Tagging and fingerprinting MP3 files on Linux and Windows

Now that Spotify is shutting down their free (ad supported) service people are forced back to building own MP3 collections. As usual filenames are total mess and ID3 tags missing.


But no worries. Grab MusicBrainz Picard (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard/) and let it take care of boring work. Just enable audio fingerprinting with sensible file + folder renaming rules and rest is pretty much automatic.

There's Windows and Linux clients available. Well MacOSX too, but who cares about that. :)

# Add MusicBrainz repo
apt-add-repository -y ppa:musicbrainz-developers/stable

# Install
apt-get -y install picard

Some plugins I use myself and changes made to default settings.

 
# Get some useful plugins, see MusicBrainz wiki for details
# http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard/Plugins
mkdir -p ~/.config/MusicBrainz/Picard/plugins/
cd ~/.config/MusicBrainz/Picard/plugins/
# Remove Feat. Artists from Titles
wget "http://users.musicbrainz.org/~luks/picard-plugins/featartistsintitles.py"
# Release Type
wget "http://users.musicbrainz.org/~luks/picard-plugins/release_type.py"
# No Release
wget "http://users.musicbrainz.org/~luks/picard-plugins/no_release.py"
# Title sort names
wget "http://github.com/voiceinsideyou/creaps-picard-plugins/raw/master/titlesort.py"
# Last.fm Plus
# lastfmplus-0.13.zip official download location: http://www.mediafire.com/?qlso9gc8c75aq5a
wget "http://kraehen.org/tmp/lastfmplus-0.13.zip"
unzip lastfmplus-0.13.zip
rm -f lastfmplus-0.13.zip
 
Launch Picard and make following changes to defaults:
Options > Options
General: Enter your username and password
Metadata: Use standardized artist names
Metadata: Use track relationships
Metadata: Use folksonomy tags as genre
Metadata: Various Artists: VA
Metadata: Non-album tracks: MISC
Metadata/Preferred Releases: Album, United States, United Kingdom.
Metadata/Preferred release formats: CD
Tags: Preserve timestamps of tagged files
Tags: Before tagging: Remove ID3 tags from FLAC files
Tags: Before tagging: Remove APEv2 tags from MP3 files
Tags: Tag compatibility: ID3v2 version: 2.4
Cover Art: Save cover images as separate files
File naming: Rename files when saving
File naming: Make sure Replace windows-incompatible chars is NOT selected
File naming: Move files to this directory when saving: /mp3/sorted/
File naming: Move additional files: *.jpg *.png *.bmp *.txt *.nfo *.JPG *.PNG *.BMP *.TXT *.NFO
File naming: Name files like this:
$rreplace($replace($replace($replace($upper($left(%albumartist%,1))/%albumartist% \\($left($if(%originaldate%,%originaldate%,%date
%),4)\\) $rreplace($rreplace(%album%,\\\\?+\\$,),\\\\.+\\$,)/$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),%discnumber%-,)$num(%tracknumber%,2) - %title%,?,.),:,;),_,-),[\"
*<>|'`],)
Fingerprinting: Audio Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting: Use AmpliFIND (MusicDNS)
Advanced/User Interface: Allow selection of multiple directories
Advanced/User Interface: Use interface language: English
Plugins: Enable following plugins:
 Convert typographic punctuation
 Cover Art Downloader
 Disc Numbers
 Feat. Artists in Titles
 Last.fm.Plus
 No Release
 Release Type
 Save Matches
 TSO2
 Title sort names
Close and re-open Options window so plugins get loaded.
Plugins/No release: Enable plugin for all releases by default
Plugins/Last.fm.Plus: Make sure "Join tags with" field is EMPTY (defaults to "; ")
DONE!