[Q] MusicBrainz artwork and other enhancement ideas. Where to start

[Roason]

I've been on a long search for a music player that is well integrated with MusicBrainz and the best so far is MusicBee.  I really like the look and feel, and how well it works with MusicBrainz metadata.  However, there are a number of enhancements I'd like to see for my particular way of managing my collection and listening to music.

I really enjoy classical music, and I have been in the process of carefully scanning all the artwork associated with a release and uploading it to MusicBrainz.  I'm still working through my collection; but for those releases I have done, I have scanned the front cover, the back cover, the spine, the CD, each page of the included booklet, and if there is artwork in the CD tray, I scan that too.  All those images are then uploaded to MusicBrainz and carefully tagged to indicate the kind of artwork they are.

What I'd like is to have a means to do the following:

• Download images from MusicBrainz
• Extend the artwork tags in MusicBee to have tags for booklet pages.
• Map the artwork tags in MusicBrainz artwork to MusicBee tags
• Have a means to browse the Album art in MusicBee while listening to, or browsing my library.

What of the above features are possible through a plugin?  Are there artwork downloader plugins around?  So far most artwork seems to be "Artist" related; not album related.  I like artist artwork; but I much prefer album artwork when listening to my music.

Another separate idea I'd like to see is to be able to browse my library based upon the MusicBrainz concept of "Works".  For example, I'd like to be able to specify the work "Beethoven's 9th Symphony", and see listed there all the different recordings of that symphony - including derivatives  - that I have in my library.  For those that have taken the trouble to provide the data for their CD's, MusicBrainz has extensive information about Works tied to specific recordings.  How feasible is such a thing in MusicBee.  Is it in the realm of possibility for a Plugin; or would it require core changes to MusicBee?  This idea would also be desirable, I imagine, to those who like to listen to more popular music because it would allow you to find all the "covers" of a particular song that you might have in your collection.

Any advice on where to start learning the API for doing the things I'm interested in?  Are the things I'd like to do even feasible?  I've never done C# programming before; but I have 20+ years C/C++ experience (although that was more than 10 years ago - I'm a bit rusty).  I don't have a clear sense of what is in the control of a Plugin, and what requires core MusicBee changes.

Thanks

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum! 

I also rely heavily on MusicBrainz for tags, artwork, etc.  MusicBee works well with MusicBrainz's own Picard tagger, which can do just about everything on the tagging end.  It will definitely get you all the images with little fuss, and you can easily configure MusicBrainz' Work tag as a custom tag in MusicBee.

Here's a tutorial I made on tagging tracks in Picard so that MusicBee can retrieve multiple artists: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Tagging_Multiple_Artists_with_Picard

I can't help so much with the plugins, except to point you to some pages on the wiki that might help:
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/API
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Tutorial%3A_Creating_A_Simple_Plugin

[Roason]

Thanks for the reply psychoadept.

I'm using Picard for my tagging, and it turns out that it's already creating a WORK tag and includes the Work associated with the track.  After some tweaking in MusicBee I have been able to expose that in the Library Browser, so I can now sort on Work and find all the tracks in my library that cover the same work.  But there are several problems.  First, it's text based.  While I haven't run into the problem yet; I think I will eventually.  For some works with common and simple names; different works will be lumped together based on their name.  The same will be true for artists.  For example I have several recordings attributed to John Williams the composer/conductor.  But I also have a number of recordings under John Williams the classical guitarist.  MusicBrainz can distinguish between the two because it uses a unique ID under the covers.  But, so far as I can tell, MusicBee relies on the text version.  It turns out that Picard records the MusicBrains unique ID's in my tracks; but I can't see how I can use that information in MusicBee as of yet.

I might even want to support multiple "Works" in a single tag.  For major works in classical music within MusicBrainz, each movement is a separate Work, and all the movements are part of a larger Work for the Opera, or Symphony; or whatever the major work happens to be.  But when it maps to tracks it can get complicated.  Sometimes multiple works might be captured in a single track.  It's also conceivable that a single work might span multiple tracks; although I can't think of an instance of that.  So, for a variety of reasons a single track might include portions of movement; as well as being a part of the larger work.  Currently the work recorded in the tag is the movement work.  The containing major work isn't represented.  I'd like to add that somehow.  I expect I'll need to do that on the Picard side of things.

So far as multiple artists is concerned; I'm only partly interested in that.  Breaking apart the artists won't help me get to the artwork I want.  I want the artwork associated with the "Album".  Artwork associated with artists is of a secondary concern to me.  As I said before, I think that MusicBee is primarily focused on Tracks and Artists.  Having said that, I see that there is support for artwork in the edit panels.  When I choose to edit an album it brings up an edit dialog for "Multiple Tracks".  That seems to me to indicate that all an album is; is a group of tracks.  And the concept of "Editing an Album" is nothing more than a group edit of the tracks that comprise that album.

Within the edit dialog, whether for a single track or multiple tracks, one of the tabs is for Artwork; and I have the option of Adding an arbitrary amount of artwork; and that artwork can be tagged as one of:

• Album Cover
• Album Cover (back)
• Leaflet Page
• Media Label
• Lead Artist
• Artist
• Conductor
• Band
• Composer
• Lyricist
• Recording Location
• During Recording
• During Performance
• Video Screen Capture
• Illustration
• Band Logotype
• Publisher Logotype

For many of these, I'm not entirely sure what is intended.  Is Leaflet page for the booklet?  I'm not sure.  Can these picture categories be extended?  What will MusicBee do with this information?  At the top of the edit dialog it says "Multiple Files".  That seems to indicate to me that if I were to put a picture in there, it would associate that picture with each track.  Is there even a concept of a separate data object called an "Album" that has artwork associations all it's own?  Or is this artwork only associated with tracks?  And an Album is nothing more than the set of tracks that share the same "Album" attribute?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the main architectural and data model concepts in MusicBee.

[theta_wave]

But, so far as I can tell, MusicBee relies on the text version.  It turns out that Picard records the MusicBrains unique ID's in my tracks; but I can't see how I can use that information in MusicBee as of yet.

Musicbrainz Picard Tag Documentation: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/docs/tags/

Use MB's tag inspector to doublecheck that the tag information from Picard is there, add the "tag code" value as a custom music tag (Preferences > Tags (1) > Define New Tags) and click Save.  Name the custom tag, point it to the just-created tag and select the option to save it to the music file.  MB will rescan your collection adding any metadata from the new custom tag you just created.  Then you can create your own sort order using that custom tag.

*

*Note, old pic.  My Musicbrainz Album Tag is now MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID per Musicbrainz Picard's standard.