General Options

Server address

The domain name for the MusicBrainz database server used by Picard to get details of your music. Default value: musicbrainz.org (for the main MusicBrainz server).

In addition to the standard MusicBrainz servers provided in the drop down list, you can manually enter an alternate address, such as “localhost” if you are running a local copy of the server. When an alternate server host name is entered, a warning will be displayed and you will be asked to confirm that you want to submit all data to this alternate server.

Port

The port number for the server. Default value: 443 (for the main MusicBrainz server).

Username

Your MusicBrainz website username, used to submit acoustic fingerprints, retrieve and save items to your collections, and retrieve personal folksonomy tags.

Password

Your MusicBrainz website password.

Automatically scan all new files

Check this box if you want Picard to scan each music file you add and look for an AcoustID fingerprint. This takes time, but may be helpful for you and MusicBrainz. Leave it unchecked if you don’t want Picard to do this scan automatically. In any case, you can direct Picard to scan a particular music file at any time using “Tools ‣ Scan”. See also Scan Files and Understanding Acoustic Fingerprinting and AcoustIDs.

Automatically cluster all new files

Check this box if you want Picard to automatically group all loaded files into album clusters. Leave it unchecked if you don’t want Picard to do this automatically. In any case, you can direct Picard to cluster files any time using “Tools ‣ Cluster”. See also Lookup Files.

Note

You can either enable “Automatically scan all new files” or “Automatically cluster all new files”, but not both.

Ignore MBIDs when loading new files

If you enable this option Picard will not use MusicBrainz identifiers (MBIDs) stored in the files to automatically load the corresponding MusicBrainz release and match the loaded file to the correct track. Leaving this option disabled is useful when re-processing files that have been previously tagged with incorrect information.