Can I manually override Genre values set by Musicbranz Picard?
#1
I've read the documentation, followed the instructions, yet I'm still unclear about one thing. And because I've got a humongous collection of music (too big to back up since I don't have the free disk space for it) I'm a little reluctant to experiment. I tried that once (quite a while ago) and ended up with a big mess.

I have tagged 95% of all my music using Musicbrainz Picard as per the various instructions in the Wiki. I'm left with a (significant) number of albums that are not in the MB database, and with a ton of albums that are now tagged incorrectly due to the inconsistencies in the MB database. For example, five albums by the same band may be tagged as Trance, Club, Dance, Electronica or Other, while in fact it all should be the same genre (trance). Picard lets me edit the genre tag (and other tags) but if I do that, will Kodi organize my MP3 files by the original tags it retrieves from MB when I add the MP3 files to the library (using the MBID tag) or will it use my edited tags?

Also, if an album is not present in the MB database, can I manually edit the tags for that album (so as to be consisted with the rest) and will Kodi then use that info?

// FvW
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#2
The best course of action would be to add the missing albums to MB yourself. It's probably about the same amount of work and you'll have to satisfaction to be able to download exactly the information that you want. For the first submission there will be a bit of a learning curve but it should be smooth sailing from the 2nd or 3rd album onwards.
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#3
(2019-03-10, 14:33)frankvw Wrote: I have tagged 95% of all my music using Musicbrainz Picard as per the various instructions in the Wiki. I'm left with a (significant) number of albums that are not in the MB database, and with a ton of albums that are now tagged incorrectly due to the inconsistencies in the MB database. For example, five albums by the same band may be tagged as Trance, Club, Dance, Electronica or Other, while in fact it all should be the same genre (trance). Picard lets me edit the genre tag (and other tags) but if I do that, will Kodi organize my MP3 files by the original tags it retrieves from MB when I add the MP3 files to the library (using the MBID tag) or will it use my edited tags?
Personally I always set the genre tag manually, other people's ideas of genre seem totally bizarre to me. Using Picard picking up genre from Musicbrainz is optional, I suggest you don't use it.

Kodi uses the tags embedded in the music files, so it will use your edited song genre values.
 
(2019-03-10, 14:33)frankvw Wrote: Also, if an album is not present in the MB database, can I manually edit the tags for that album (so as to be consisted with the rest) and will Kodi then use that info?
Well adding to Musicbrainz is the community spirited thing to do, but I also understand if you don't  want to spend your life doing this, maybe just do some.

Kodi will work with music files that don't have Musicbrainz id tags, mbids are not mandatory just useful - giving more accurate scraping, prevents inconsistent naming resulting in multiple entries for same artist,  and the only way to have multiple relases of the same album or different artists with the same name in the library. But say you have some music files by artist X fully tagged with Musicbrainz id, and some albums not. Kodi will match the artist by name and have only library entry for that artist with the artist mbid, but you have to be consistent with naming.

Some manual tagging tips:
  • Do tag as fully as possible - ARTIST, ALBUM, TRACK, YEAR as a bare minimum
 
  • Don't try to add some mbid tags (say for the artist) and not others (e.g. the release), there is no need and is likely to cause problems. Users always seem to get in a mess when they manually edit Musicbranz ID tags. Either let something like Picard provide them, or don't use them.

  • Make use of the ARTISTS and ALBUMARTISTS (note the S) tags to help Kodi identify individual artists if the ARTIST or ALBUMARTIST tags refer to multiple artists and does not use the slash-space-slash default separator or a multi-frame tag format e.g. ID3 v2.4 or Vorbis.
    For example in ID3 v2.3 tags format
    ARTIST = "Craig Chaquico (with Russ Freeman)"
    ARTISTS = Craig Chaquico / Russ Freeman

  • Be consistent with artist names - "Peter Tchaikosky", "Tchiakovsy" and "Pytor Iilich Tchaikovsky" will be taken by Kodi as 3 diffferent artists unless there are Musicbrainz tags showing they are the same. In that case Kodi takes the first artist name it scans as the definaitve one for the library entry.

Since you have a "humongous collection of music" can I also suggest that you try splitting it into multiple music sources when adding it to the music library. It will not only mean that you can try out how the library works on a smaller subset, but also give you another way to browse your music in more accessible chunks. A feature in v18 onwards.
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#4
(2019-03-10, 14:53)HeresJohnny Wrote: The best course of action would be to add the missing albums to MB yourself. It's probably about the same amount of work and you'll have to satisfaction to be able to download exactly the information that you want. For the first submission there will be a bit of a learning curve but it should be smooth sailing from the 2nd or 3rd album onwards.
 While I agree that adding the missing info to MB would be a more efficient use of my time than adding them solely to my own collection, this does not answer my question: can I override MB tags? I've got a whole pile of albums by the same artist, all of which are tagged with a different genre in MB because they apparently have been added by different people who all had their own different opinions in which category to fit these albums. I want all my trance albums tagged as fitting into the "Trance" genre and not one tagged as Electronica, another as Alternative and a third as Other.

Can I do so and how?
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#5
You can manually edit your tags. I use Mp3tag. If you open the album using Mp3tag, there's a selection at the top "view", then select "extended tags", that has all the musicbrainz tag fields and values. If you go to 'genre' and double click, there are boxes for Field and Value and you can change the Value to whatever you like. There are probably other tools to do it, but that's what I have and how I can do it.
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#6
"genre" is not a specific musicbrainz tag, there is no "override". Kodi will read whatever is written in that specific tag and use it in its database.
AFAIK, there could only be a conflict between MBID and "artist" or "album artist" tag in which case MBID takes preference (this may also be true for album titles and song titles).
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#7
(2019-03-11, 15:41)HeresJohnny Wrote: "genre" is not a specific musicbrainz tag, there is no "override". Kodi will read whatever is written in that specific tag and use it in its database.
 Thank you, sir! That is what I needed to know.
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#8
I recently started using Picard on my collection, I definitely love a lot about it. But I gotta agree on the genre thing. Some albums have like 5 different genres and some just have WTH genres that aren't even close to what it is. I find even 2 different genre's for a single album to be cluttery. But that's probably my OCD.  I have my collection organized in directories for different genres. So I'll just load Tagscanner and I can change them all back with thankfully just a few clicks.  mp3tag was recommended here, it looks great I just tried it today for the 1st time. But, I've been using Tagscanner since it came out so it's what I'm use to.
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#9
I'm the opposite, I've never even noticed that the metadata includes "genre". I know what records I have and what they are, I don't really care what they might be categorised as. I'd find it very difficult to pick a genre, I can understand why there are differing assessments on Musicbrainz.
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#10
(2019-03-15, 08:55)quebert Wrote: I recently started using Picard on my collection, I definitely love a lot about it. But I gotta agree on the genre thing.
 That's not a Picard issue; it's a problem with the Musicbrainz dataset. Which, in all fairness, is no better or worse than any other user-maintained data set. The problem is that different people have different ideas on how to categorize things. In my previous life as a website developer I've always had more problems with inconsistencies in customer-supplied or user-maintained data sets than with anything else. In the 1990s we had the same problem with CDDB and now with FreeDB as well. It's always been like that and always will be like that. Smile

What could be improved in Picard, IMO, is a willingness to deal with that fact of life, in the form of a better manual tagging feature that lets you do things the way you want it on your own, private and locally maintained music collection. Perhaps with feedback to MB so that, on a statistical basis, these changes might eventually find their way into the data set. (Something along the lines of "if this or that music is classified as X but everyone keeps changing it to Y, perhaps someone should have a look at recategorizing it".)

Just one man's opinion... Smile
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#11
(2019-03-15, 09:54)frankvw Wrote: (Something along the lines of "if this or that music is classified as X but everyone keeps changing it to Y, perhaps someone should have a look at recategorizing it".)

Just one man's opinion... Smile
That someone could be you. As you say, it's a user contributed database. If a contributor thinks something is wrong, they can put it up for change and it'll be voted on. If "genre" has multiple tags, you might not even have to do that, you might be able to just add the tag that you think applies.
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#12
Genre is subjective in ways that other facts about a release (that can be taken from the packaging) are not. I have found Musicbrainz community sourced data for those facts pretty good, but of course users make mistakes.

I can only repeat my recommendation not to fill the genre tag using Picard. It is optional, in fact in older versions you needed to use a plugin in Picard to fetch it. I can't remember the settings but Picard does not fill the genre tag when I use it, so look at the user guide and turn off whatever you have enabled that is filling genre.

EDIT: In v2.1.3 of Picard uncheck "use genres from musicbrainz" under Options > metadata > genres
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#13
It is also possible to install a plugin to Picard, which can grab the genre from ex. last.fm, AcousticBrainz, tango.info or Wikidata.

https://picard.musicbrainz.org/plugins/
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#14
The first problem is there does not exist a canonical set of genres, except I guess what someone defined way back in ID3 v1.  Without that it makes kind of a moot point IMHO to argue what text string should be assigned to a recording of a work (song).

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
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#15
Also, you are usually entering a release into musicbrainz, not just a recording. One artist might stick to a genre and you can say that the release is "whatever", but a different artist might have recordings on a release that can be described as different genres. Particularly on compilations, each recording may be a different genre. It's a lot of work to enter on musicbrainz, even more so if you had to consider each recording (and when you've just bought something new, you might not even know yet). I think genre will continue to be something a user has to decide and implement for themselves.
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Can I manually override Genre values set by Musicbranz Picard?0