What databases can be used for automatic song identification ?

Part 5: Fix Songs, Review Match Options
Part 7: How to add Metadata to your Music

 

Part 6: SongKong Tutorial: What databases can be used for automatic song  identification ?

In the previous section we described ways you could modify how songs and albums  were identified. But of course the key things that decides what songs are identified are the databases that SongKong uses, so lets explain these.

SongKong uses MusicBrainz, Discogs and AcoustId for song identification, and by default it uses all of these.

If you have a Melco license it can also use existing Naim Wav metadata files but this is a special case. It only applies to customers with a Melco license who files identified using a Naim server such as a Unitiserve and ripped their music to Wav format, so we will discuss this later on.

MusicBrainz

This is the Gold Standard, metadata is rarely wrong and frequently very detailed. Once songs have been matched to a MusicBrainz album it also makes it very easy to lookup additional databases by the MusicBrainz identifiers, since this has become the defacto standard.

So for example we can look up artwork from the Cover Art Archive and acoustic analysis from AcousticBrainz

We can also frequently lookup Artist and Albums pages from Wikipedia and Discogs.....

Discogs

Discogs is a database that concentrates on physical releases (such as CD's/Vinyl) since it allows people to buy and sales records.
 
When we have matched to a MusicBrainz album then we often have a direct link to an equivalent Discogs release, and this is very useful because Discogs often has additional information that MusicBrainz does not have. And this includes Cover Art so now we have another source for that all important front cover art.

But we can also search Discogs when we do not have a MusicBrainz match. Although there is much overlap,  MusicBrainz has albums that are not in Discogs, and Discogs has albums that are not in MusicBrainz. In fact the Discogs database is larger than MusicBrainz so it is very important to have this second database.

AcoustId

AcoustId creates an audio fingerprint of your songs, this then allows the song to be looked up in the AcoustId database, and the AcoustId database often has a link from an AcoustId to a MusicBrainz Recording Id - so in that way we match songs to MusicBrainz.

So the primary use of AcoustId is to help to match your songs to MusicBrainz, AcoustIds are used in conjunction with existing metadata and folder structure to find the correct match.

But AcoustId database is larger than both MusicBrainz and Discogs. So it can very usefully be used to add basic metadata for songs that could not be found in MusicBrainz or Discogs.

Enabling or Disabling these Databases

You can enable/disable matching from MusicBrainz/Discogs and using the link from MusicBrainz to Discogs releases, options are highlighted below on the Match tab. You need to select Show Advanced to see the Disocgs options.

AcoustIds are always calculated as required but you can force SongKong to calculate for every song even when not neccessary for song identification by enabling Force Acoustic fingerprints even if already matched.