Complete and fix your music tags with MusicBrainz

Opening the tag workshop

The workshop works on an album or on a selection of tracks. Right-click an album and choose “Edit tags”: this is the former “Fix tags”, renamed in version 0.3.0. You can also select tracks in the library, then click “Workshop” in the selection bar.

The workshop is a single table, with an edit panel on the right that collapses with one click. The header shows the album, the number of pending changes, Undo (Ctrl+Z, with the number of steps) and “Write N files” (Ctrl+S). Tools live in two menus: Tags (Complete online, Clean, Number 1 to N, Cover) and Files (Rename files, Batch history).

The “items to check” list: what’s missing at a glance

Above the table, a badge counts the items to check across the workshop’s tracks. Open it to see each one with the number of tracks concerned and a fix button:

• “Missing title, artist or album” and “Missing genre”: the “Complete” button opens Complete online.
• “Empty album artist”: the “Fill” button sets the album artist on the tracks concerned.
• “feat.” in the artist: the “Clean” button opens the cleaning rules (spaces, underscores, “feat.”, case).

A checkbox filters the table down to the tracks concerned. With nothing selected, a fix applies to every track in the workshop. When everything is in order, the badge reads “Consistent tags”.

Editing in the table and in the panel

The table works like a spreadsheet. Double-click a cell or press F2 to edit it, then Enter to move down a row or Tab to move to the next column. Selection works as in a file manager: click, Shift for a range, Ctrl to add a track.

Each column has its own menu: copy a value to the selection, “Title Case”, clear, “Hide column”. The Columns button picks which ones are shown; your choice is remembered, and the album artist is hidden by default.

The edit panel groups the track, album and credits fields (composer, comment). A value you type applies to every selected track. A field with differing values says so (“Different values”) and keeps them as long as you don’t type anything in it: you can fix the year of a whole album without touching the titles. A changed field reverts with one click, and genres already present in the album are suggested.

Complete online, in two steps

Complete online looks the album up on MusicBrainz or Deezer and suggests titles, artists, year, genre, track and disc numbers, composers and cover art. Everything lands in the workshop for review before writing.

1. 1

   Start “Complete online”

   Select the album’s tracks, then Tags → Complete online. Pick the source, MusicBrainz or Deezer: it is remembered for next time.

2. 2

   Pick the edition

   The search starts on its own with the artist and album from your files. Editions with the same number of tracks as your files come first, and the most likely one is marked “Best match”. With MusicBrainz, each edition is identified by year, country and medium, for example “1991 · JP · CD”.

3. 3

   Pick the fields

   Three modes: “Fill the blanks”, “Update everything” or “Custom”. For each field you see your files’ value, the source’s value and the effect (“Fills 17”, “Replaces 1”), expandable track by track. Tracks are matched by title, number and duration; a mismatched file can be left out with one click.

4. 4

   Review, then write

   The chosen values land in the table, not yet in your files. Check them, undo if needed, then click “Write N files”.

MusicBrainz or Deezer: which source to choose?

MusicBrainz is an open music database maintained by a community of contributors, who describe each edition of an album. Its cover art comes from the Cover Art Archive, a joint project of MusicBrainz and the Internet Archive. Deezer is a streaming service whose public API RustMusic queries. MusicBrainz allows one request per second at most, so the list of editions may take a moment to appear.

MusicBrainz is the right choice for classical music or jazz, where composers matter, and for finding a specific edition (Japanese pressing, remaster). Deezer is a quick option for cover art on a recent album.

Multi-disc albums and writing the files

On a double album, two tracks can share the same number, one per disc. RustMusic 0.3.0 no longer mixes them up, with Deezer as with MusicBrainz, and suggests the disc number along with the rest. The total track count is counted disc by disc. On MusicBrainz, a two-CD edition shows up as “2×CD”.

When the table looks right, “Write N files” (Ctrl+S) saves the changes to your MP3, FLAC, DSF, DFF and M4A files. Unedited blocks are copied as they are: existing cover art, rating and MusicBrainz IDs are kept.