Feeling dumb about autotagging

[cristobal03]

(first post, if a mod could please fix the links)

I'm trying to fix my library tags from some old personal backup CD rips, and the auto-tag feature is not doing what I expect.

The album is a Tchaikovsky compilation from the 90s, details at (musicbrainz) /release/2ff83ddd-5a59-4845-91ad-c7959b6fdb37 and also (discogs; less accurate) /release/5852114-Tchaikovsky-Tchaikovsky.

When I try to auto-tag in MM5, only 3 of the 8 tracks are recognized as from this album. The other 5 tracks, I can't get to pull from this album. I want to just pick all 8 and say, "Hey, here's the musicbrainz uuid, just go do that and stop trying to detect stuff from an audio fingerprint."

Is there a way to do that? Otherwise it looks like I need to manually update all the tags, which is annoying. Thanks for any advice!

[Lowlander]

Which Build (Help > About) of MediaMonkey?

[cristobal03]

5.0.4.2693 (just downloaded it today after reading some posts about the advantages of 5 over 4).

[Lowlander]

Can you please see if this works correctly on the latest MediaMonkey 2024 beta?

[Barry4679]

When I try to auto-tag in MM5, only 3 of the 8 tracks are recognized as from this album. The other 5 tracks, I can't get to pull from this album.

I think that the first thing to check is whether MM sees that all 8 tracks do belonging to the album.

• eg. Put MM5 into "Grid (by album)" View mode
• navigate to the album
• then click on the album artist, or the album name

Are all 8 tracks listed?

If not, you need to re-tag some of the tracks.
MM defines an album as being all tracks which have identical album and albumartist tags.

[cristobal03]

Can you please see if this works correctly on the latest MediaMonkey 2024 beta?

Same behavior with the latest beta you linked. One more track was correctly detected, so now it's 4 correct, 4 incorrect. On the incorrect ones, auto-tag generally identifies the wrong album, and all the corresponding details are incorrect. When I click Album to try to select the correct value, it isn't listed from musicbrainz. But I can select the (old value), which I had manually entered.

It would be great to be able to provide the musicbrainz resource identifier rather than some complicated detection approach. I already know exactly what the reference database URL is.

When I try to auto-tag in MM5, only 3 of the 8 tracks are recognized as from this album. The other 5 tracks, I can't get to pull from this album.

I think that the first thing to check is whether MM sees that all 8 tracks do belonging to the album.

• eg. Put MM5 into "Grid (by album)" View mode
• navigate to the album
• then click on the album artist, or the album name

Are all 8 tracks listed?

If not, you need to re-tag some of the tracks.
MM defines an album as being all tracks which have identical album and albumartist tags.

Thanks for the reply, I think you misunderstood. I know I could manually tag the tracks. My question is why the auto-tag feature is not detecting the correct album entry from musicbrainz, and since I know the album entry, if there's a way to simply auto-coerce all the tags to that musicbrainz entry.

Unless you mean I have to first associate all the tracks with a single album name in order for auto-tagging to work right?

[edit]
Actually, I did what you suggested, and MM 2024 does not list the tracks under the same album, even though all the tracks have identical "Album" tag text. That seems wrong, like the track is pointing to something else besides the Album tag to create that view?

[edit 2]
I'm so sorry to scroll. I gave all the tracks the same album title AND album artist, and the grid view now shows all 8 tracks as belonging to the album. But I had to do it manually.

[Lowlander]

Can you please upload the full Album to a Cloud Service (like OneDrive) and include the link to the shared folder in a Support Ticket: https://www.mediamonkey.com/support

This will help us analyze why this fails for this Album.

[Barry4679]

Thanks for the reply, I think you misunderstood. I know I could manually tag the tracks. My question is why the auto-tag feature is not detecting the correct album entry from musicbrainz, and since I know the album entry, if there's a way to simply auto-coerce all the tags to that musicbrainz entry.

Unless you mean I have to first associate all the tracks with a single album name in order for auto-tagging to work right?

I was trying to extrapolate from what you had written.
I thought that you may have been clicking on the album thumb, and then used the autotag item from the context menu.
But I was wrong

Actually, I did what you suggested, and MM 2024 does not list the tracks under the same album, even though all the tracks have identical "Album" tag text. That seems wrong, like the track is pointing to something else besides the Album tag to create that view?

[edit 2]
I'm so sorry to scroll. I gave all the tracks the same album title AND album artist, and the grid view now shows all 8 tracks as belonging to the album. But I had to do it manually.

MM recognises an album as being all tracks which have identical album AND AlbumArtist tags.
I think that some of your tracks had a differing albumartist tag, or no albumartist tag, when you first ripped the album.

I don't know how autotag works under the covers, but I presume starts at the album level initially for efficiency reasons.
If these tracks were not part of the album they could have been excluded from whatever was discovered from the Internet lookup at the album level.

And, yes, when album tracks are excluded from the album, due to outsider tags, you have to correct the tags manually, so that they can be assimilated into the album.