Metadata / Tagging

The tag editor is where you view and fix a track’s tags. You can edit them by hand, or pull metadata from online providers (MusicBrainz, Discogs and Deezer) and review it before saving. Soulsolid can also identify tracks by how they sound using AcoustID, either one track at a time or for your whole library.

What you can do#

• View and edit a track’s tags.
• Fetch metadata from MusicBrainz, Discogs or Deezer, or search them and pick the right match.
• Mark a track as instrumental.
• Fingerprint a track and look up its AcoustID.
• Run an AcoustID analysis over the whole library.

The tag editor#

Open the tag editor from the Edit Tags button on any track in the Library, from the import queue, or from a failed track in a job log.

The editor shows the tags as they are in the audio file right now, so what you see is what’s actually on disk. You can edit:

• Title and version (remix, live version, …)
• Artists and album artist
• Album, year and genre
• Track number and disc number
• ISRC, composer, BPM and replay gain
• Lyrics

Artists and albums are picked from the ones already in your library. The editor also shows the cover art embedded in the file and lets you play or download the track.

Click Save Changes to write your changes both to the audio file and to the library.

Instrumental tracks#

Check Instrumental for tracks that have no lyrics. This clears any lyrics and tells Soulsolid to skip the track when fetching lyrics, so it won’t keep showing up as “lyrics not found”.

Getting metadata from providers#

The provider buttons at the top of the editor (MusicBrainz, Discogs, Deezer) search that service using the track’s current artist, album, title and year. Only providers enabled in your configuration are shown.

The results appear in a list showing each match’s artist, album, year, genre and ISRC. Pick the right one and the form is filled in with its data. Information that belongs to the file itself (like its audio properties) is kept. If the match comes with an artist or album that isn’t in your library yet, it’s created for you.

Fields filled in by a provider are highlighted in that provider’s color, so you can see where each value came from. Nothing is saved until you click Save Changes, so you can review or adjust the values first.

AcoustID#

AcoustID identifies recordings by their sound rather than their tags. Soulsolid computes an audio fingerprint of the file (using Chromaprint) and looks it up in the AcoustID database. This is useful for files with wrong or missing tags, and it’s what the Merge section uses to find duplicate tracks.

From the tag editor, the AcoustID button fingerprints the current track and stores its AcoustID. You can also view the stored fingerprint.

AcoustID lookups need a free client key: create an application at acoustid.org/new-application and add it to your configuration (see below).

AcoustID analysis#

To identify the whole library at once, go to Analyze → Metadata and start an AcoustID Analysis. It runs in the background as a job and:

• fingerprints and looks up every track in the library,
• skips tracks that already have an AcoustID,
• reports how many tracks were processed, and how many AcoustIDs and fingerprints were added.

You can cancel it at any time from the Jobs section. Afterwards, use the AcoustID filter in the Library to find tracks that still couldn’t be identified.

Configuration#

metadata:
  providers:
    acoustid:
      enabled: true
      # secret: !env_var ACOUSTID_CLIENT_KEY   # your acoustid.org application key
    deezer:
      enabled: true
    discogs:
      enabled: true
      # secret: !env_var DISCOGS_API_KEY       # https://www.discogs.com/settings/developers
    musicbrainz:
      enabled: true

A disabled provider doesn’t show up in the tag editor. See Configuration for keeping keys out of your config file.

Related#

• Lyrics: fetching lyrics from the tag editor or for the whole library.
• Importing: fix missing tags on queued tracks here.
• Merge: find duplicates once your tracks have AcoustIDs.
• Reorganize: move files to match their corrected tags.