Contemplating re-tagging my music database (165k Files) with Songkong

[paultaylor]

@jacobacci

Release “Má Vlast” by Bedřich Smetana; Jakub Hrůša, Bamberger Symphoniker - MusicBrainz

In this case your original album title is Smetana - Ma Vlast (DSF), and the album name match failed because on MusicBrainz it is just Ma Vlast, we strip of the bracket info when matching and if the composer was added as Smetana: Ma Vlast (DSF) we would ignore that as well, but we didnt strip of the Smetana part separated by ‘-’ isn this case.

However, a match based on just track titles did work and the match was scored and looked okay

12/07/2024 14.58.22:CEST:MusicBrainzScorer:calculateReleaseScores:SEVERE: G1333:F:\music_RF\7d DSF_ISO_2ch\Hrusa, Jakub\Smetana - Ma Vlast (DSF):false:false:false:false:false:ReleasesToCheckAfterFiltered:2
12/07/2024 14.58.22:CEST:Scorer:calcReleaseLevelScores:WARNING: Score for 50f1acea-cc3b-458e-b13f-0ad144cba4bb:Má Vlast was:score:66:release:75:totalTrack:381:avgTrack:63:modeTrack:70
12/07/2024 14.58.22:CEST:Scorer:calcReleaseLevelScores:WARNING: Score for a5b55a32-638c-43c8-91eb-3c02f0293ff3:Má Vlast was:score:54:release:34:totalTrack:381:avgTrack:63:modeTrack:70
12/07/2024 14.58.22:CEST:MusicBrainzScorer:calculateReleaseScores:SEVERE: --G1333:F:\music_RF\7d DSF_ISO_2ch\Hrusa, Jakub\Smetana - Ma Vlast (DSF):false:false:false:false:falseReleasesWithValidReleaseScore:2

However, addtional checks failed:

12/07/2024 14.58.22:CEST:MusicBrainzScorer:calculateReleaseScores2:SEVERE: G1333:F:\music_RF\7d DSF_ISO_2ch\Hrusa, Jakub\Smetana - Ma Vlast (DSF):false:false:false:false:false:50f1acea-cc3b-458e-b13f-0ad144cba4bb:Má Vlast:good 0:bad 6
12/07/2024 14.58.22:CEST:MusicBrainzScorer:calculateReleaseScores2:WARNING: G1333:F:\music_RF\7d DSF_ISO_2ch\Hrusa, Jakub\Smetana - Ma Vlast (DSF):false:false:false:false:false:50f1acea-cc3b-458e-b13f-0ad144cba4bb:+Má VlastMatch Rejected because more metadata only matches failing doublecheck then passing:6:0

but unforunately I cant see why it failed because by default that info is not logged

What you could do is:

1. Go to Preferences:Support and set Debug Log Level to Config
2. Run Fix Songs against just this folder
3. Run Create Support Files
4. Go to Preferences:Support and set Debug Log Level back to Warning

Also none of tracks on this album have an existing Acoustid therefore we could not use Acoustid matching to help us.

[jacobacci]

Thanks a lot, Paul
I am indeed in search of good consistent metadate
I have rerun fix songs twice on the Nareh Arghamanyan folder and I am creating and uploading support files.
Is there an easy way to force match files in a folder to a MusicBrainz release?
The (DSF) at the end of the Album Title serves to identify the file format, as I often have several versions in CD quality, several HD PCM samplerates and several DSF sample rates. The way around this might be to simply strip whatever is in parentheses (which you seem to do for identification purposes) and then put it back to the end of the new album title.
Rudi

[paultaylor]

@jacobacci

Is there an easy way to force match files in a folder to a MusicBrainz release?

Yes you need to use the Match to One album task

e.g paste https://musicbrainz.org/release/f5080bcb-76ce-4718-923c-211dab9a1ceb into the Enter MusicBrainz Url … field, and possibly enable Force allow low scoring match option

The (DSF) part in brackets is not a problem that is stripped off anyway

It is worth saying that matching to Classical is harder than matching to Pop/Rock because:

• Not so good coverage in Acoustid and MusicBrainz database
• More variation in how users tag Classical files

[paultaylor]

@jacobacci

I have rerun fix songs twice on the Nareh Arghamanyan folder and I am creating and uploading support files.

Thanks, okay I looked at that and like the other release I looked at it does find the right match, but the additonal checks it runs causes it to ultimately reject the release, but the reason why is not shown by default in logs, could you please

1. Go to Preferences:Support and set Debug Log Level to Config
2. Run Fix Songs against just this folder (easier if you just select the F:\music_RF\7d DSF_ISO_2ch\Arghamanyan, Nareh\Rachmaninoff, Sergei - Piano Works (DSF) folder rather then the artist folder)
3. Run Create Support Files
4. Go to Preferences:Support and set Debug Log Level back to Warning

So I can determine why it doesnt like the match.

[paultaylor]

Okay I can see the issue, the problem is the MusicBrainz album data is not as correct as it could be for Classical release, it has the Track Artist (Credit) set to Sergei Rachmaninov but also has the Recording Artist (Credit) set to Sergei Rachmaninov where as it should be set to Nareh Arghamanyan. This is one of my main gripes of MusicBrainz that for Classical they make Track Artist Credit and Recording Artist Credit mean very different things (for other genres such as PopRock and Jazz they do not) , and I explaiin this further in a post on roon, also see here and here, and then they make it difficult to to this.

Now the extra matching SongKong does already takes this into account, it recognizes that the album being matched to is a Classical release and checks both the track artist credit and recording artist credit to see if either has a match to your songs artist metadata. However in your case it fails because your song metadata correctly has the track artist Nareh Arghamanyan but MusicBrainz only has Sergei Rachmaninov for both track artist and recording artist, so there is no match.

Solution would be to recognize the case where MusicBrainz has used composer for both and user has track artist as artist (which is correct) and it that case look for a match at album artist level, raised issue https://jthink.atlassian.net/browse/SONGKONG-2614

In the meantime Match to One Album with Force allow low scoring matches enabled should work

[jacobacci]

Hi Paul,
I have rerun fix songs on Nareh Arghamanyan with Debug Level set to Config. I have uploaded the Support Files. Hope this helps.
Will do Ma Vlast next.
Rudi

[jacobacci]

Just ran fix songs on Hrusa/MaVlast and sent Support Files with LogLevel Config

[jacobacci]

I have tried the force match and found some inconsistencies in the metadata on MusicBrainz:
The songs have Smetana as Artist

The Album has Hrusa as Artist

I then ran the force match and saved the metadata. Looking at the metadata with mp3Tag shows the following:

Maybe I am totally wrong here, but so far I thought that Album Artist should contain only one entry (the main artist for the whole album or ‘Various Artists’).
The Artist field I have always populated with the names of the artists that contributed to the recording, separated by backslash (in mp3Tag). Here these two seem reversed.
Conductor seems not to be modified (spelling of Hrusa different from artist). Orchestra field has two identical entries.
This is what I would expect the metadata to look like.

Am I missing something here?

[jacobacci]

I have also run match to one album on the Nareh Arghamanyan. The metadata on MusicBrains is inconsistent:

So the question arises who to fix the metadata in MusicBrainz without too much effort?

[paultaylor]

HI, first of all can you send support files again please this is more helpful then showing screenshots and the view from Mp3tag. you can see all the metadata from within the SongKong report itself.

e.g
This is from your FixSongs preview report, the Ma Vlast album wasnt matched to MusicBrainz but it was matched to Discogs.

But to answer some of your questions

@jacobacci

The Album has Hrusa as Artist…
Maybe I am totally wrong here, but so far I thought that Album Artist should contain only one entry (the main artist for the whole album or ‘Various Artists’).

This is a common misconception but no the Album Artist should not contain only one entry, but it should contain the same entrie(s) for every track. Now by default if it is an album with multiple album artists we do by default store as a single entry e.g Jakub Hrůša, Bamberger Symphoniker in the AlbumArtist field, and store as multiple entries e.g Jakub Hrůša\\Bamberger Symphoniker in the AlbumArtists field

But as you are using the Roon profile if we did it this way Roon would look for an artist called Jakub Hrůša, Bamberger Symphoniker in its links it would not realize they are two artists, so we use the Save multiple values as separate fields option i the roon profile

BTW the value is not actually stored as \ this is just how Mp3tag indicates multiple values, how it is done is tag format specific but for DSF (which uses ID3) its actually by storing a null byte between each value.

So for this album it is correct that Jakub Hrůša and Bamberger Symphoniker are the album artists , they are credited equally on the front cover.

@jacobacci

The songs have Smetana as Artist

Smetana should not be included, unless Track Artist has been modified to include Composer, but this maybe something to do with the album being matched to Discogs before rather than MusicBrainz because the classical algorithm is only fully applied to Musicbrainz matches.

@jacobacci

Conductor seems not to be modified (spelling of Hrusa different from artist). Orchestra field has two identical entries.

Conductor was in your original metadata, added by yourself or via another application

MusicBrainz has not included the Conductor relationship for this release, i.e the information is not incorrect but incomplete. SongKong does not delete existing metadata unless replacing with metadata although you can use the Metagrater task to mass delete fields if desired.

But what is has done is recognize here is an existing value that looks like last name, first name and converted it to first name last name

[paultaylor]

@jacobacci

I have also run match to one album on the Nareh Arghamanyan. The metadata on MusicBrains is inconsistent:

It doesnt look like it has been matched, would see to see the reports.

@jacobacci

So the question arises who to fix the metadata in MusicBrainz without too much effort?

So lets not jump to conclusions, but actually anybody can edit the data relatively easily, and it is subject to guidlines and voting to ensure editing improves things rather than breaks things.

[jacobacci]

I have rerun the match to one album on the Nareh Arghamanyan and checked with ‘view album’ that it actually matched to the MusicBrainz release. The report has been uploaded.

[jacobacci]

Support files for Hrusa also sent after match to album. Checked ‘view album’ that the match was indeed to MusicBrainz release.

[paultaylor]

Hi, okay there is a small bug, MatchOneAlbum reports are not getting sent with the support files, fixed for next release but could you do the following for me please

• Go to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\SongKong\Reports (where username is your windows username, and note AppData is hidden folder on windows by default)
• Zip up the folders beginning MatchAlbumReport
• Send zip file to support@jthink.net

thanks, sorry for the inconvenience.

[jacobacci]

MatchAlbumReport Folders sent via Email

[paultaylor]

Thankyou, okay now I see the problem please see this post about the roon profile specifically this section

Classical Track Artist

PopRock music usually has a well defined track artist but Classical music doesn’t have an easily defined track artist, it can be defined by the conductor/performers/choirs/orchestras on the track but is difficult. Since this we have separate fields for conductor/performers/choirs/composers anyway it is usually better to leave the track artists blank and let roon work out the best track artist from the other fields

We do this by adding (Track) Artist to the Never Modify or add these fields option on the Classical tab, we also add the plural and sort variants. This prevents these fields being used when we match to a Classical album, non classical albums are unaffected.

So if using purely in via Roon there is some benefit to not having the track artist set, however if you already have values then better to update the value or beforehand use Metagrater to deletes these values. I think in your case best to just set Classical/Never Modify or Add these Fields to nothing. And this should fix the Artist/Sort Artist/Artists/Sort Artists issues for both albums.

When we originally created the roon profile there was an option to empty existing fields included in Fix Songs and that was the option we used so these fields would always be empty. But that option was taken out of Fix Songs and put into separate MetaGrater task which generally gives more flexibility but doesnt work quite so well for this scenario. I may modify the Roon profile to no longer leaves these fields unchanged for Classical, will have to think about it a bit more.

[jacobacci]

Which of the three profiles should I use:

• roon
• minimserver (I use minimserver on my NAS)
• default

and which parameters would I need to set in the recommended profile? I will then run the match album again, so we can check the result.

[paultaylor]

Just select the Roon profile (as you have been doing) but modify the Never modify or add these fields option on the Classical tab, once changed subsequent uses of roon profile for that task will keep the change, you dont have to do it each time.But you would need to do once for Fix Songs and once for Match to One Album because each task has its own profile they are not shared (although they may have same name)

[jacobacci]

I have set the ‘never modify or add these fields’ parameter to empty and redone the album match task for Nareh Arghamanyan. The extended tags in mp3Tag look much better now. I uploaded the report.

[jacobacci]

Same for the Hrusa. Uploaded the report