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.

 

 

A Discogs Tagger

If you have digitized your Music collection, then there is a real boon in not just identifying your songs but maintaining the links to the Music database they have been matched to. For example you can list your collection on Discogs, you might want to just share your music preferences or you may be interested in trading some of your records.

This is why SongKong and Jaikoz do not only store basic metadata like Artist, Album and Title, but also fields that identify the correct MusicBrainz/Discogs data such as the artist(s) and release.

With previous versions of SongKong songs an attempt was always made to match to MusicBrainz before matching to Discogs. But now in the latest 3.24 release you can disable MusicBrainz matching and only match your songs to Discogs, just disable the Search for a MusicBrainz match.



Now you can even disable the Acoustic fingerprinting stage, but even if you are only matching to Discogs then SongKong can still make use of  acoustic fingerprints, so we do not usually recommend it.

And of course you can just match to MusicBrainz and not update or match to Discogs by disabling Update from Discogs and Search for a Discogs Match.

Discogs Artists that could be linked to MusicBrainz Artists Report

Within MusicBrainz it is possible to link an artist to the equivalent Discogs artist, in fact there are already some 300,000 artists linked. However there are nearly a million artists within MusicBrainz leaving nearly 700,000 artists unlinked, the majority of these already existing in Discogs.

Linking both artists together allow information between the two databases to be shared, for example the Discogs artist may contain the real name of the artist and that might be missing from the equivalent MusicBrainz artist aliases. Alternatively MusicBrainz may have various translations of an artists names for different languages, and these variations may not be available in Discogs.

Albunack now contains a number of reports that attempt to find potential matches between the two together with a link for each match to make it easy to add a link from MusicBrainz artist to the Discogs artist, all listed here

The first report  MB artist matches Discogs artist and both have a release with same name and the artist names are unique contains over 40,000 potential links. Matches are only listed here if the following criteria are met:

• Simplified MusicBrainz artist is unique within MusicBrainz list of artists.
• Smplified Discogs artist name is unique within Discogs link of artists.
• Neither name is already matched
• Both the MB artist and the Discogs artist have released an album with the same name

Because of these conditions we are confident there are very few (if any at all) bad links.

The simplified artist names remove case, accents and some punctuation in order to allow matches between artist names that are not identical. Because we only include artists whose simplified name is unique within the databases it is unlikely that the MusicBrainz artist has linked to the wrong Discogs artist. And this is made very unlikely with the last condition that requires both artists to have a release with the same name.

Some of the links may already have already been created because the underlying database is not updated in real time, but it is regularly updated - usually every week.

Links are listed so that artists with the most releases are listed first, the basis being that these are likely to be of most interest.

But with 40,000 artists to link the job to complete this task could take some time, so if you have 10 minutes please consider double-checking and then creating some of these links within MusicBrainz.

New versions of Jaikoz and Jthink Music Server

New version of JThink Music Server 

Yesterday we released a new version of the JThink Music Server - this is what powers Jaikoz, SongKong and Albunack . This latest release fixes an issue with incorrect values for the Sort Artist field. It also add supports for the latest Discogs cover art, required because the way cover art has been provided by Discogs for releases added over the last couple of months has changed.

New version of Jaikoz Music Tagger 8.2.3

Today we release a new version of Jaikoz.

Firstly this includes modifications required to work with cover art added to Discogs in the last two months.

Then we have fixed two problems related to song titles and track total when matching multi-disc Discogs releases.

Then we have fixed a regression whereby the Only Update Year if Earlier option for the Year field was ignored so this field could be overwritten with a later date.

We recommend you update to this latest version of Jaikoz and then run Update Metadata from MusicBrainz and Update Metadata from Discogs to fix any data that may have been incorrectly added in earlier releases and to benefit from the very latest data added to MusicBrainz and Discogs.

Albunack, bringing Discogs and MusicBrainz together.

MusicBrainz is the defacto standard for Music, MusicBrainz Ids are used by many of the major players in online Music services such as Google the BBC and Spotify, and the MusicBrainz schema is a thing of beauty. But it has always been difficult getting the latest releases into MusicBrainz because there are no automated feeds from record companies and it mainly relies on the hard work of the many contributors.

Discogs is another online database, its not as well designed as MusicBrainz and its codebase is not open, but it has more artists and more releases and does make its database available monthly under a public domain license. Discogs has a vibrant marketplace, but to sell a record it has to be in the database, this is a good reason for users to contribute releases, and because buyers need to know exactly what they are purchasing sellers need to enter the details accurately.

For years I have wanted to something to make it easier for editors to get data into MusicBrainz from Discogs in some form or other but never seemed to have the time, but over the last month I have been working on a solution and now I have beta available as: http://albunack.net



The idea is you look up an artist and it shows you a combined MusicBrainz + Discogs discography, showing releasegroups/release and tracks on a single page.

Here is an example for the Pale Saints, a greatly under appreciated UK band from the early 90's


This makes it easier to see gaps in the MusicBrainz which could be filled by data from Discogs, and makes it easier to add that data:

• It shows any existing links between MusicBrainz and Discogs matches. 
• It also matches up Musicbrainz releases without a Discogs link to potential Discogs releases and lists these matches together with a Link button to seed a MusicBrainz Edit release. 
• It provides an Import button to seed a MusicBrainz Add Release from other Discogs releases not linked to Musicbrainz  

I have been testing it myself over the last few weeks and it is so much quicker and so much safer  then previous ways I have used of adding data. Ive also found it is very good at showing when there is incorrect data in either MusicBrainz or Discogs.

You can also use it to check automated tagging done by SongKong or Jaikoz since they use the same underlying database.

Currently it only shows releases where the artist is the only album artist credit (i.e we don't list collaborations, nor Various Artist releases) Of course, the user still has to make decisions about the data and check the data before submitting anything to MusicBrainz, and everything still goes through the edit system. You can use the bug tracker for raising any issues.