MusicBrainz Picard/Plugins

There are many plugins available for Picard. A number of these are written by the Picard developers, however many are written by users and enthusiasts. If you are having issues with a plugin, please check the forums for answers and ask any questions.

Installation

Simple method

This method works for any plugin that consist of a single .py file, unless special installation instructions are given. In that case refer to those and/or to the advanced method below.

Though this tutorial has only been tested with the Windows version of Picard, procedure should be very similar with other operating systems.

To install a plugin:

1. First of all, download the plugin (.py file) you want to install
2. Open Picard
3. Click Options in menu bar
4. Choose Options... to open preferences menu
5. Go to Plugins in the left pane
6. Click Install plugin...
7. Locate the downloaded .py file and click Open

That's it, your plugin is now ready for use. The file has been copied by Picard to it's plugins folder (using Windows specifically %APPDATA%\MusicBrainz\Picard\plugins), it's safe to delete the plugin in your download folder.

Advanced method

To install a plugin:

1. download .py file(s)
2. create a 'plugins' directory (if not existing already) under
   1. Windows: either C:\Program Files\Musicbrainz Picard\plugins (for default Picard application folder) or %APPDATA%\MusicBrainz\Picard\plugins
   2. *Nix: either Picard application directory/plugins or ~/.config/MusicBrainz/Picard/plugins
   3. OSX: Follow These Steps:
      1. Open a Terminal (can be found in: Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
      2. type mkdir -p $HOME/.config/MusicBrainz/Picard/plugins (needs to be done only once)
      3. type open $HOME/.config/MusicBrainz/Picard/plugins to display the folder in finder. Now move the plugins there.
   4. Please note that some plugins need to be placed inside a separate subdirectory specific to the plugin. See the 'Notes' column below to see if this is required for the particular plugin you are installing.
3. Move downloaded .py file(s) to 'plugins' directory
4. Enable the plugin. Check the box beside the individual plugin in the plugins menu, which can be found at
   1. Windows/*Nix: Options Menu >> Options... >> Plugins
   2. OSX: MusicBrainz Picard >> Preferences >> Plugins

Creating Plugins

Please refer to the Picard plugin API documentation.

Plugins

Name	Description	Author	Adds Context Menu Item?	Download / Compatibility	License	Known issues/Notes
Disc Numbers	Moves (disc X) from releases titles into separate tags (discnumber and discsubtitle).	Lukáš Lalinský	No	0.9 - 1.0	(unspecified)	-
Classic Disc Numbers	Reverts to pre-NGS (aka "Classic") behaviour by adding (disc X: discTitle) to release titles into separate tags (discnumber and discsubtitle).	Lukáš Lalinský	No	0.15 - 1.0	(unspecified)	Broken in 0.15.1 (OK in later releases); workaround version of plugin available on forum here.
Remove Feat. Artists from Titles	Removes (feat. Artist) parts from track titles.	Lukáš Lalinský	No	0.9 - 1.0	(unspecified)	-
Move Feat. Artists to Titles	Move "feat." from artist names to album and track titles. e.g. "A feat. B - Song" becomes "A - Song (feat. B)."	Lukáš Lalinský, Michael Wiencek	No	0.9 - 1.0	(unspecified)	-
Title Case	Converts track and release titles to Title Case (capitalizes first character of every word)	Javier Kohen, Lukáš Lalinský	No	0.9 - 1.0	GPLv2	-
Cover Art Downloader	Downloads cover art for optional tag embedding and/or saving as a separate image file (using standard Options >> Cover Art Picard settings)	Oliver Charles, Philipp Wolfer	No	0.9 - 0.11 0.12 - 0.14 0.15 - 1.0	GPLv2	-
Last.fm Tags	Use Last.fm tags as "genre"	Lukáš Lalinský	No	0.15 - 1.0 (file 1) 0.15 - 1.0 (file 2)	(unspecified)	(copy both files to directory plugins/lastfm/)
Last.fm Plus	Use Last.fm tags as "grouping/genre/moods/occasions/countries/originalyear" and more. Modified version of above plugin.	RifRaf, voiceinsideyou	No	0.15 - 1.0	(unspecified)	Unzip into plugins folder. (so you have plugins/lastfmplus/__init__.py etc) Documentation, forum thread
Add Cluster As A Release	Adds right click option to an unmatched cluster to allow adding releases to MB based on tags.	Lukáš Lalinský, Philip Jägenstedt	Yes	0.9 - 0.16 1.0	(unspecified)	-
Generate Cuesheet	Generates a cuesheet from a release	Lukáš Lalinský	Yes	0.10 - 1.0	(unspecified)	-
Release Type	Appends information to EPs and Singles such as " EP" or " (single)" (customisable, see file for details). Useful for separating releases with singles/EPs of the same name.	Elliot Chance	No	0.9 - 1.0	(unspecified)	-
No Release	Do not store specific release information in releases of unknown origin.	hrglgrmpf	Yes	0.15 - 1.0	(unspecified)	See forum post for details.
Search Plugins	Launch searches for clusters or releases to external non-MB websites from Picard	Brian Schweitzer	Yes	0.9 - 1.0	(unspecified)	Plugins available for: All Music Guide Amazon (supports: .ca, .com, .de, .fr, .jp, and .co.uk) CastAlbums.org (musicals) DiscogsFilmMusziek.be (film music) eBay Game Music Revolution (game soundtracks) Google The Lortel Archives (off-Broadway musicals) SoundtrackCollector.org (soundtracks) SoundtrackINFO (soundtracks)
Change Encoding	Converts the tags of individual files or clusters between different character encodings. This is often necessary with files that have only ID3v1 tags in a non-Latin encoding.	Philip Jägenstedt	Yes	0.9 - 0.12	(unspecified)	You will probably only need to change the target encoding. If the encoding you're looking for isn't in the list, you can type it in yourself and it will hopefully work.
Original Release Date	Set the original release date of a release by using the release events and "earliest release" advanced relationships.	Philipp Wolfer	No	0.12	(unspecified)	Not needed for newer versions of Picard which support the %originaldate% tag directly.
Title sort names	Guess sortnames for track and album titles and adds as titlesort and albumsort tags.	Creap	No	0.12 - 1.0	(unspecified)	Checks language (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Swedish) and moves articles ("The", "Das", etc) to the end of the track/album title in the sort tags.
Title version	Moves song metadata such as "demo", "live" from titlesort to version tag.	Creap	No	0.12 - 1.0	(unspecified)	Searches titles for keywords like live, demo, mix, etc, and moves it from titles to version tags.
$swapprefix function	Adds the $swapprefix(text, *prefixes) script function, which moves the specified prefixes to the end of the text.	Philipp Wolfer	No	0.9 - 1.0	GPLv2 or later	See this forum post for details.
Lookup PUID	Adds the ability to lookup the PUID on MusicBrainz (useful in case there are several tracks linked with the same PUID)	WPME Hofland	Yes	0.12	(unspecified)
TSO2	Set TSO2 as well as TXXX:ALBUMARTISTSORTORDER in ID3 tags, so album artist sort order works in iTunes and other players	Andrew Barnert	No	0.12	(unspecified)	See this forum post for details.
Add to iTunes	Mac OS X only! Add an album/track/etc. to iTunes.	Andrew Barnert	Yes	0.12	(unspecified)	See this forum post for details.
The Sorting Plugin	Allows sorting of clusters and releases (i.e. both panes) through the right click "Plugins" menu. (can sort either Clusters or Releases by Artist or Title, and within a cluster by artist or title)	Aaron Lambers	Yes	0.12	(unspecified)	See this forum post for details.
Discnumber and Bonus disc	Combination of the discnumber and bonus disc plugin	WPME Hofland	No	0.12	(unspecified)
Convert Typographic Punctuation	Replace hard-to-type-into-search-boxes fancy punctuation with Latin-1 equivalents	anonymous	No	0.9 - 0.12	(unspecified)	See forum and bug ticket for details.
Foobar2000 ReplayGain	Analyse your albums using the foobar2000 ReplayGain scanner.	hrglgrmpf	Yes	0.10 - 1.0	(unspecified)	See forum post for details.
MetaFlac ReplayGain	Analyse your albums using the MetaFlac ReplayGain scanner.	Olivier Kaloudoff	Yes	0.10 - 1.0	(unspecified)	Tested only on Mac OSX / Feedback to kalou at kalou dot net
$eq2, $ne2 functions	Each plugin adds a new function to taggerscript, to allow comparison of a variable against more than one string. Example: set %engineer% to "test" if the artist is equal to "foo", "bar", or "baz": $if($eq2(%artist%,foo,bar,baz),$set(engineer,test))	Brian Schweitzer	No	0.12 - 1.0	(unspecified)	See forum post for details.
$p function	Adds an $p(string, unofficial) function to taggerscript. This works like the inverse of a \p{foo} regex using Unicode properties. In other words, it tells you what script a character belongs to. Usage: $p(%something%) $p(%something%, True) The second argument is optional. By default, it is set to False. When set to True, unofficial Unicode scripts (i.e. ConScript, etc.) are also checked.	Brian Schweitzer	No	0.12 - 1.0	(unspecified)	See forum post for details.
Open in GUI	Open files/folders in the GUI environment.	Michael Elsdörfer	Yes	0.9 - 1.0	(unspecified)
Remove Perfect albums	Remove "Perfect" matches from album list i.e. all tracks matched and tags saved.	ichneumon	Yes	0.15 - 1.0	(unspecified)	See forum post for details.
Autosave complete albums	Save albums with 4+ tracks and 90%+ confidence on all tracks, then remove them from the album list. Useful when importing a big, relatively well-tagged collection.	encukou	Yes	0.15 - 1.0	(unspecified)	See forum post for details.
Sidecars	Stores and retrieves metadata in "sidecar" files so that changes can be staged.	Tony Flaks	Yes	0.14	(unspecified)	See wiki page for details.

Context Menu Items

Note that not all plugins will add options to the "Plugins" section of the right click context menu you get on tracks, files and clusters. Plugins in the above list that do not add a context menu item should work automatically on all new metadata that is loaded into the right-hand pane, once they are enabled in the options.