Jaikoz 10 Released:Improved Matching

We are pleased to announce the first release of Jaikoz 10, in this major release we have concentrated on improving probably the most important feature of Jaikoz - matching your music collection to MusicBrainz.

There are three key new features:

Song Only Matching

Song Only Matching  ensures that Jaikoz can at least partially identify almost all your songs  even if it cannot match a group of songs to an album. 

We explain Song Only Matching in detail here
 

Albunack Disc Id Matching 

AlbunackDiscIds is an alternative to Acoustid matching that can be faster and lead to more matches for both MusicBrainz and Discogs albums.

We explain AlbunackDiscIds in more detail here

 

Match Directly to MusicBrainz

First of all Jaikoz looks in our dedicated Albunack server instead of directly contacting MusicBrainz. But if no match can be found we now do an additional search directly against the MusicBrainz database.

We explain Direct MusicBrainz matching in more detail here

Console Improvements

Also note the Jaikoz console now gives more information on how your songs were matched

Jaikoz, Match Directly to MusicBrainz Release

Jaikoz, Match Directly to MusicBrainz Release

Jaikoz does not do most of it searches directly from Musicbrainz or Discogs, instead it uses Albunack. Albunack is a single database containing both MusicBrainz and Discogs datasets. It is specially designed for tagging your music and hence allow matching much quicker and much more reliably than if Jaikoz had to use MusicBrainz and Discogs directly.

Albunack is updated regularly from MusicBrainz and Discogs with the latest data, but there can be a delay of up to one month. So if you are tagging the latest releases or have added a release yourself to either of these databases it will not be in Albunack immediately.

With Jaikoz 10  we have added an extra search to MusicBrainz itself when we are unable to find a match in Albunack. This ensures you always have access to latest releases as soon as they are added to MusicBrainz.

Jaikoz Albunack Disc Id Matching

Albunack Disc Id Matching 

When you have a complete album stored in one folder with no missing or additional tracks, and the track order can be safely determined from either existing Track No metadata or the filename we can generate an AlbunackDiscId for your album. We can then look for a MusicBrainz match in the Albunack database, if we find matches we double check by looking at any existing metadata and/or generating AcoustIds for the first track.

This has three advantages over fingerprinting all songs and then finding matches based on fingerprints/acoustIds:

1. It is faster

Generating Acoustid fingerprints is a cpu intensive task, even on a fast machine it can take about a second per track. This might not seem much but it can become a bottleneck, especially on a machine with slow cpus, or only one cpu.

2. It finds more matches

Sometimes your album may be in MusicBrainz but there are no acoustic fingerprints linking to tracks on the MusicBrainz release. If you have no existing metadata then we cannot find a match based on fingerprints/metadata but we may be able to find a match based on AlbunackDiscIds !

3. It can match Discogs releases

The AlbunackDiscId is not just for MusicBrainz releases, it can also be used to match Discogs releases. This is very helpful, since we cannot directly use AcoustIds to match to Discogs.

Do I need AcoustIds for All My Songs ?

If you get an Albunack match then an acoustId fingerprint only needs to be created for one track. However there are occasions when you may want to get acoustIds for each tracks regardless.

AcoustIds are one way of finding Duplicate files so if you are using one of these options you may want to add AcoustIds for all songs.

Also the Filters menu lets you filter by variations of AcoustIds.

You can ensure AcoustIds have been added for every song before running Delete Duplicates by using the Retrieve AcoustIds Task 

Jaikoz Song Only Matching

Previous Method

Jaikoz always attempts to group song that belong to one album to one album. If it cannot achieve this the the songs remain unchanged, you can override this by disabling the Only Allow match if all songs in grouping match to one album
option.

But then this can cause a grouping of songs that do actually represent one album to be split up if the album simply does not exist in MusicBrainz yet.

Song Only Matching

Song Only Matching works differently. If Jaikoz fails in its attempt to match a group of songs to an album it then just attempts to match the songs via AcoustId. Having found a match it add song details such as Title, Artist and MB Recording Id but not album details such as Track No and MB Release Id .

We can add some album information

But its a bit cleverer then that. Firstly when an AcoustId is linked to some MusicBrainz Recordings, we look at the MB Releases that these recordings are linked to. And if the groups of songs have recordings that have links to the same MB Release then we also add some basic release information such as Album Name, Catalogue No and Cover Art using the most popular releases for the songs. So for each song we use the most popular release that the song is linked to.

And we know that Cover Artist a key piece of metadata customers like to have. And it is much easier to remove an incorrect piece of artwork then manually search and add artwork yourself.

We do not add MusicBrainz Release Ids

Because we are not sure if this is the correct album we do not add any MusicBrainz Ids that affect MusicBrainz released based tasks, so we don't add MusicBrainz ReleaseGroup Id, MusicBrainz Release Id or MusicBrainz Track Id
 

We do not replace existing album data

But we only add this additional information if these fields are currently blank for your songs, so we don't overwrite your existing data as we cannot be sure its 100% correct. 

We do not use Compilation album data

And we only add album data for albums that are not compilations. The reasoning behind this is that we cannot be sure we have the correct album because we cannot match all songs to the album, but if it is an original album there is a good chance it is the correct one, or a variation of the correct one. But if it a compilation then because popular songs can find their way onto many compilations there is a good chance that this is actually the wrong one.

We can use User Submitted Metadata 

There are many tracks in AcoustId database that we cannot find in MusicBrainz, there are currently 45 million unique recordings in Acoustid compared to 20 million in MusicBrainz.

 

In these cases we can at least make use of the basic user submitted metadata provided by Acoustid. This allows us to add artist, song title and sometimes album for these songs. For album we try use metadata from original albums that rather than compilations.

All these features of Song Only Matching should ensure that Jaikoz can at least partially identify almost all your songs without requiring modification to the default settings.

 

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.

 

 

Tagging Classical Music:Part I - The Track Artist

Go to Part 2:A Sensible Track Artist

In Pop/Rock music there is usually a single performer or band who is credited for the track. They are often the composer of the song as well but when they are not the details of the writer are not usually so important, the artist credits on the release itself make it clear who should be credited for each track.

For example 19 the first album by Adele contains mainly songs written by Adele, but track 9 Make You Feel My Love is a cover of a Bob Dylan song, and the main composer of track 3 Chasing Pavements is Ed White. However the Track Artist for all songs is Adele.

But in Classical music, various performers, an orchestra, a conductor and a composer are all usually credited, this means there is potentially a long list of people credited for each track, and we don’t have an accepted order they should be added in.

MusicBrainz approach is to store the Composer in the Track Artist field as can be seen in the release of Piano Concertos whereby all songs are credited to Mozart.

However the the actual performers of each track such as this one are stored in the Recording Artist field, and as relationships between the recording and various people involved.

Until now Taggers usually take the track artist field from the databases such as MusicBrainz  and use it for the Artist field, the result of this was that the Composer was added to both the Composer and Artist fields, and the performers were only stored in specialist fields like Performer and Conductor, if at all. But this rather simplistic approach is not really satisfactory for Classical music

In the Part 2 we explain how SongKong uses a more sensible value for Track Artist in Classical music.

Go to Part 2:A Sensible Track Artist

What would you like to see for Classical Track Artists

For Pop/Rock the track artist is clear, generally they are the artist credited for the track on the album cover, they are the performer of song and often the writer as well. If tracks are not credited seperately then they will be the artist credited for the release as a whole, and it is assumed all tracks are performed by the same artist. Usually the artist credited will be just one person or band, and rarely more than three people.

But for Classical it gets more complicated...

 Keeping things simple at release level a Classical release will give usually give credit in this order to

• Composer
• Soloist
• Orchestra
• Conductor

Of course they may be no soloists and if the release contains multiple works there many be multiple composers or in the case of compilations even multiple orchestras and conductors

At track level clarification can be provided on which tracks a soloist actually performed. When there are multiple works by multiple composers the track artist would only list the composer for that particular track and so on.

So there are more types of people credits on a Classical release, and more people in total.

What should we store as the Release Artist in SongKong and Jaikoz

We use what MusicBrainz provides, which usually corresponds to credits on the cover, and would usually comprise Composer, Soloist (if prominent), Orchestra and Conductor. By having the composer first this has the added advantage that if the AlbumArtist field is used for naming files then all releases by a particular composer would be alphabetically grouped near each other.

But what should we store as the Track Artist in SongKong and Jaikoz

In the past track artist would probably just store the composer field, and this is what MusicBrainz currently provides by default and is what SongKong and Jaikoz currently use.

But in all metadata formats there is a standard Composer field, and this is now well supported by most media players, so do we need to store it again here. There is also a standard Conductor field but this less well supported. What there is not is good support for Soloists and Orchestras

But MusicBrainz does in most cases also store the conductor, orchestra, soloists and also performers

When there is an orchestra performers would probably not be considered of enough signifcance to be part of the track artist, but when it is a classical piece performed without an orchestra then they could be.

I am working to add support to store Soloists, Performers  and Orchestras in their own fields as well to allow users to make use of the data as they wish but we still need a sensible value in the Track Artist field and I would love to hear what you think about this

Some Options

Use Composer as Track Artist
Use Orchestra as Track Artist
Use Soloist/Performer/Orchestra as Track Artist
Use Soloist, Orchestra, Conductor as Track Artist
Use Composer, Soloist, Orchestra, Conductor as Track Artist

But I would rather not add options that are not going to be used so which would be your choice ?

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.