Missing Tags Help

[dmtml]

Hi there,

I'm new to MusicBee, have tried iTunes, MediaMonkey, MusicBrainz, and others to get all of my music sorted out and tagged correctly, and I've got a few questions for you experts!

First, there are a lot of quirks with the search function when you are auto-tagging by album. Say I know the artist and song title, but don't know the album.  I will put those two bits of info into the search, and often times will come up with nothing.  Then I delete the song name, and just search for the artist, figuring I can figure out which album it's on trough trial and error, narrowing it down because I know the year (at least approximately).  Sometimes I will just get 1 or 2 results, even though I only searched for the artist.  Shouldn't every album for that artist show up as an option???

Here's an example.

1.  I've got a song by Beyonce, titled "Halo", but it does not have a tag for the album.
2.  I right click on the file, and choose "Auto-Tag by album"
3.  I get two results, one is a compilation bootleg, and the other is a single.
4.  That would be fine, but I know that this song is on an actual album, which is how I like my songs to be tagged.
5.  My reasoning is that next I could search for just "Beyonce", and that should return all of her albums, and I can choose the right one from there.
6.  Now my only search option is "Beyonce" under album artist, and I get just two results, both Singles.
7.  At this point, I go to google and find out that the song is actually on a album titled "I am... Sasha Fierce"
8.  I do another search in "Auto-tag by album" with "Beyonce" again under artist, and this time "I am" as the album.  This time I finally get a bunch of results that show the correct album, and the song I was looking for.

So why when I search for just "Beyonce" return only two results, but when I add the album name, it brings up dozens???  Shouldn't just one search string return more results???


And question #2, I like to use the tagging tools, like show files with missing tags, and files with missing artwork, etc.  These do a great job of sorting these initially, but as soon as I update a song, it goes back to my full library, and I have to reselect "show songs with missing tags" and re-sort and manually scroll back to where I was working before.  After I update a song, is there anyway to get it to still be showing me the files with missing tags?

Thanks All!!

[redwing]

Update your MB to the lastest version:

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_3/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip

(unzip and overwrite everything to MB program folder)

Since gracenote was added, auto-tag by album has improved a lot.

[redwing]

And question #2, I like to use the tagging tools, like show files with missing tags, and files with missing artwork, etc.  These do a great job of sorting these initially, but as soon as I update a song, it goes back to my full library, and I have to reselect "show songs with missing tags" and re-sort and manually scroll back to where I was working before.  After I update a song, is there anyway to get it to still be showing me the files with missing tags?

That's an expected behavior as filtered tracks get updated with your edit. You might want to save them in a playlist fist, and work on with the playlist instead.

[dmtml]

And question #2, I like to use the tagging tools, like show files with missing tags, and files with missing artwork, etc.  These do a great job of sorting these initially, but as soon as I update a song, it goes back to my full library, and I have to reselect "show songs with missing tags" and re-sort and manually scroll back to where I was working before.  After I update a song, is there anyway to get it to still be showing me the files with missing tags?

That's an expected behavior as filtered tracks get updated with your edit. You might want to save them in a playlist fist, and work on with the playlist instead.

Thanks Redwing.

I am now running the latest version.  For #2 here, I understand that tracks are updated as I edit, but shouldn't it still stay showing files with missing tags, but the songs that I just updated should no longer be showing up?  For some reason I feel that it worked that way when I first started using the program, but maybe I am remembering wrong!!!

In fact, at the top of the screen, it even still shows "Tag Manager",  and "filter: Files with Missing Tags" is still shown, but it is now showing all of my songs??

As for the searching, it seems to be similar for the most part.  First song I tried to tag after the update was "Fireflies", by "Owl City".  There is nothing in the Album tag, so the "auto-search by album" autofills "Fireflies" to Title, and "Owl City" as album artist.  When I do the search, it just brings up 2 compilation albums.  Upon searching google, I find that the song is on an album titled "Ocean".  Without changing either of the other two search strings, I enter "ocean" as the album, and now I get five returns on the search, all with the correct information.  I'm just really confused as to why that album would not show up when I did the first search?  I could understand if something was spelled differently or something, but I didn't change anything else??

I certainly can go to google to find the album and go from there, but it's an extra step that adds up to LOTS of extra time over thousands of songs!

Thanks again!

[redwing]

Make sure GraceNote was enabled. Go to Edit> Preferences> Tags(2) and check "tags providers" setting. With your example, it finds the album.

[redwing]

Also note that, except for GraceNote, there are some limitations with other sources:

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=8756.0

[dmtml]

Make sure GraceNote was enabled. Go to Edit> Preferences> Tags(2) and check "tags providers" setting. With your example, it finds the album.

I actually did go in and do that right AFTER i posted, but even after restarting MusicBee, I am still not getting any results for that search except for the two compilation albums.  I even went in and moved Gracenote to the top of the list so that would be the #1 priority with no change.  

I wonder why you would get results, but I wouldn't???

[redwing]

Will you post a screenshot of your Tags(2) setting?

[dmtml]

And THANK YOU for such quick replies!!

[redwing]

Everything looks fine to me. Try with other songs to see if you can get any results from GraceNote.

[redwing]

This is what I get with your example:

[dmtml]

I'm not seeming to get results from Gracenote on any song... 

I unchecked all the other options so that Gracenote is the ONLY one being searched, and I get no results whatsoever.

[redwing]

How about artwork and lyrics with right side panel? Do you get results from GraceNote?

[dmtml]

How about artwork and lyrics with right side panel? Do you get results from GraceNote?

"No Match" on gracenote artwork, and "auto-tag completed with no updates" when I try to update lyrics. 

[redwing]

OK, now let's try this, assuming your settings file got corrupt somehow.

Locate your settings file (Help> Support> View Settings File) and move the file out of the folder.

Launch MB, set up the providers setting again, and try searching tags and artworks.