales](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/WovenTales)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 6:59pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/8 "2017-07-13T18:59:34Z")
I’m pretty sure those only work for Lookup and have no effect on Scan – and for different reasons, neither of us can or want to press the former before the latter. Though, @markinhfx, I will say that Lookup should do a fuzzy search, so as long as your files have some sort of attribution in the tags, they don’t have to perfectly match the database in order to get the right album. ---
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/9 "2017-07-13T19:14:03Z")
Yes I did try the “preferred release” option which helped a bit on lookup but as @WovenTales points out it would be ideal if this worked for the scan function. And I think lookup would work fine with the correct song and artist name which could be achieved through the scan function which is why I was thinking what if did the scan and did not put in the album info and just renamed the song and artist correctly which would allow the lookup with the sliders set to work better? ---
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 7:31pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/10 "2017-07-13T19:31:01Z")
By the way does anyone know why the log file grows so large?? mine is almost 4GB… ---
**Author:** ![aerozol](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/aerozol/32/116_2.png) [@aerozol](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/aerozol)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2017, 9:48pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/11 "2017-07-15T21:48:29Z")
> [@markinhfx](#): > > the actual recording may have come from a greatest hits or a live performance The only issue with scan is that (if our data is correct) it will never match a live recording to the original album version, because it’s looking for the exact same audio. With lookup if the track name doesn’t have ‘live’ in it, and you clear the album name tag, it should be searching for the original release group as well as all the others. Actually… I just realised that you probably figured this out! > [@markinhfx](#): > > did not put in the album info and just renamed the song and artist correctly Yes, doing that and then running it through lookup with the sliders changed should work pretty well! One note is to please not hit ‘submit’ in picard when using acoustid with these tracks, since you’re not trying to match the technically ‘correct’ track, and it will save incorrect information to MB. Oh and other note sorry - since you’re working with individual tracks, and you don’t necessarily want them tagged ‘correctly’, I’m not sure if Picard/MB is the best tool for the job. There might be other taggers that are much more basic that do better at just throwing out the original release and nothing else ---
**Author:** ![WovenTales](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/woventales/32/5963_2.png) [@WovenTales](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/WovenTales)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/12 "2017-07-16T02:16:20Z")
> [@aerozol](#): > > One note is to please not hit ‘save’ in picard when using acoustid with these tracks, since you’re not trying to match the technically ‘correct’ track, and it will save incorrect information to MB. Just to be sure, you mean we shouldn’t hit “Submit AcoustIDs” until the rest of the info is correct, right? My impression of “Save” was that it only affects the local file, not the MB database, but I can see it making sense that doing so would call the submit subroutine as well. I don’t _think_ anything in my process would wind up giving bad data, but I want to know if there’s a chance it might so I can pay closer attention if necessary. ---
**Author:** ![aerozol](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/aerozol/32/116_2.png) [@aerozol](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/aerozol)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 7:28am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/13 "2017-07-16T07:28:34Z")
Sorry, I meant ‘submit’ / ‘submit acoustids’! 🙃 ---
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 12:52pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/14 "2017-07-16T12:52:31Z")
thanks for all the feedback, Part of what is driving this is for example if I want to only play songs from say the 80’s and because the scan has identified the song from say a greatest hits collection that was released in the early 2000’s it will not do what I want… I hope that makes sense? Unrelated, what about lyrics? the only plug in seems to be limited to 30% ---
**Author:** ![Freso](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/freso/32/25_2.png) [@Freso](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Freso)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2017, 12:38pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/15 "2017-07-19T12:38:37Z")
> [@markinhfx](#): > > Part of what is driving this is for example if I want to only play songs from say the 80’s and because the scan has identified the song from say a greatest hits collection that was released in the early 2000’s it will not do what I want… There is [an experimental Picard plugin](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/plugin-tag-first-recorded-date/187175) that will associate a Recording with the earliest Release date of any Releases it appears on. So if a Recording appears on a 1979 album, a 1998 CD anthology, and a 2015 iTunes/Amazon/etc. best-of, that plugin should set the “ORIGINALRELEASEDATE” (or whatever the tag is) to 1979, regardless of which of these the Recording is actually from. Maybe give that a try and see if that works for you? (Of course, you’ll have to use a player that actually understands this tag too. Also, you may have to look into merging some Recordings as well, but that’s a discussion for another topic if you need help with that. :)) > [@markinhfx](#): > > Unrelated, what about lyrics? the only plug in seems to be limited to 30% I don’t know anything about that plugin. Some players have the ability to fetch lyrics for you, so you may want to look into that. [beets](http://beets.io/) also has a more fleshed out lyrics plugin. You can also write your own lyrics plugin and contribute that to Picard—I’m sure others would like such a plugin too. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@markinhfx](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/markinhfx)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2017, 3:02pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/original-album/302761/16 "2017-07-19T15:02:38Z")
Thank You for the link to the original album plugin!! Much appreciated 🙂