MusicBrainz Picard
Picard is the next generation MusicBrainz tagging application. This new tagging concept is album oriented, as opposed to track/file oriented like the ClassicTagger was. Picard is written in Python, which is a cross-platform language, and makes use of cross-platform libraries -...
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Python
- PortableApps.com
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
Features
- Automatic Tagging
- Automatic album art download
- Acoustic fingerprinting
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- Mp3 Tag Editor
- Fix missing information
- AcoustID audio fingerprints
- Multiple languages
- Autotagging
- Ad-free
- Musicbrainz support
- Portable
- Batch Editing
- Structured data
- MP3 / ID3 Renaming
- File Tagging
- No registration required
- Batch Rename Files
- Artwork
- Support for Unicode
Tags
- audio-tagging
MusicBrainz Picard News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
- xpey liked MusicBrainz Picard
POX added MusicBrainz Picard as alternative to GnuDB- holakoyad liked MusicBrainz Picard
Jqri added MusicBrainz Picard as alternative to SimpleTag
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What is MusicBrainz Picard?
Picard is the next generation MusicBrainz tagging application. This new tagging concept is album oriented, as opposed to track/file oriented like the ClassicTagger was. Picard is written in Python, which is a cross-platform language, and makes use of cross-platform libraries - this allows the same code to run both on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
MusicBrainz Picard information
Developed by
Lukas Lalinsky and Robert KayeLicensing
Open Source (GPL-2.0) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.1Alternatives
67 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Audio & Music, File ManagementGitHub repository
- 4,423 Stars
- 430 Forks
- 14 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
This is without a doubt the best cross-platform tagging software available. It's incredibly powerful and versatile.
However (massive caveat), it's a pain to get used to using it, and any noob is not going to figure it out.
Tiny things like being able to link the power of the automatic search in the app with the manual power search on the MusicBrainz website. If you haven't found the release that you wanted through the Picard app, you can search for it on the MusicBrainz website. Once you've found the correct one, just click the 'tagger' icon in the top right hand corner of the window and it'll automatically insert it back into your Picard app, ready for you to drag and drop your tunes onto. This is a massive time saver.
The 'Scan' function is completely amazing, and although not 100% accurate, it's an incredible time saver. I don't know why they don't promote this more.
It could really do with
All in all, an indispensable piece of software that I use very regularly. Highly recommended.
Non-intuitive interface with zero explanations (!!!!!). Moreover, Picard severely failed with album covers search in spite of the plugins, I have installed from official site. I am using freeware TACHYCARDIA (has step-by-step interface, especially for missing cover art search) and freeware MP3TAG currently - both progs have human, clear interfaces.
An absolute gem of an application to organise and tag your music. A bonus for me is that it's cross-platform, so I can switch between my Windows and macOS devices to keep organising my music collection to stream on Plex Media Server.
I do face two challenges:
Otherwise the app and the online database is absolutely fantastic.
It does quite a good job, but also is does consistently a lot of errors with the automated analysing.
To explain this: I have albums, which I bought on an online platform. Those files were downloaded to my desktop PC and then copied to a SD-Card to have it also on my phone.
If I shove the SD-Card into my flash card reader and scan it, MusicBrainz detects songnames, artists, and albums correctly, but on a lot of files it detects them as from different releases as the ones on my PC, although the files are literally the same.
Even if the play time of titles don't match, the program does consistently tag them as from the wrong release. For example when I bought the GB release of a title which has 3:56 minutes play time, the US release of the same song has 3:57. The program does tag artist, album, and title right, but somehow assumes that it is from the US release, although it is a second shorter.
Idk how this happens, maybe the music player app on the phone, or on PC does something to the file? Or is it the MusicBrainz database?
This happens to half of my files, and I have to manually sort them into the right album.
Sometimes it splits the albums on my PC into 2 or more different album releases, although they are literally downloaded as one folder from one source.
Nevertheless, you have to be careful when auto-tagging your files, and still put a lot of handwork into it, when tidying and structurizing your music library with this software. It also isn't very intuitive to use, so I recommend reading into the documentation to find out how to use this software properly.
Overall it is quite useful, althought it has some quirks, and doesn't quite ease the work as much as it promises.
Powerful tool : does the job
thanks for sharing this information
Genius app! Saved a lot of time!