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MusicBrainz64#

Requirements#

  • foobar2000 2.24 or later. 32bit and 64bit are both supported.
  • Windows 10 or later

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Tag Mapping#

Before you consider using this to tag your files, it's important to note that it does not strictly adhere to the Picard tag mappings as documented here.

If compatibility with MusicBrainz Picard or other taggers/players that make use of MBID data is more important then you should probably avoid using this. More details of what this component does and why can be found below.

Preferences#

These can be found under File>Preferences>Tools>MusicBrainz.

musicbrainz preferences

Usage#

This is very much a dumb tagger. You can only tag complete releases (or release mediums) and all tracks must be in the same order as they appear on MusicBrainz.

If you have incomplete releases, for example 2 discs out of 3, you'll need to update each disc individually.

You can right click any selection of tracks from a playlist or library viewer and use one of these 4 commands.

musicbrainz context

The TOC options only appear if the selected tracks are sourced from a CD rip. This is determined by their exact length so if you've used an inferior CD ripper like Window Media Player, your CD rips may not have these options.

The first option looks up releases by a discid calculated from the combination of track count/lengths. If no matches are found, it's possible the release does exist on MusicBrainz but no one has attached a discid just yet.

Note

When performing a Get tags by TOC lookup, LYRICIST, WRITER, PERFORMER and COMPOSER are not available.

You can use the 2nd option to search for releases by Artist and Album name.

The 3rd option will let you do a more precise search by MusicBrainz Album ID if you know exactly which release you want to use or if you've tagged the files before, an existing value will be read.

You may paste full release URLs in to the popup dialog and the server address will be stripped away.

When one or more matching releases have been found, you'll be presented with the main Tagger Dialog (screenshot).

From here, you can choose the best match for your selection. Note that while multiple releases may match your selection count, they may have differing track orders and entirely different tracks depending on region. Sometimes, the release from your country of origin may be the worst match and you'll have to pick another! The releases list is read-only but you can edit all other text fields and the Title column in the track list.

In the Disc Subtitle column, you can only edit the entry for track 1 of each disc. Edits will be applied to all tracks from the same disc when tagging.

TOC submissions#

You should only use the Add TOC to MusicBrainz option if you are a MusicBrainz editor and the selection is an actual CD in an optical drive. Submitted discids must be calculated from sources that take pregap information in to account. This simply is not present in ripped files.

The Nerdy Stuff#

When it comes to tagging MBIDs, this component always follows the naming conventions used for Vorbis comments regardless of the underlying file format/tagging sheme.

For example, it will write MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID instead of MUSICBRAINZ ARTIST ID to MP3 and M4A files. Repeat that for all tags prefixed with MUSICBRAINZ.

The following differences affect ID3 tagging only:

  • DISCSUBTITLE is written to TXXX:DISCSUBTITLE rather than TSST (SET SUBTITLE)
  • LABEL is written to TXXX:LABEL rather than TPUB (PUBLISHER)
  • MEDIA is written to TXXX:MEDIA rather than TMED (MEDIA TYPE)
  • MUSICBRAINZ_RECORDINGID is written to TXXX:MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID rather than UFID://musicbrainz.org
  • RELEASECOUNTRY is written to TXXX:RELEASECOUNTRY rather than TXXX:MUSICBRAINZ ALBUM RELEASE COUNTRY
  • PERFORMER is written to TXXX:PERFORMER rather than TMCL / IPLS

The reasoning for this is twofold:

  • foobar2000 has never been able to read or write certain frames like UFID / TMCL / IPLS.
  • And for frames that are recognised, it unifies tag display/search regardless of file format. It's easier to search for %LABEL% IS blah rather than %LABEL% IS blah OR %PUBLISHER% IS blah which is what you'd have to do if this was Picard compatible.

The main exception to the above is that ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT will be written differently depending on format. See the changelog entry for 1.1.2.

Changes#

2.9#

  • Minor bug fixes.

2.8#

  • Fix PERFORMER bug where guest/additional attributes may have been written without specifying vocal or an instrument. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

2.7#

  • Fix multi-value sorting bug affecting COMPOSER/WRITER/PERFORMER.

2.6#

  • Bump minimum requirements to foobar2000 2.24 and Windows 10.
  • Compiled with the latest foobar2000 SDK.

2.5#

  • Fix bug where ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE could be written even when the preferences were disabled.

2.4#

  • Fix tagger dialog bug where the Track Artist could not be previewed/edited before writing. Just to be clear, this only appears on various artist releases.

2.3#

  • Work relationships are now parsed which adds support for writing LYRICIST and WRITER tags. Check the main Preferences>Tools>MusicBrainz64 if you wish to disable this. It should also improve coverage for COMPOSER.
  • Improve PERFOMER handling to include more vocalists.

2.2#

  • Fix crash on shutdown which did not provide any popup but may have left crash dumps in your profile folder. These should be deleted to avoid confusion in the future. Apologies for the inconvenience.

2.1#

  • Add support for 32bit. The name is remaining unchanged.
  • For existing 64bit users, all preferences have been reset due to a large internal rewrite at the same time.

1.2.9#

  • Fix bug where ascii punctuation replacements were not applied if enabled in the Preferences. I can only apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused.
  • v1.1.2 added support for writing ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT and it was clearly stated that foobar2000 would transform these to ARTISTSORTORDER and ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER when tagging mp3/m4a. Unfortunately I did not notice that this would not clear any existing ARTISTSORTORDER and ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER values so if you tagged the same tracks more than once, values would be appended instead of overwriting. This is now fixed.

1.2.8#

  • Fix displaying/editing the disc subtitle for single disc releases.

1.2.7#

  • No changes in functionality from previous release but some code has been modernised.

1.2.6#

  • Use ; as multi-value separator when editing LABEL, CATALOGNUMBER and Secondary Types in the tagger dialog.

1.2.5#

  • Fixes a bug where the Disc Subtitle column was recently enabled for single disc releases but the value was not written unless it was a multi-disc release.

1.2.4#

  • Fixes a bug introduced in 1.2.3 where a PERFORMER credited with the same instrument at recording and release level would see that instrument duplicated.

1.2.3#

  • COMPOSER and PERFORMER from the recording level are now supported. The original implementation only supported release level.

1.2.2#

  • CATALOGNUMBER and LABEL can now be multi-value. Previously, only the first value was written.

1.2.1#

  • Minor bug fix.

1.2.0#

  • All new options are enabled by default. Always check File>Preferences>Tools>MusicBrainz. Previous settings for existing users should be preserved.
  • Support for writing PERFORMER and COMPOSER tags has been added. Note that these are not available when performing Get tags by TOC lookups.
  • When writing PERFORMER to MP3, multi-value TXXX frames are used. This is because foobar2000 has never supported TMCL / IPLS.

1.1.2#

  • Support for writing ARTISTSORT was added, it's off by default. ALBUMARTISTSORT will be written for various artist albums.
    • Note that foobar2000 will automatically transform these to ARTISTSORTORDER and ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER when writing to MP3/M4A. Component authors cannot control this.
    • For MP3, they are written to the TSOP and TSO2 frames as detailed here.

1.1.1#

  • Fix regression in 1.1.0 where the state of the Preferences Apply button did not update to reflect when changes had been made.

1.1.0#

  • Support for writing multi-value ARTISTS has been added. It's off by default so check the Preferences.
  • An option to always write ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE has been added. Previously, it was only written if it differed from DATE.

1.0.2#

  • RELEASETYPE now supports multiple values.

1.0.1#

  • Fix crash caused by not using new SDK methods correctly.

1.0.0#

  • All dialogs have been updated to support Dark Mode.
  • Some Preferences have been updated.