MusicBrainz Picard icon
MusicBrainz Picard icon

MusicBrainz Picard

 402 likes

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 -...

Main

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Python
  • PortableApps.com
4.2 / 5 Avg rating (23)
402 likes
22comments
0 news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight

Features

  1.  Automatic Tagging
  2.  Automatic album art download
  3.  Acoustic fingerprinting
  4.  Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
  5.  Mp3 Tag Editor
  6.  Fix missing information
  7.  AcoustID audio fingerprints
  8.  Autotagging
  9.  Multiple languages
  10.  Musicbrainz support
  11.  Ad-free
  12.  Portable
  13.  Batch Rename Files
  14.  MP3 / ID3 Renaming
  15.  File Tagging
  16.  Batch Editing
  17.  No registration required
  18.  Artwork
  19.  Support for Unicode

MusicBrainz Picard News & Activities

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Recent activities

  • jozzyinc thinks Acoustic fingerprinting is a important feature of MusicBrainz Picard
    15 days ago
  • deenahai, noctis-x, thejfex and PinkPlastic liked MusicBrainz Picard
    19 days ago
  • App icon
    gabriel-fresan added MusicBrainz Picard as alternative to Ear Tag
    3 months ago
  • -LTR- liked MusicBrainz Picard
    4 months ago
  • shazmataz reviewed MusicBrainz Picard  
    4 months ago

    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:

    • The UI is not easy and takes a while to get used to
    • Download of cover art regularly fails

    Otherwise the app and the online database is absolutely fantastic.

  • shazmataz liked MusicBrainz Picard
    4 months ago
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MusicBrainz Picard information

AlternativeTo Categories

Audio & MusicFile Management

GitHub repository

  •  3,913 Stars
  •  396 Forks
  •  9 Open Issues
  •   Updated Feb 9, 2025 
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Our users have written 22 comments and reviews about MusicBrainz Picard, and it has gotten 402 likes

MusicBrainz Picard was added to AlternativeTo by Aerialsky on May 25, 2009 and this page was last updated May 1, 2022. MusicBrainz Picard is sometimes referred to as Picard.

Comments and Reviews

   
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Comment summary: MusicBrainz Picard is praised for its powerful tagging capabilities, with many finding it essential for organizing music libraries. Users appreciate its accuracy, particularly in identifying song details via its digital signature comparison. However, challenges include its complex interface and occasional issues with album cover searches and incorrect tag assignments. Despite these quirks, Picard is lauded as a reliable cross-platform solution for music metadata management.
Josh Kopecek
  
Top positive commentOct 5, 2011

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

  • some user interaction, tool-tips suggesting that you can use complex search terms in the search window
  • possibly an automated system (I seem to click the same buttons in the same order every time)
  • more incentive to sign up to the MusicBrainz service
  • a reason why it never seems to find the artwork?

All in all, an indispensable piece of software that I use very regularly. Highly recommended.

5
antonanton
  
Top negative commentSep 29, 2022

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.

0
Shaz Shah
  
Positive commentOct 16, 2024

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:

  • The UI is not easy and takes a while to get used to
  • Download of cover art regularly fails

Otherwise the app and the online database is absolutely fantastic.

0
hellih
  
ReviewJun 19, 2023

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.

0
Nicolas
  
Positive commentJul 21, 2022

Powerful tool : does the job

-1
steve johnson
  
ReviewFeb 7, 2022

thanks for sharing this information

0
triumphalism
  
Positive commentNov 13, 2019

Genius app! Saved a lot of time!

-2
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7 of 22 comments

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.