Once a folder is selected it is displayed in the Select Folder field and then you can use any task to process this folder, (you can select multiple folders using the Open Folder menu item). SongKong also works with individual music files and .M3U and .M3u8 playlists, just drag and drop them onto SongKong. For example music files can be dragged directly from iTunes, Finder on OSX and Windows Explorer on Windows.

No files are actually modified when this option is enabled. This allows you to test SongKong without making modifications, preview is always enabled in SongKong with a Trial License.

When SongKong attermpts processes any song with Fix Songs it always adds a SONGKONG_ID field. This means on subsequent attempts we can recognize files that we have seen before. With this option we can skip over the songs that we have processed before but could not match instead of another attempt to match them. This speeds up the processig time by not wasting time trying to rematch songs that didnt match first time and probably will not be matched second time round, such as Audiobooks since our matching libraries are music focused.

With the default Update Metadata Only option SongKong will only try to match songs that have not already been matched to MusicBrainz previously, but it will update existing matches with the latest data or make adjustments based on customer preferences. For example if Update Artwork was disabled when originally matched and it is now enabled SongKong will check for artwork without modifying the releases that the songs have already been matched to.

If the option is Rematch then SongKong disregards any matching previously done by SongKong or any other MusicBrainz enabled tagger such as Jaikoz and rematches from scratch.

If the option is Ignore then SongKong ignores any songs already matched to MusicBrainz albums and does not process them any further. Note that songs matched to a MusicBrainz song only or a Discogs album are not ignored.

SongKong can find artwork from a number of sources and there are additional options available in the Artwork tab that let you refine how artwork is matched. But artwork quality can be a subjective notion, SongKong only replaces existing artwork with higher resolution artwork, but higher resolution is not always higher quality. Or you may already have artwork provided in a non-standard location such as iTunes artwork stored in your iTunes database and do not require it to be stored directly in your songs. For these reasons you might prefer SongKong to leave your artwork as it is, if so disable this option.

SongKong uses Genres from Discogs. If enabled Discogs adds the first genre for any album matched to Discogs to each song in the album, but only if the song does not already have a genre. But genres is a subjective notion, for these reasons you might prefer SongKong to leave your genres alone, if so disable this option.

SongKong uses data derived from acoustic analysis of the actual song from AcousticBrainz. Enabling this option enables the options set on the Mood tab, this option is only available if you have a SongKong Pro license.

SongKong Pro can use acoustic analysis to determine additional features of your songs. With other solutions the software has to listen to each song to calculate the acoustic analysis, this is time consuming and CPU intensive. But SongKong Pro does not have to do this, the songs for nearly three million songs have already been analysed and results of the acoustic analysis is already stored with the song in the Albunack Music Server, so there is no additional time required to add fields calculated via acoustic analysis.

This option is enabled by default to protect your songs from being split into multiple folders due to sub-optimal matching. If your songs are already organized one folder per album then songs in the folder will only be matched to a release if all songs in that folder can be matched to the same release. Usually SongKong is clever enough to recognise when you have a multi disc release and have created separate folders per disc as well, in this case it will only allow a match if songs in each sub-folder are matched to a disc of the same release.

Usually this option should be enabled because if even if you some have folders containing a random assortment of files SongKong can still use Acoustid matching to identify these songs adding the correct artist and song title, but without matching the album metadata and without renaming these files. These songs are listed in the Match to MusicBrainz song only section of the report. This is useful because it allows identification of those songs that are completely unidentified and matching the basic song information may be enough to allow the songs to be identified to a Discogs album in the next stage.

If you disable this option then if SongKong fails to match the folder to a MusicBrainz album it will then try and group the songs in the folder into smaller groupings based on their existing metadata, if this fails and matching to Discogs fails as well it then does individual song by song matching and will match each song to the best album it can find with the limited information available.

If enabled together with Only allow match if all songs in grouping match to one album then all the songs in the folder must match to same album and all songs on the album must be matched, so if there are 10 songs in folder it can only match a 10 song album. If your music collection is already well organized and you have complete albums this ensures that only very high quality matches will be made to MusicBrainz and Discogs but it does also mean if you have any partial albums they will not be matched to a MusicBrainz or Discogs album, although Match to MusicBrainz song only is still enabled to help identify songs.

If you have only this option enabled it means that any album that is matched must be completely matched but this doesn't have to be on a folder by folder basis, so for example if you have a folder containing 10 songs that failed to match any album but existing metadata in the songs creates two groupings of 5 each, then one of those grouping could be matched to a 5 track release that would be okay.

If this option is enabled individual song by song matching to the best album does not take place.

If you use iTunes (or Apples Music App) as your primary media player, or just use it for copying songs to your iPod you may want SongKong to update your iTunes library with any changes you have made. Enabling this option informs iTunes of the following changes

So you can see the changes made by SongKong a date stamped playlist is created within a SongKong playlist folder listing all the added or modified songs

However, in order to update iTunes SongKong has to create a model of what is currently in the iTunes, if your iTunes library is large this can take a long time. Also the iTunes api is rather slow so unless you are renaming songs in SongKong it is usually better to not enable this option, then simply go into iTunes afterwards, select all songs and then Get Info and then iTunes will reread the metadata from the actual music files instead of its internal database and then update its library with the new information added form SongKong.

Warning Before enabling this option it is also worth reviewing the following two preferences within iTunes Advanced options

SongKong may create acoustic fingerprints to help identify songs but if your music collection is already well organized it doesn't necessarily need to for all songs, this is good news because Acoustic fingerprints can take time to create on slow systems. If you enable this option it will force SongKong to create fingerprints even when they are not required for song identification, Acoustic fingerprints only even have to be created once for any particular file as long as you are not running in preview mode. One reason yo may wish to enable this option would be if you use audio fingerprints as a way to detect duplicates files with the Delete Duplicates task.

SongKong's main source for song matching is MusicBrainz so during normal operation you would never want to disable this option. However there are some special situations where by you may wish to disable it such as you would like to only match your songs only against Discogs and not MusicBrainz

When a match is made to a MusicBrainz album the MusicBrainz album may itself contain a link to the equivalent release on Discogs. If this option is enabled we make use of the additional information the Discogs album may have that the MusicBrainz album does not and add it to your songs metadata.

SongKong can also try and match songs to a Discogs album even if no match to a MusicBrainz album was found if this option is enabled.

When matching individual songs instead of complete releases SongKong uses both metadata derived from the filename and the acoustid to try and identify songs. Sometimes a single acoustid can match multiple songs so this additional metadata helps SongKong pick the correct song. If the song has no song title SongKong tries to derive the song title from the filename but if you know the filename does not represent the song title it can be ignored by enabling this option.

SongKong usually groups songs by folder and assumes that one folder represents one album or single, although it does clever things to identify multi-disc releases that may store songs in one folder per disc. Then if the Only allow match if all songs in grouping match to one album is enabled SongKong will not allow a match unless all songs in the folder have been matched to one album. But many of us may have some folders just containing a collection of essentially random songs and if SongKong identifies such a folder and was not able to match all the songs to one album it will then allow individual song matching for songs in such a folder. Some of you may store all your songs in a single folder, or one folder per artist and SongKong can also detect all these situations.

But if you know that every folder already represents an album you can enable this option to prevent SongKong from detecting non-album folders. Doing so ensures that SongKong cannot possibly break up songs in any folders because all songs in folder need to match to the same release.

SongKong often finds multiple potential releases that could match a group of songs, if the release is one of your selected media formats then that potential release has their score boosted making it more likely that it is the release that SongKong selects.

SongKong can take the release date of the potential releases into consideration, and boost the score of the earliest or more recent release, or ignore release dates entirely

SongKong often finds multiple potential releases that could match a group of songs, if the release was released in one of your preferred countries then that potential release has their score boosted making it more likely that it is the release that SongKong selects.

These apply to both Front Cover Artwork and Back Cover Artwork.

Sometimes artwork is found of such a low quality and small size that you would rather ignore this artwork.

High quality artwork can take up a lot of disk space, it is often not necessary to have such high quality artwork embedded into your songs. In fact some song playing apps do not work with artwork that is larger than a particular size.

Find artist artwork for these types of person, this can then be stored within your audio files and also directly on your computer, the current list is Album Artist, Artist, Composer, Conductor, Orchestra, Lyricist, Performer and Label. If artwork is found for a particular artist type it is automatically added to your audio files.

We do special processing for the Album Artist, if the album artist is made up of multiple artists and we can find images for each album artist we try to stitch the images together to create a single image that represents the album artist.

Save album artist artwork to each Artist folder. Can be useful if using UPnP server and like to browse music by folder. The album artist will be stored as a folder.jpg file within the each Artist folder and this means that your uPNP control point should use the artist image as the folder image.

SongKong can add all the artists found to a single folder and this can then be used by MinimServer to provide artwork for items in different uPnP indexes if configured as the MinimServer indexArtwork folder. Each image file is named based on the artist or label name that the image represents.

Specify how or if you want the Genre field to be populated, you can specify the source and the maximum number of genres you want to add. Discogs releases contain both high level Genre and one or more detailed Styles, usually an album only has one genre and the genre is too high-level to be that useful. When added to the Genre field the genres are added as separate values, some applications may only see the first value

Specify how or if you want the Grouping field to be populated, you can specify the source and the maximum number of genres you want to add. Genres are added to a single field allowing all genres to be search for within one field, the grouping field is often used in iTunes as a way of supporting multiple genres for a song.

Warning:this field was originally for storing Classical music works and since iTunes 12.5.3 is now used for this again for MP3 and AIF formats, if you have Classical Music in your collection you should think carefully before using this option for grouping genres.

When songs are matched to a Discogs album we check the genres provided by Discogs for that release against the genres listed below, if the Discogs album has multiple genres in this list then we use the genre that comes earliest in this list, so the order of the list is important - if you want to keep them you should put more specialist genres such as Power Pop before more general categories such as Pop. If no match is found no genres will be added to songs matched to that release. Having found a match SongKong uses that value if that is the only value on the line, but if there is a ';' and then a second value it will use that second value, this is useful for mapping multiple similar genres to a single genre.

The Genre list is a text file that can be edited independently of SongKong if you wish.

When SongKong identifies songs all the standard metadata such as song title, artist, release title are automatically updated. But there are some specialist situations when you might not want SongKong to update certain fields. With the exception of a few fields always required by SongKong you can specify that certain fields are never modified by SongKong.

You may want to limit the number of fields added to a minimal set and do not want to add fields you have no requirement for.

If are using SongKong to match songs against home compilations tapes that do not exist in the official databases then you may want to maintain your custom track numbering by adding Disc No, Disc Total, Track No and Track Total fields to this option.

SongKong also completes the various Sort Artist fields, this is usually very useful because it allows artists to be sorted more sensibly then using their actual name, in English a particular problem is the number of bands whose name begins with The, but of course it is not usually helpful to have so many bands grouped under the letter T. But if SongKong only matches some of your songs it can cause problems in iTunes if some songs by an artist have an Artist and a Sort Artist and some do not. Some customers just prefer not to use sort artists so they can be disabled.

There may be fields that you have entered the data manually or from another source and you do not want SongKong to modify this existing data. With the exception of a few fields always required by SongKong you can specify that certain fields are only modified by SongKong if they are currently empty, so no existing data is modified.

By default the BPM,Mood and Key fields are included in this list

When SongKong can match a song but not determine the album it will update song metadata such as song title but not album metadata such as Album Title or Track No regardless of any existing metadata. This means that the song is identified and updated with useful metadata without making any changes that would prevent it being identified as part of the same group on a subsequent run of Fix Songs.

However even modifying only Song Only metadata such as the Song Title or Track Artist could still change values significantly so that there is a difference between these songs and the totally unmatched songs. This difference is more likely when dealing with Classical release since there is not a single standard way that these fields are used with Classical music, for example you may have some songs where the work has been included in the song title and others where only the movement is used. If you disable this option then it will only update fields that are currently empty and this may better preserve consistency if some songs in an album are matched song only and some are not matched at all. The disadvantage of disabling this option is this can prevent SongKong replacing existing incorrect metadata with correct metadata.

If the artist names is in a non-Latin script such as Chinese, Japanese or Cyrillic its Latin equivalent will be used if available. This is very useful for Western speakers who typically only can only pronounce Latin script but may have music from other cultures because then it allows them to pronounce the names of any of the artists in their collection. The Latin name is often stored as an additional alias within the original MusicBrainz database, it maybe a transliteration of the original name or an alternative Latin based name that the artists is known by in the Western world. The SongKong database additionally links Discogs artists to the corresponding MusicBrainz artist if it exists so that now you can often get Latin names even when your songs only match a Discogs album and not a MusicBrainz album.

This option will not just romanize performers it will also romanize all individuals associated with the release such as composers, conductors and engineers.

Sometimes an artist may use a different name on some of their releases, this can make it harder to manage your collection so if you enable this option then their standard name is always used.

The exact same recording can be found on multiple releases and sometimes the recording is credited to different artists (or artists in a different order) on different releases. If you would like to use the same artist credit fro all occurences of the song then enable this option.

Sometimes a song is given another name on a different release, to force a consistent name to be used enable this option.

Sometimes tracks are credited to multiple artists, and with the default Add all contributing artists to the artist field option set all these artists will be used in the artist field for this song. But sometimes this can make it difficult to organize your songs because songs by the same main artist can be split up by your music player , if the artist worked with a number of contributing artists. To make things simpler we can ignore these additional artists by selecting the Only use main artist in the artist field and discard other artists option. Alternatively if you don't want the featured artists information to be completely lost they can be added to the title field instead with the Only use main artist in the artist field and add others to the title field. Note if a song is equally credited to multiple artists then the multiple artists will be added to the artist field whatever option is selected, the options only have an effect when there is a main artist and featured or guest artists.

Sometimes albums are credited to multiple artists, and with the default Add all contributing artists to the album artist field option set all these artists will be used in the album artist field for songs of this album. But sometimes we are just interested in the main album artist so we can ignore these additional artists by selecting the Only use main artist in the album artist field and discard other artists option. Note when the album is equally credited to multiple artists then the multiple artists will be added to the album artist field whatever option is selected, the options only have an effect when there is a main artist and featured or guest artists.

SongKong contains a Year field and an Original Year field. Usually the Year field stores the year the date of the release your songs have been matched to so all songs matched to the same release would have the same value for the Year field. Then for each song the Original Year contains the date of the first release that each song was released on, but sometimes it is more interesting to know the original year than the year and this is accessible to more applications if it is stored in the Year field.

Regardless of this option the date of the album release is always stored in Album Year and the earliest release date of the Album is stored in Original Album Year

SongKong date fields can store full dates, however this level of detail may not be desirable so you may prefer to limit to just store years in date fields. Also, although SongKong can store full dates sometimes only a year or year/month is available from metadata sources so year may provide more consistency,

Sometimes a release is given a different name in a different version of the release, to force a consistent name to be used enable this option.

It can be useful to identify when a song had been matched to a single, compilation etcetera rather then the more usual album. By enabling this option the type of the release is added to the release title field, if the release is of type album then this is not added because this is the default.

If you have transcoded an album into multiple audio formats it can be useful to add the audio format to the release title to aid identification.

Lets you easily distinguish between HD (High Definition) and non HD albums by adding [HD] to the album title. This option only availble with SongKong Pro license

Lets you group each disc in a boxset by album tag, this is useful if using Roon Music Player

The Disc No field is very useful in multiple disc releases, for example to distinguish between the first track on disc 1 and the first track on disc 2. But not all applications provide access to this field so it can be useful to add to the release title by setting this option to Always Add Disc No Information to the release title. Multi-disc releases sometimes give an actual name to each disc and this can be added to the release title by setting the option to Add Disc No to the release title if disc has title.Or you can elect to do nothing special for multi-disc release by setting the option to Never add Disc No information to the release title.

Warning:Enabling this option would cause different discs of one release to have different titles this can cause some applications to treat each disc as a different release rather than as a disc of the same release.

SongKong uses various way to identify Classical tracks, if a song does appear to be a Classical piece then the IsClassical field is set. Usually it is best to let SongKong to decide if a release is classical or not by keeping the default option of Classical releases identified by SongKong . But some releases are difficult to assess. If all you know all the releases you are matching in this run are Classical then you can set this option to All releases treated as Classical to force SongKong to treat all matched songs as classical and set the isClassical field. Alternatively if you consider none of the releases to be Classical then you can set this option to None, no releases treated as Classical to force SongKong to treat all the songs to none classical, clearing any values previously set for the IsClassical field

If this option is enabled then whenever a song is identified as classical the options on this tab are applied to it, they are not applied to Non Classical.

Classical music albums often contains the composer name as a part of the album title but not always. Different composers often named their works simply such as Symphony No 1 so without the composer name it can be difficult to distinguish one album from another. With this option enabled SongKong will add the composer(s) surnames to the start of the album title if the composer is not in the current title to help with easier album identification.

The Album Artist usually reflects what is written on the spine of the physical release, it usually consists of the Composer(s) of the Classical music on the release, and the principal performers and choir, orchestra or other ensembles involved, the Album Artist helps to distinguish one release from another.

But if you additionally use the Album Artist to identify only the main performers you can use this option to remove the Composer from this field, since they are not a actually a performer. Using the Album Artist instead of the Track Artist to identify performers allows you to concentrate on the main performers of the release as a whole without catching a performer that may only have performed on a single track on the release.

When using MinimServer uPNP server to play your classical music with the SongKong Classical profile enabling this option will show the composer as part of the work name in the Work index. This can be very usual for distinguishing between completely different works with very similar names written by different composers.

When you play a Classical work with MinimServer uPNP server enabling this option will show the composer when you play the group corresponding to the work. This can be very usual for distinguishing between completely different works with very similar names written by different composers. Because MinimServer only allows groups for work containing multiple contiguous movements enabling this option also includes adding the composer to title if the work has no movements.

Every artist in MusicBrainz is categorised as either a choir, orchestra, group or person. But sometimes a group may be a credited as an orchestra or choir on a particular release, and when this occurs we credit that artist as an orchestra or choir for the particular songs in that release. However this can mean that within your songs metadata the same artist is sometimes added to the Orchestra or Choir field and sometimes the Ensemble field depending on what release the song is from, if instead you wish a particular artist to be categorised the same way throughout your collection enable this option.

Classical Music often comprises a series of works, with each individual piece a movement within a work. When SongKong detects that a release contains multiple movements from a work it adds information to the Work, Movement, Movement No and Movement Total fields, often an album contains multiple works so adding this information allows songs to be organized by work rather than by album. Whenever a movement is linked to a work within MusicBrainz data then the MusicBrainz Composition and MusicBrainz Work fields are completed, but the Work and Movement fields are only used when movement is part of a multi movement work on the album. If the album is simply a compilation of extracts of different classical works and only contains single movements of works then these fields will not be added for those tracks.

The Shorten Song Title to the Movement option can be used to shorten the Title field to the movement because typically the title comprises both the work and the movement and such a title can become long and unwieldy, currently the Movement field is not well supported so most players would use the Title field for all songs and ignore the Movement field.

Options provide are:

However since iTunes 12.5.3 iTunes natively supports the Work, Movement, Movement No and Movement Total fields so there is no real need to shorten the Title field if you only use the iTunes player. If you have SongKong configured to update iTunes it will transfer these fields to iTunes but you do need to tell iTunes to use these fields instead of Title and Album as follows:

The original metadata format was ID3 and this defined a field called Grouping that was intended to be used to store the work for Classical music, but it also had other uses, it was defined as

“The 'Content group description' frame is used if the sound belongs to a larger category of sounds/music. For example, classical music is often sorted in different musical sections (e.g. "Piano Concerto","Weather - Hurricane”"

This definition is a bit open to interpretation so over the years the field has been used by different applications in different ways, both as a work and as a way to group multiple tracks in other ways. For example in SongKong it can be used to store genres as a list of values because iTunes Genre can only see the first value, a problem if you want to categorize a song with multiple genres.

So SongKong uses a separate Work field to store the work, but depending on what audio formats and what audio players you are using you may want to copy the contents of the Work field to the Grouping field. So for example iTunes uses the Grouping field to store the work for formats that use ID3 such as MP3 and AIF, but it has a separate Work field for MP4 and M4A files, and this is the same as the Work field that SongKong uses for this format.

If you are using Flac/Ogg your player may expect works to be stored in the Grouping field or the Work field or have no support at all for works

So we provide the following options for this option:

Classical albums create extra compilations for metadata tagging. Most usually classical albums consist of a number of works, each containing a number of movements. Sometimes a work contains another work, most notably Opera usually consists of Works, Acts and Scenes. SongKong works well with both Roon and MinimServer but these two applications have different incompatible ways of dealing with multi-level works such as Opera. Roon uses Movement, Section and Work but MinimServer uses Movement, Work, Overall Work, this option lets SongKong switch between the two alternatives.

In Pop/Rock there is usually a single performer or band who is credited. They are often the composer of the song as well but if they are not the details of the writer are not usually so important, the artist credits on the release itself make it clear who should be credited for each track.

In Classical music, usually various performers, an orchestra or choir, a conductor and a composer are all credited. This means we potentially have a long list of people credited for each track, and we don’t have an accepted order they should be added in. Previously the Composer was used for the Artist field, but as the Composer field is better supported in most players (such as iTunes) we usually we no longer need to add the composer to both the Artist and Composer field. In fact doesn't really make sense to add the Composer to the Artist field any longer for Classical music because often the music was composed many years ago and they were not involved in the actual recording in any way.

The default for SongKong is to store the , Performers, Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra and Conductor in that order, but we offer different masks for different uses.

If you have a particular interest in MusicBrainz, we also offer the option to use the MusicBrainz artist fields directly. For Classical music the MusicBrainz database typically stores the Composer in their MusicBrainz Track Artist Credit field and the performers and conductor in the MusicBrainz Recording Artist Credit field but this is not always applied consistently.

If song is categorised as Classical then any fields listed here will not be modified, this is in addition to any fields already added to Never modify these fields option on the Format tab

Classical/Jazz releases are not so well served by existing media players so sometimes novel approaches are sometimes used and SongKong can leave any fields alone just for your Classical recordings if you wish.

If song is categorised as Classical then any fields listed here will only be modified if currently empty, this is in addition to any fields already added to the Only modify these fields if empty option on the Format tab

For example Classical releases often consist of a number of works on a single album and if you have manually used work numbering rather than album numbering you can protect this by setting this by adding Disc No, Disc Total, Track No and Track Total to this list.

In Pop/Rock an album usually represents the artistic intent of the artist, i.e. the album was conceived and created as a single body of work.

In Classical it is more complicated. Classical composers work in terms of Symphonies or Sonatas rather than albums, we call these Works. These works comprise sub works or movements, and there may be additional levels. When Classical music and released as an album it may only contain part of a work, or conversely multiple works, so the album grouping may not be the most important grouping.

SongKong captures this data and stores in additional fields. This data can be used in your rename mask and it can also be used by Players, and UPnP Streamers to index your songs by these new fields.

Classical fields are described below, exactly how they are stored depends on the underlying file format as described in the Field Mapping section of the report.

One way that SongKong identifies classical releases is looking for releases that have credits to particular people known to work only on Classical music. This list is available within classical_people.txt, here is a small section, each line has the MusicBrainz Artist Id and then Artist Name

The term Classical is used here in the most general sense so that anyone who died before music could be recorded is included plus Classical composers and conductors of the 19th and 20th century, in total there are about 6000 people listed. If you are finding that certain releases credited to a particular person are being classified as Classical when you do not want them to be you can search this file for that person and remove that line, you can also add people to this file using the format MusicBrainz Artist Id = Name

The first time you start SongKong the classical_people.txt file is copied from the installation folder into the user preferences location, and this is the file that SongKong will use. So you'll need to edit the file in this location for it to have any effect, see Section 12:Command Line for details of this location.

There is also a classical_composers.txt file, like all automated music taggers SongKong is always dealing with incomplete databases, a particular problem for classical music is that the database may have the list of credits for a release but not their particular role, e.g. Is Person B a composer, performer or conductor. SongKong has created a list of people who principal activity is composing so when we find this person credited on a release we can usually assume that they are the composer even if they do not have a composer credit on that particular release.

The smaller classical_conductors.txt list works the same way for conductors, both these files can be edited in the same way as the classical_people.txt file in order to fine tune your classical metadata requirements. If a person is a composer and conductors (or performer) then they will not be included in the composer/conductor list unless the vast majority of their credits are for one particular role.

The not_classical_release.txt list is an exception list to specify releases that should never be considered a Classical release. Some releases are borderline Classical and SongKongs algorithm can sometimes get it wrong, adding a MusicBrainz Release Id and a title to this list ensures that SongKong does not treat these releases as classical when using its identify classical algorithm.

Most audio formats stores numbers as text, for example 1 can be stored as 1, 01, 001 or 0001. This is useful for sorting songs and is applied to the Disc No, Disc Total, Track No and Track Total fields. this field has no effect on the Mp4 files because this format only stores a number.

The Involved People field can be used to add additional people and their role, certain named roles such as Producer, Engineer and Orchestra have their own fields and by default are not added to the Involved People field but they can be by adding them with this option. Please note that in earlier versions of SongKong (before 7.0) these roles were only added to Involved People and did not have their own fields but this was a problem for MinimServer because it cannot read the Involved People field for ID3 format.

When an album is by multiple people we store the album credit as it appears on the album as a single value in the Album Artist field and then add each of the main performers as a separate field to the Album Artists field (note the plural). For example an album credit to Johnny Cash & June Carter would store

This has a number of advantages, most players only understand a single value for the AlbumArtist so this way guarantees they get Johnny Cash and June Carter not just Johnny Cash which would be the case if they only took the first value form the Album Artist field. Secondly we preserve the exact album credit, for example this credits using and, but it could be with, ft etcetera. Thirdly the individuals are listed in the Album Artists field, so applications that understand multi value artists can use the Album Artists field instead, this is what MinimServer does.

However some applications such as Roon understand multiple artists, but only use the Album Artist field not the Album Artists field. This option lets you store the album artist as multiple values in the Album Artist field just like the Album Artists field, it also lets you apply the same logic to the Album Artist Sort field, recommended yo select both fields if you use this option.

You can also do exactly the same thing for track artist by selecting the Artist and Artist Sort field as well. All four field are added to this option when using the Roon, Fix Songs profile.

Other people fields such as Composer, Conductor and Producer are always stored as multi value fields because there is no exact credit to preserve.

For mp3s in ID3 there is a preconfigured list of 256 genres, if a genre is in this preconfigured list it is stored as a number rather than the text. But iTunes does not understand the complete list of genres so you can force SongKong to always write the genre as text if you enable this option.

iTunes prefers that for Various Artists compilations that Album Artist and Sort Album Artist are left blank so that iTunes can provide translated versions

BPM (Beats per minute) is a measure of the tempo of the song. In music written with a traditional score a particular note value (for example, a quarter note, or crotchet) is specified as the beat, and that the amount of time between successive beats is a specified fraction of a minute. The greater the number of beats per minute, the smaller the amount of time between successive beats, and thus faster a piece must be played.

BPM is particularly import in dance music because of its usefulness to DJs. In this context the beats measured are either quarter notes in the time signature or drum beats (typically bass-drum or another functionally similar synthesized sound), whichever is more frequent. Higher BPM values are therefore achievable by increasing the number of drum beats, without increasing the tempo of the music. House music is faster around 120–128 BPM, trance music ranges from 125 to 150 BPM, and drum and bass generally ranges between 150–180 BPM.

Key scale represents the scale that the majority of the notes played in a piece of music come from. For traditional classical music this is relatively simple since the key signature is defined in the staff of the musical notation and in usually adhered to throughout the piece. For Pop/Rock and Experimental music it is more difficult because the key scale can change during the piece, and non -standard scales can be used.

The mood of a piece is an indication of the ambience of a piece, for example it could be Calm, Aggressive, Happy or Sad. Calculating the mood is similar to genres, it is by its nature subjective there is no definitive answer. Mood can be calculated manually by listening to the music and selecting the mood but this can take a considerable amount of time, SongKong provides an alternative by analysing the music and selecting a mood based on the analysis.

This analysis can generate the following moods:

SongKong also adds other measurements, that can be useful, only SongKong adds this data to your songs so there is no danger of replacing data added by other providers. The attributes give a probability of something rather than a definitive true or false answer in the range of 0 - 100. So for example the Instrumental attribute shows the probability of a song being totally instrumental, if the track had somebody introducing the track at the start the value would not be 100 but it would still be higher than somebody singing all the way through. If the value is less than 50 this indicates the that the measure is false, so for Acoustic that would be mean it probably was not acoustic.

The attributes added are:

We also add two special measures that are used to work out the Mood with a range of -100 to 100, these measure are called

Summarizes how many songs have been loaded and checked, how long it took and how many and what percentage of songs have been matched to the various databases and any changes that have been made to your iTunes library if iTunes update is configured.

The Browse sections allow you to navigate your music in a very similar way to how you would if using a UPnP Control Point. You can browse by Album Artist/Album, Album, Composer/Work or Folder. At each level you can see the relevant artwork, artwork size and how many of the songs have been matched to MusicBrainz or Discogs release, and how many songs have been modified in this latest run of Fix Songs. These badges can be hidden by unchecking the Show Labels option.

Each Browse section prides a free text search, simply start typing and non matches are filtered out.

You can also filter to only show grouping that have/not have artwork

You can browse by Composer and Work, not just Album Artist and Album

You can also browse by Folder, this can be very useful if your songs metadata does not align with an Artist/Album folder structure

In all cases as you navigate down you can see all the songs and the full metadata for the selected Album, Work or Folder. This shows the value of every metadata field and if it has been newly added or modified, with links to online databases where appropriate, you can even play the song directly in your web browser.

This section groups songs by the Album they have been matched to, linking directly to the album we have found on MusicBrainz or Discogs. If you have converted Naim wav rips we can also show you the All Music Guide release they are linked to. Like the Browse sections you can drill down by artist and album but instead of using the value of your artist and album metadata we use the internal ids that are only added if the songs have actually been matched to MusicBrainz or Discogs. When you drill down to album level you are therm shown a summary of the album, and how your files are matched to that album.

All options used can be seen by clicking on the Options link

This option opens a spreadsheet (in the xlsx format) that lists all the songs processed together with their modified metadata (if running in Preview mode then it shows what the metadata would be if not running in Preview). Because SongKong can typically add a lot of different metadata we group the metadata into logical groupings over a number of sheets. The sheets are Basic, Release, Classical, People, Sort Fields, MusicBrainz & Discogs, MusicBrainz Work and AcousticBrainz, every sheet lists songs alphabetically by file name, the file name is in the first column of each sheet. When SongKong has added a metadata for a field that did not have any metadata for that field it is shaded yellow, when the field did already have metadata but it has now changed then it is highlighted green, if a field is deleted it is highlighted red

The spreadsheet view enables you to very quickly view multiple changes on multiple files.

Shows any songs that could not be loaded because they seemed to be corrupt

Shows all the files that are not matched to either a MusicBrainz song, MusicBrainz release or Discogs release in the right hand side using a file tree view. To be considered matched they need to have matched to either a MusicBrainz song, MusicBrainz release or a Discogs release. If matched to a MusicBrainz song but not a MusicBrainz release then SongKong will only update the metadata that is not release specific, so Song Title and Track Artist would be updated but not Track no, Release Title or Release Artist.

If you have songs that were previously matched to MusicBrainz or Discogs but were not matched during this last run of Fix Songs they will still be listed in the Not matched section because this section is designed to show those songs that could not be identified during the last run of Fix Songs

Shows all the files that are not matched to either a MusicBrainz or Discogs release in the right hand side using a file tree view. Songs that were matched to a MusicBrainz song but not release are listed here.

To be considered matched they need to have matched a release not just a MusicBrainz song. If you have songs that were previously matched to MusicBrainz or Discogs but were not matched during this last run of Fix Songs they will still be listed in the Not matched section because this section is designed to show those songs that could not be identified during the last run of Fix Songs

Shows all the files that are not matched to a MusicBrainz release in the right hand side using a file tree view.

If you have songs that were previously matched to MusicBrainz but were not matched during this last run of Fix Songs they will be listed in the Not matched to MusicBrainz section because this section is designed to show those songs that could not be identified during thew last run of Fix Songs

Shows all the files that are not matched to a Discogs release in the right hand side using a file tree view.

If you have songs that were previously matched to Discogs but were not matched during this last run of Fix Songs they will be listed in the Not matched to Discogs section because this section is designed to show those songs that could not be identified during thew last run of Fix Songs

No files are actually moved or renamed when this option is enabled. This allows you to test SongKong without making modifications, preview is always enabled in SongKong with a Lite License.

If song moved to another folder move lets you control what should happen to non-music files in your folder when music files are saved to a different location, this occurs if you rename files from metadata and new metadata changes the sub-folder part of the file name path, or if you have selected a move folder that al matched songs should be moved to. The default is to move artwork with the music, but you can also choose to only move the music or conversely to move everything in the folder.

On Windows system you can decide if to impose the Windows Explorer limit on your drives, and can differentiate between local and remote drives. The limit is only imposed by Windows Explorer, the ujderlying Windows opertaing system can handle longer filenames but if Windows Explorer encounters these longer filenames it will instead display as a random sequence of characters.

When renaming or moving files SongKong respects the file system limits set by the operating system, most notably Windows set a limit of 260 characters for the complete path. But some legacy applications may impose short maximum lengths, or you may use SongKong with one operating system but want the files to be compatible with another.

The Maximum File Path Length option provides an easy way to set a maximum filepath length, if the file name is too long the file name part will be truncated accordingly. A more powerful approach is modify your rename mask to set different maximum lengths for different parts of their mask using the inbuilt JavaScript substring function.

When you select folders or files to rename SongKong tries to guess what part of the folder path contains metadata such as artist name or album name and which part does not contain metadata. It then splits the folder path into Base Folder and Sub Folder, the reason for this split is that if your songs are renamed from metadata only the Sub Folder part is renamed by applying your rename mask to your metadata. If you specify a Move Folder or Unmatched Folder on the Move Files tab then the Base Folder is replaced by the Move (Un)Matched Folder

But its not always easy for SongKong to get this right so you can use the arrow keys to modify where the split is. Or perhaps you would like the whole path to be modified by the rename mask , in this case use the right arrow to put the folder path in the sub folder field.

For example:if your folder name was /Music/The Beatles/Revolver then usually the Base Folder should be set to /Music and Sub Folder set to /The Beatles/Revolver.

By default this option this set to No. It can be very useful to name files based on the current metadata but this can cause problems for any other applications that index files by their file name. For example if you are using a music manager application and rename a file that is under the music managers control then it will not be able to find it, it is usually better to use SongKong on songs before adding them to a music manager. But if you are using iTunes then SongKong can inform of iTunes of changes that SongKong makes so that iTunes does not lose the file.

This option is not simply Yes or No, you can decide to rename songs based on how and/if they have been matched. Often the best choice is Yes if matched to a release this ensures that songs are only renamed if matched to a MusicBrainz or Discogs release, this in turn ensures that complete albums of songs are renamed and therefore kept together.

Alternatively the Yes if matched to a release or song option can be used, this additionally allows songs that have been matched to a MusicBrainz song but not a release. This ensures that all the songs renamed will have reliable basic metadata, but if you have a folder of songs representing an album and they have only been matched to a song it could cause them to be put into different folders.

The Yes if has metadata option allows any song to be renamed even if not matched by SongKong as long as it contains the basic metadata of Title, Album and either Artist or Album Artist. This option allows SongKong to be used for any collection of songs even when the songs could not be found in the MusicBrainz or Discogs databases.

The Yes, for all files option takes this a step further allowing any song to be renamed regardless of the status of it's existing metadata.

Some characters may not be compatible with the file names on some file-systems so this option replaces such characters with their simpler equivalent (i.e. é -> e, ℮ ->e and ◀ -> <) if Simplify non-standard characters is enabled. Simplification of file names can make managing your files easier and provide greater compatibility with other applications.

This option is similar to the Convert to ASCII option found in some applications but ASCII only supports a subset of the Latin character set , characters sets such as Chinese, Korean and Arabic cannot be converted to ASCII so we do not try, but we can simplify file names in four main ways.

The complete file path of a file comprises of the Base Folder, Sub Folders and File name. When this option is enabled only the file name part will be modified using the file name part of the defined rename mask. This allows files to be renamed base don new metadata without modifying structure.

The common reason for using this option is as follows. You have a folder containing songs that have not been tagged, the folder either represents an album that is not known to the Albunack Server so with the default matching options SongKong is unable to match the songs. You decide to uncheck the Only allow match if all songs in grouping match to one album option on the Basic tab to give the SongKong the best chance of finding a match. And because the existing tracks are just labelled Track1.mp3, Track2.mp3 you want to Rename files based on Metadata to give the files more useful names, but you don’t want the tracks to be moved because you know they all belong to one album. Enabling Rename file name only allows you to do this.

Regardless of the rename mask selected only the name part of the rename mask will be used to replace the name part of the existing file path. So if the existing file path has sub-folders they will remain even if the rename mask does nothave a sub folder component. If the existing file path does not have sub-folders then no sub-folders will be added even if the rename mask does have sub-folders.

e.g... assuming the song actually is With or Without You by U2 on the Joshua Tree album

Existing filepath /Music/U2/Best Of/Track1.mp3 gives Base Folder=/Music, Sub Folder=U2/The Joshua Tree and File name=Track1.mp3

Rename Mask: Artist/Album/TrackNo - Title, Rename file only:false would give

/Music/U2/The Joshua Tree/03 - With or Without You.mp3

Rename Mask: Artist/Album/TrackNo - Title, Rename file only:true would give

/Music/U2/Best Of/03 - With or Without You.mp3

Rename Mask: TrackNo - Title, Rename file only:false would give

/Music/03 - With or Without You.mp3

Rename Mask: TrackNo - Title, Rename file only:true would give

/Music/U2/Best Of/03 - With or Without You.mp3

The Rename mask defines how files renamed based on their metadata. You can select from any of the defined masks using the drop-down. The list of available masks is the same in the Rename mask, compilation mask and file name masks drop-downs. You can create new filename masks or modify existing ones from the Preferences menu.

It is often useful to store Compilation releases in a different location to Original Album releases. This mask is used when renaming songs that have been identified as being part of a compilation, the isCompilation field is set for these fields. The compilation mask defines how files renamed based on their metadata. You can select from a number of defined masks using the drop-down.

A common way of managing your songs is to move songs from an unsorted folder to a fixed folder as they are identified. Within SongKong this can be accomplished by setting a Move Folder, as songs are matched they are moved from their current folder to the move folder. SongKong moves songs if they are matched to a MusicBrainz album or a Discogs album, they are not moved if only matched to a MusicBrainz song as this is considered only a partial match.

When a song is moved to a new folder the new folder replaces the Base Folder part of the original file name. If Rename files based on metadata on the Basic tab is unchecked the rest of the file name is unchanged from the original file name, if the option is checked then the rest of the file name will be derived using either the Rename Mask or Compilation Mask you have selected on the File Naming tab.

If SongKong is unable to match a song to either MusicBrainz album or Discogs album then it is unmatched, usually this means that the file is not renamed but you can still move these files to the Unmatched Folder if you enable the option. Songs that are only matched to a MusicBrainz song but not an album are still moved to the unmatched folder because otherwise if some songs in a folder are matched by song only and some are not matched at all then the folder would be split. If you are only trying to identify songs and are not concerned about albums you should disable this option.

This option is useful because it allows you to differentiate between a song that SongKong has tried to match and failed to match, and a song that SongKong has not yet attempted to match. It is especially useful when processing many files if for any reason Fix Songs did not fully complete.

No files are actually modified when this option is enabled. This allows you to test SongKong without making modifications, preview is always enabled in SongKong with a Lite License.

Naim music files often have a front cover stored in a seperate file in the same folder as the album, enabling this options adds the artwork to yor music files

Naim metadata files often store a Genre, enabling this optin adds the Genre to your music files.

Sometimes artwork is found of such a low quality and small size that you would rather ignore this artwork.

High quality artwork can take up a lot of disk space, it is often not necessary to have such high quality artwork embedded into your songs. In fact some song playing apps do not work with artwork that is larger than a particular size.

When SongKong identifies songs all the standard metadata such as song title, artist, release title are automatically updated. But there are some specialist situations when you might not want SongKong to update certain fields. With the exception of a few fields always required by SongKong you can specify that certain fields are never modified by SongKong.

You may want to limit the number of fields added to a minimal set and do not want to add fields you have no requirement for.

If are using SongKong to match songs against home compilations tapes that do not exist in the official databases then you may want to maintain your custom track numbering by adding Disc No, Disc Total, Track No and Track Total fields to this option.

SongKong also completes the various Sort Artist fields, this is usually very useful because it allows artists to be sorted more sensibly then using their actual name, in English a particular problem is the number of bands whose name begins with The, but of course it is not usually helpful to have so many bands grouped under the letter T. But if SongKong only matches some of your songs it can cause problems in iTunes if some songs by an artist have an Artist and a Sort Artist and some do not. Some customers just prefer not to use sort artists so they can be disabled.

There may be fields that you have entered the data manually or from another source and you do not want SongKong to modify this existing data. With the exception of a few fields always required by SongKong you can specify that certain fields are only modified by SongKong if they are currently empty, so no existing data is modified.

By default the BPM,Mood and Key fields are included in this list

SongKong date fields can store full dates, however this level of detail may not be desirable so you may prefer to limit to just store years in date fields. Also, although SongKong can store full dates sometimes only a year or year/month is available from metadata sources so year may provide more consistency,

If you have transcoded an album into multiple audio formats it can be useful to add the audio format to the release title to aid identification.

Lets you easily distinguish between HD (High Definition) and non HD albums by adding [HD] to the album title. This option only availble with SongKong Pro license

No files are actually modified when this option is enabled. This allows you to test SongKong without making modifications, preview is always enabled in SongKong with a Trial License.

Remove these fields from yor music files.

The Preview only option allows you to try out SongKong and test the different criteria for identifying duplicate songs without making any modifications to your collection. In preview mode you will be able to see a full report of SongKong's activity without actually deleting files.

Preview only is always enabled in SongKong with a Trial License.

If enabled then searches can be restricted to be within a particular format. This makes it easy to keep multiple versions of the same file but with different formats whilst still finding actual duplicates.

You can specify what is meant by a duplicate, depending on what you want to achieve.

Whether you are interested in creating a jukebox of songs or preserving the integrity of albums the different options will help you. The options vary in their restrictiveness and of course you can apply different criteria to different parts of your music collection or use more than one option to hone your results.

Within SongKong you can set the duplicate criteria to be:

Same title and album (metadata only)

In this option a song is considered a duplicate if it contains the same information for the artist, song title and album in the metadata fields. This option is good if you want to be able to play complete albums because if a song appears on an original album and a compilation then no songs will be deleted.

This is the default setting. More accurate results can be achieved if you fix songs first and find duplicates based on their MusicBrainz Ids.

Same title (metadata only)

In this option a song is only considered a duplicate if it contains the same information for the artist and title in the metadata fields. This is most useful if your focus is on individual songs. More accurate results can be achieved if you fix songs first and find duplicates based on their MusicBrainz Ids.

Sounds the same only.

This option finds duplicate songs based purely on how the songs sound. This is most useful if your focus is on individual songs and allows you to find duplicates for songs that don't have a MusicBrainz match.

Same MusicBrainz song only.

This option finds duplicates if they have been identified as the same song in MusicBrainz. This is most useful if your focus is on individual songs. To use this option process your songs in Fix Songs first.

Same MusicBrainz song and sounds the same:

This option finds duplicate songs if they are the same song in MusicBrainz and if they sound the same. This is most useful if your focus is on individual songs more than albums and the acoustic matching provides an extra check that the songs really are the same.

Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version)

This option is best if you prefer to play complete albums because if the same MusicBrainz song is found on an original album and a compilation album then no songs will be deleted, keeping your albums in tact.

Same MusicBrainz song and same album (any version) and sounds the same

This criteria is like the preceding option but with an added acoustic check to be really sure the song is the same.

Same MusicBrainz songs and same album (specific version e.g... same date/country of release)

This is a more restrictive criteria than same song and same album (any version) because it will only identify duplicates if the same song is found in exactly the same version of an album. If the same song is found in the UK and the US release of an album no song will be deleted.

Same MusicBrainz songs and same album (specific version e.g... same date/country of release) and sounds the same.

This is the strictest criteria for finding duplicates. It works in the same way as the previous option but has the added acoustic check to be extra sure that a song really is the same.

Read on for more detail about how each criteria works.

When duplicate songs are found one is kept and the remainder are either deleted or moved to the specified Duplicates folder.

This is the folder where the duplicate songs will be moved to if you select to move duplicates instead of deleting them. By creating a duplicates folder you build in a safeguard that permits you to keep your duplicate files for review before final deletion or alternatively to restore them to your music collection if you change your mind or wish to adjust your criteria for identifying duplicates.

If enabled then any folders that contained duplicate files that have now been deleted are also deleted if they are now empty or only contain files listed below, you can use the asterisk (*) to denote a wildcard. It will not delete folders that were checked but did not contain any music files in the first place.

When duplicates are found, SongKong decides upon the song to be kept and the songs to be deleted based on the order of this criteria, the songs that best matches the criteria is the song that is kept. The first item in the list is used to compare songs, and only if all the songs for that key are found to have the same value for the criteria does additional criteria get used in the order they are listed. To change the order of the criteria click on the criteria you wish to reorder and use the up and down keys to move into position.

When the preferred audio format is being used this list defines the order of the preferred audio formats to use, by default lossless formats are preferred. The order of preference can be adjusted by using the up and down keys so if you prefer to keep lossy files over lossless you can adjust the order.

MP3s support both ID3v23 and ID3v24. V24 is the latest version of the ID3 Specification and has been available since 2003 but it still is not as widely supported as V23. You can elect to save your MP3s using the version they already have or force save to either V23 or V24.

Unfortunately because Vorbis comments are free text fields where both the field name and value are freely editable, minor yet absolute differences can emerge. In this particular case because the human readable abstraction album artist has a space in it, different software and hardware have taken different decisions in what to do with the space. So some players such as Foobar2000 use ALBUMARTIST, whilst other most notably JRiver use ALBUM ARTIST, some players support both but prefer one value to the other. SongKong defaults to using ALBUMARTIST, but if you find this field is not being displayed in your preferred player you should change it to ALBUM ARTIST or ALBUMARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST

Filename masks are used to rename your files based upon the metadata in your music files. From Preferences you can create new masks, edit existing masks and delete masks, the list of masks is shared by all profiles. Within Fix Songs on the Filenaming tab you can then specify a Filename Mask to use as a Rename Mask and Filename Mask to use as a Compilation Rename Mask.

The File name masks drop-down list all the masks currently available for renaming songs based on their metadata.

You can modify an existing mask by selecting a mask from the drop-down and selecting the Edit button.

You can delete an existing mask by selecting a mask from the drop-down and selecting the Delete button.

You can create a new mask by selecting the Add button

This defaults to your computers locale, but you can select from over 15 languages that SongKong has been translated into. You'll need to restart SongKong after changing the language for all text to display in the new language.

Can display the gui using the default Light mode or Dark mode

SongKong creates a log file recording information about what it is doing, how much information is recorded depends on the value of this option. If you are having a problem with SongKong then support may request that you increase the log level to aid in resolving the problem.

SongKong also records information about what is transferred between your songs and SongKong when opening and saving changes to your song files, how much information is recorded depends on the value of this option. If you are having a problem with SongKong then support may request that you increase the log level to aid in resolving the problem.

There are currently a few limitations of the Remote mode compare to the Desktop mode

At the top of Artwork tab it shows all the existing artwork for songs in this folder, usually you would expect there to be either one or zero pieces of artwork. The New Artwork area will be where newly added artwork is displayed, thee Dropzone below is where new artwork can be dragged to, and at the bottom are listed your songs in this folder with some of their basic metadata to help identification.

You can add new artwork as follows:

Metadata is grouped into logical tabs and can be edited like a spreadsheet.

Selecting the Admin link at the bottom of the page takes you to the page below, and from here you can run Empty Log Files, Delete Reports, Empty Database and Create Support Files

And Preferences are available via the Preferences link

The About link shows details of your SongKong version, and license version. From here you can buy version upgrades, this allows you to continue getting the latest versions of SongKong for a nominal cost.

The License link lets you enter or update your license key

The location and name of the command line is operating system dependent as described below:

The location of the files is operating system dependent as described below:

The license is stored in the license.properties file, Simply replace the trial license with the three lines from your email to end of the file, such as

Most preferences and options can be configured by adding/modifying them songkong.properties, they are stored as name value pairs

e.g.. configuring

would disable Preview Only on the Basic tab, setting it to true would enable it. The songkong properties file do not contain all the options because the defaults are stored in the application itself, so options are only added to properties when they are changed by the user for that task.

The genrelist.txt file can be used for configuring genre mappings, classical_people.txt, classical_composers.txt, classical_conductors.txt and not_classical_release.txt can be configured to fine tune classical music identification.

Modify the maximum memory allocated by editing SongKong64.ini,

For example to set it to 4GB of memory

Modify the maximum memory allocated by editing /Applications/SongKong.app/Info.plist,

For example to set it to 4GB of memory

Modify the maximum memory allocated by editing songkong.sh.

For example to set it to 4GB of memory