Bulk add track artworks to files - No match for 90% of tracks.

[estevenin]

Hi all,

After looking at all the posts in the forum, trying to tweak all the settings to make it work, I haven't progressed at all so I decided I would post.

The issue : For 90% of my music, MusicBee can't find any artwork or when it does, it's wrong. I'm regularely using MusicBee to update music in bulk and was uploading it manually but this time I have too much, so I wanted to update it automatically. (I have already deleted ALL the artworks so all tracks are empty from artwork)

One example for the track : Abakus - Dreamer.



There is no match for this track, but with a quick Google Search, there are plenty of matches, including deezer, lastfm and spotify :



In the settings, I have deezer, bing, lastfm and fanart for artworks, in tag (1)
In the internet tab, I have plenty of custom searches that I found on this forum



MusicBee is 3.4.8033. Not sure what else to do at this point. This example is not an isolated example, it happens pretty much with 90% of the library.

The ideal scenario for me would be Select All > Auto-Tag By Track > Update Missing Artworks
For the source, would search and update automatically in that order : Deezer, Spotify, LastFM, Soundcloud, Google
Also, ideally, I would rather receive the TRACK ARTWORK, I function with tracks rather than albums. In a second option, album is ok of course. But the best option is the track cover.

This is the ideal but of course I'm happy with just deezer and lastfm, which I believe are built in in MusicBee, as they have pretty much every cover I need. Then Google for the very odd music.

Any help is welcome on how to make this work properly, I'm sure this is how it's meant to work and I must be missing something somewhere. Perhaps the issue is that MusicBee is looking for an album cover using the track name ? (I ALWAYS use the track name in the album field, this is a personal preference, I di not want to have anything to do with albums, except very rare cases. This is because most tracks I listen do not have an album, only tacks)

Thanks in advance!

[frankz]

I ALWAYS use the track name in the album field, this is a personal preference, I di not want to have anything to do with albums, except very rare cases. This is because most tracks I listen do not have an album, only tacks

Then this is never going to work for you.  MB assumes accurately tagged files, and looks for album artwork based on the album name.

[estevenin]

I see. That makes sense, that's unfortunate as I suppose most people would rather having the track title to be the thumbnail (If you have 5/6 tracks for the same album, you would end up with the same artwork for 5/6 files) ? That's how spotify, deezer, all those guys work as well, some have an album cover but for every standalone track, the track cover. Given that most of my files do not have an album (simply was never made), only came out as standalone songs, with a B side and a club mix maybe on the single. I suppose it's logical that the track title and album to be the same ?

For example, it is the case for the track example I'v given, if I use the exam terms from the tags, it can accurately find the right stuff from google, which shows the right artwork in deezer and lastfm. Any reason why this would not work when album = title for songs that never had an album ?

[frankz]

For example, it is the case for the track example I'v given, if I use the exam terms from the tags, it can accurately find the right stuff from google, which shows the right artwork in deezer and lastfm. Any reason why this would not work when album = title for songs that never had an album ?

I searched for this song on Discogs.  It's listed as being on two albums, neither named "Dreamer (Original Mix)."

I am also not able to find an album named this on Spotify.

Image searching the song title Google returns this release in discogs for a cover.  It is not called "Dreamer (Original Mix)."

In order to automatically search for information, MB needs accurate input.  Album and Title are two different fields for a reason.

You are free, of course, to disagree with this methodology, but it is the reason why your searches for artwork are failing.

[sveakul]

The issue : For 90% of my music, MusicBee can't find any artwork or when it does, it's wrong. I'm regularely using MusicBee to update music in bulk and was uploading it manually but this time I have too much, so I wanted to update it automatically. (I have already deleted ALL the artworks so all tracks are empty from artwork)

Everything frankz said about starting with accurate album title tagging is correct.  However, when you use Artwork Downloader, be sure to first CHECK the album in the list before hitting the "Preview" button--if you don't, no search results besides already exsisting art will be shown.  Because the checkbox will "uncheck" itself after returning results, there's no way of knowing if you did this already by your screenshot, so thought I would post.

[phred]

MusicBee is 3.4.8033. Not sure what else to do at this point.

The correct answer is what frankz and sveakul stated.

I want to point out that you're using a version of MB that's more than two years old and strongly suggest that you update to the latest 3.5 version available from the downloads page of the website. Or from the first forum topic.

[estevenin]

Thank you all for the answers, that's very helpful. (I will update the software).

In the discogs example, indeed there is the album, and the EP. And the desirable artwork in that case would be the EP (named The Beginning / Dreamer) rather than the full album. I understand that google would indeed return the right artwork, but discogs, lastfm and deezer would have a different search engine, that needs a precise title.

I suppose in that case and based on your feedback, following that process would work correctly:

- Auto-tag from track, updating "album" field only. (To bounce back on the example, if the album would have been The Beginning / Dreamer it would have returned the correct artwork, if it would have been "departure", it would have returned the full album. Any setting to use to make sure that auto-tagging would select the EP name for the album tag here instead of the full album  name ? Or it would just come randomly)
- Lookup for artwork for all tracks
- Delete all album tags
- Auto-tag from filename, updating "album" field only.

That should then help more artworks to be found I believe, as long as I update the album tags based on my methodology after the search.

Thanks again