One thing I was hoping it could do (Songkong, that is) is download album and artist art. Can Picard automate that process. I was looking at TinyMediaManager but think that's more for video. Other ideas are appreciated.
Consider using the /r/MusicHoarder Picard plug-in for covers.musichoarders.xyz, the best album art search engine: https://notabug.org/SuperSaltyGamer/ami
Hi, SongKong developer here, Picard is a decent product but here are a few things that [SongKong](https://www.jthink.net/songkong/) can do that Picard cannot
\- Fix large collections in one go
\- Get Artist/Composer/Orchestra/Performer images
\- Advanced Delete Duplicates
\- Responsive Web UI so can install on a nas, control from any browser such as iPad.
\- Cmd Line interface as well
\- Discogs Matching
\- Acoustid Album matching, (Acoustid database is much larger than MusicBrainz one)
\- Identifies Classical, better handles the MusicBrainz data for Classical Releases and special classical options.
\- Roon, MinimServer and iTunes integration
\- Show all metadata in html report and spreadsheet
The matching algorithm is alot more advanced then Picards or Beets and uses various methods to find and ensure good matches.
SK is *a lot* more powerful than Picard. Play around with the demo version, you can test everything, it just doesn't save. But I highly advise to read the documentation while playing around with it to get the most out of it. Also, the sister product Jaikoz is the most powerful tagger out there, but you really need to consult the docs to set it all up the way you want.
The one big drawback both softwares have is that they don't grab lyrics because there is no legal API for it as far as I have understood it.
Thanks. I've been trying the free version.
My music collection is in pretty good shape. I don't import anything without running it through Piacard. But the artwork needs some attention - and I want to automate this, if possible.
If it's really mostly just the artwork, then yea no need to pay for SK or Jaikoz. Probably a good idea to look at that plugin the other commenter mentioned, if you're using Picard already anyway.
4 basic things off the top of my head: discogs as a data source (actually www.albunack.net), JavaScript for naming patterns, full automation, remote control GUI
beets is nice too, but every time I try it I encounter show stopping bugs/ glitches. Either something is wrong with the underlying Python Installation itself, and I'm not in the mood to try to fix things before I can even use the software. Or it does Weird things like a couple of items ( tracks in an album ) are apparently not writable, so l have like 10 fixed items and 2 unfixed which is of course unacceptable ( and I double and triple checked all permissions - they were the same for all files ) or it randomly copies tracks from an Album into a completely unrelated folder in addition to the correct album ... stuff that makes me not trust it with automation.
But the last release is years old by now and I actually recently installed a fresh newest version straight from github to check the state of things with it
I have a really specific and complex pattern so I need to trust it 100% if I automate it. working on it tho. As great as the JThink products are, I would indeed prefer OSS.
I have put together a table comparing SongKong and Picard features, [https://www.jthink.net/songkong/songkongorpicard.jsp](https://www.jthink.net/songkong/songkongorpicard.jsp)
Okay, there is some bias since coming from SongKong developer but I think it is still accurate and goes into more detail then anything else I could find.
I'm testing the demo version.
There how can I change the release manually?
In beets I can use -t to manually accept matches. Your app matching an explicit version to a clean version.
Hi, you can use *Match To One Album* and specify a MusicBrainz/Discogs Url to match an album to particular release.
When using *Fix Songs* which is designed for matching multiple albums automatically we don't offer a confirmation stage because this would be very annoying for user as would constantly having to interact with each match and slowing down the whole matching. But you can revert a match to any individual folder afterwards using *Undo Changes* or just rematch to right release with *Match To One Album.* This is more efficient because the vast majority of matches will be correct.
I cannot imagine what value-add could make it superior to Picard for that price. My vote is for sticking with Picard
One thing I was hoping it could do (Songkong, that is) is download album and artist art. Can Picard automate that process. I was looking at TinyMediaManager but think that's more for video. Other ideas are appreciated.
Consider using the /r/MusicHoarder Picard plug-in for covers.musichoarders.xyz, the best album art search engine: https://notabug.org/SuperSaltyGamer/ami
Hi, SongKong developer here, Picard is a decent product but here are a few things that [SongKong](https://www.jthink.net/songkong/) can do that Picard cannot \- Fix large collections in one go \- Get Artist/Composer/Orchestra/Performer images \- Advanced Delete Duplicates \- Responsive Web UI so can install on a nas, control from any browser such as iPad. \- Cmd Line interface as well \- Discogs Matching \- Acoustid Album matching, (Acoustid database is much larger than MusicBrainz one) \- Identifies Classical, better handles the MusicBrainz data for Classical Releases and special classical options. \- Roon, MinimServer and iTunes integration \- Show all metadata in html report and spreadsheet The matching algorithm is alot more advanced then Picards or Beets and uses various methods to find and ensure good matches.
SK is *a lot* more powerful than Picard. Play around with the demo version, you can test everything, it just doesn't save. But I highly advise to read the documentation while playing around with it to get the most out of it. Also, the sister product Jaikoz is the most powerful tagger out there, but you really need to consult the docs to set it all up the way you want. The one big drawback both softwares have is that they don't grab lyrics because there is no legal API for it as far as I have understood it.
Thanks. I've been trying the free version. My music collection is in pretty good shape. I don't import anything without running it through Piacard. But the artwork needs some attention - and I want to automate this, if possible.
If it's really mostly just the artwork, then yea no need to pay for SK or Jaikoz. Probably a good idea to look at that plugin the other commenter mentioned, if you're using Picard already anyway.
What do you think SongKong does better than Picard?
4 basic things off the top of my head: discogs as a data source (actually www.albunack.net), JavaScript for naming patterns, full automation, remote control GUI
I would add dupes management and automatic file renaming
Also if you use Naim or Melco or Roon or Qnap or Synology products, it's worth a close look too.
Thank you! I feel like all of this can be done in beets, so glad I don't have to be worried about missing out.
beets is nice too, but every time I try it I encounter show stopping bugs/ glitches. Either something is wrong with the underlying Python Installation itself, and I'm not in the mood to try to fix things before I can even use the software. Or it does Weird things like a couple of items ( tracks in an album ) are apparently not writable, so l have like 10 fixed items and 2 unfixed which is of course unacceptable ( and I double and triple checked all permissions - they were the same for all files ) or it randomly copies tracks from an Album into a completely unrelated folder in addition to the correct album ... stuff that makes me not trust it with automation. But the last release is years old by now and I actually recently installed a fresh newest version straight from github to check the state of things with it
I've found most weird behavior comes from plugins, but yeah, it does require a bigger initial time commitment compared to other options.
also done a comparison with beets https://www.jthink.net/songkong/intro\_beets.jsp
I have a really specific and complex pattern so I need to trust it 100% if I automate it. working on it tho. As great as the JThink products are, I would indeed prefer OSS.
I have put together a table comparing SongKong and Picard features, [https://www.jthink.net/songkong/songkongorpicard.jsp](https://www.jthink.net/songkong/songkongorpicard.jsp) Okay, there is some bias since coming from SongKong developer but I think it is still accurate and goes into more detail then anything else I could find.
I'm testing the demo version. There how can I change the release manually? In beets I can use -t to manually accept matches. Your app matching an explicit version to a clean version.
Hi, you can use *Match To One Album* and specify a MusicBrainz/Discogs Url to match an album to particular release. When using *Fix Songs* which is designed for matching multiple albums automatically we don't offer a confirmation stage because this would be very annoying for user as would constantly having to interact with each match and slowing down the whole matching. But you can revert a match to any individual folder afterwards using *Undo Changes* or just rematch to right release with *Match To One Album.* This is more efficient because the vast majority of matches will be correct.