Hi loving how Picard can move files to folders and help me organize, but 10% of the time I’m facing these uncertain use cases. I have the feeling there is a setting I’m missing.
Various Artists: Nothing appears in look-up/scan/etc (e.g. local music compilation) . Nothing is in album pane (right pane). When I save, it creates folders for each artist. How do I manually retain it as a compilation with no tags?
Various Artists: Some appear in look-up/etc. (e.g. homemade mix CD).** Same thought - how do I maintain it as a compilation, when only half tracks have lookup data?
Single Artist: Nothing in look-up (e.g. Import EP, etc.). When I save, it saved each track separately to the artist folder, but not as an “album”.
Are you doing a “Cluster” on the album before Lookup? If the tracks are tagged and clustered, select the cluster and click “Lookup in Browser” (the globe icon). If it appears in the search results, click the corresponding green “Tagger” tag. This will load the album in the right pane of Picard. Drag and drop the cluster onto the matched album. If all the tracks are in the correct place, save. If not, drag and drop each one into position.
If the compilation album in the right pane an accurate match, drag and drop the unmatched files into the proper place. If your files have reasonably accurate tags/numbers, Picard might sort them for you if you drag them onto the album title in the right pane.
Sometimes Scan matches the correct track but the wrong release. Try the search procedure I mentioned in #1. You can also use the search field in the upper-right corner of Picard.
If a search in MusicBrainz doesn’t return a match, and you don’t see it in the artist’s/label’s discography, the album might not be in MusicBrainz yet. In that case, you can add the album to MusicBrainz yourself, or tag/move the files manually.
Thanks,
So it sounds like if lookup/scan/etc doesn’t provide anything, I should NOT click save in Picard, but instead move it manually.
In the case of “some” matches, how do I pull out the individual “matched” tracks from the album pane and include with the non-matchted tracks? I hope I’m explaining this correctly (see image)
This often happens when a compilation album is not yet in the database, but (some of) its tracks are. I agree with you: it’s best if you don’t click save. Even though it might improve some of a track’s metadata, it would assign it to the wrong album. I’ll add the album so you can tag your files. It should be online in a few minutes.
Manually make sure all albums have common tags albumartist and album set. You can select all the files you want to have in one compilation and then edit the tags (or add them if they don’t already exist) for all of them in one step.
albumartist likely should be set to “Various Artists”. But you can use whatever you want as long as it is the same for all files.
Same as above, make sure the albumartist and album tags are the same as the rest of the files in one compilation.
Depending on your player the files should also not have the MBID tags set, as some players decide on that. So if your player starts separating the release even though album and albumartist tags match either have all files of a compilation tagged with MB data or none. Move the files back to the left to the other compilation files and make sure the musicbrainz_* tags are not set.
Either match the files to MB by other means (scan, manual search) or set an album tag.
