Ok, scanned my music folder and it put everything in folders by artist! Yay! Er… wait… There are 1,516 albums. There are 2,747 files. So, question is, where does it put everything that wasn’t part of an album by default? (There are no individual files listed in the directory after the folders, and I had personally recorded files in there that wouldn’t have been connected to any artist) I don’t see a folder for “miscellaneous” or anything like that. I’d be freaking out if it wasn’t showing me the whole file count. So I know they’re there somewhere! (I haven’t touched the script option yet)
In the meantime consider if you have backed up your music folder.
If not then prepare to backup - but wait for high quality help to OK that action before backing-up.
How well organised were the files before? Were they album rips from CD \ download, or separate loose tracks? Did you use Scan or Lookup? And please tell me you didn’t just throw all 2747 files at Picard without checking what it was doing?
Picard is not a magic miracle tool. It will make a best guess at what the file is. It is very likely that your “miscellaneous” files are all scattered into Various Artists with matches into compilation albums.
Picard needs to have its matches checked as you go along so you can adjust for your needs. Many tracks will be on multiple albums meaning Picard needs your help in selecting the correct albums.
If you are just after mass tagging and not too fussed about keeping albums together then you’ll likely want to tweak the Options \ Metadata \ Preferred Release Types a bit to push towards singles and albums instead of compilations.