Editing metadata and artwork

Editing metadata and artwork

Documentation home

Current source builds on main add Edit album / Edit tracks tabs and track lyrics. These are not yet in the downloadable desktop release; see the availability note on Upcoming changes.

1. Open an album and choose Edit. Edit its title, album artist, release year or disc number, and genres or composers for its tracks. Individual tracks can also have their own title, artist, year, track number, genres and composers.
2. Use the online suggestions beside the form if helpful. Click a year or genre to fill the form, Shift-click a genre to add it, or choose Use all for the suggested genres. Suggestions do not save anything by themselves.
3. Review the before/after values, then choose Save to iBroadcast. Tagcast checks the existing values first and downloads the library again to confirm accepted writes. Change history shows the progress and result.

To edit several albums, open one album artist, tick their album cards and edit the selection. Only the fields you enable are changed. Album year changes leave track years alone unless you tick Also apply the release year to tracks; individual track edits take precedence over album-wide edits.

For compilations, tick Various Artists beneath Album artist. This uses iBroadcast's native Various Artists album artist and preserves every track's artist and additional credits. Untick it to enter an album artist again. The choice is included in the normal before/after review, also for all discs of a set; when editing a selection, first enable Change Album artist.

New album and track years must be 1800–2050; use 0 or clear the field to remove a year. The editor and server both enforce this range, including online suggestions and album-wide track-year changes. An existing year outside the range can remain untouched while you edit other metadata.

Genres are separate labels: the first is the main genre, and the others become additional genres. Split or Split combined genres explicitly separates labels such as Pop;Rock. Composers are stored as composer credits; other credits, such as featured artists, are preserved.

For covers and artist images, choose an online suggestion, existing iBroadcast artwork, your own file, a pasted image or an image URL. Compare old and new, then explicitly save the artwork. JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF are supported, up to 15 MB. Image URLs pointing to this computer or the local network are refused.

Artwork Undo restores a previous image when one exists. If an artist had no image before, Undo cannot remove the new image and explains that no previous image is available. Metadata edits, favourites and trash moves do not have automatic Undo. See how saving stays safe and multi-disc sets below.

Online sources and keys

MusicBrainz (with Cover Art Archive), Deezer, Apple Music / iTunes (iTunes Search) and TheAudioDB work without a key. Apple covers appear directly among the cover suggestions. For the others, open Settings in the sidebar:

Source	What it adds	Key
Discogs	Styles and genres, original year, covers, artist images	Personal token: Discogs → Settings → Developers
Last.fm	Listener tags as genres, covers	API key: last.fm/api/account/create
fanart.tv	Artist images	Personal API key: fanart.tv/get-an-api-key

Keys are stored in ~/.tagcast/config.json (readable by you only), or supplied through DISCOGS_TOKEN, LASTFM_API_KEY and FANART_API_KEY. Saved keys stay server-side and are never returned to the page. The Last.fm key is for metadata lookups, not scrobbling.

By default, opening an album's editor looks it up in the available sources. Turn automatic lookup off in Settings if you prefer to press Search yourself. A lookup sends the artist and album name to each source. Requests are spaced per source and responses are cached for an hour.

Matching ignores case, accents, "The", and edition text such as "(2011 Remaster)" or "- Deluxe Edition"; each suggestion shows its title/artist match score. MusicBrainz and Discogs give the first release year. Deezer and Apple Music give the date of the edition they have, which may be a later remaster.

Choose existing artists while editing

The Album artist, individual Track artist, additional artist/credit name, Genres and Composers fields now offer searchable lists of existing library names. Click the arrow to browse, or type part of a name to filter. Choose with the mouse or Up/Down and Enter; Escape closes the list and Tab continues through the form. A new name can still be typed normally. Selection only changes the draft; review and save are unchanged.

Genres and composers work on the selection-wide fields and on individual tracks. Selecting a suggestion adds one complete chip. A stored genre such as Pop;Rock stays one label until you explicitly choose Split. The first genre remains the main genre. Free typing still accepts Enter or ; to add another label, and existing length/count limits remain in place without silently truncating text.

Artist choices reuse loaded native names, including track-only artists. Genre choices use exact active labels, and composer choices use existing composer credits. The small unique catalogues are collected during the existing album-summary pass and refreshed with confirmed read-backs; no extra iBroadcast or provider request or full track view is needed. Lists display up to 40 matches at once; type more to narrow a longer list. Credit phrases keep their existing free-text field.

Multiple album artists and track credits

Open an album and choose Edit. Keep the primary Album artist in its existing field; use Additional album artists → + Add album artist for each other artist or band. Names stay separate, including names containing commas or semicolons. Each credited album artist has the album in their own artist view, with their own native stars, local favourite heart and artist image. Album pages and the player show the additional names as links.

Use Edit beside an individual track to open Additional artists and credits. Add one person or band per row, choose a role and optionally enter a credit phrase. The available track roles are Artist, Band, Composer, Lyricist, Conductor, Publisher, Involved person, Original lyricist and Original artist. Existing unfamiliar roles remain available on their original rows. Editing a name assigns another artist; leaving it unchanged preserves its native artist ID. Changing a credit does not rename that artist throughout the library.

There can be up to 100 additional credits per record, with names and phrases up to 1,000 characters. These are Tagcast safeguards, not confirmed iBroadcast service limits. New names are created only when a reviewed, allowed save needs them. Existing IDs, order, roles and phrases are preserved until explicitly changed.

• The album-wide Composers shortcut remains available and preserves other roles. A track's individual full-credit edit takes precedence over that shortcut for that track, including an explicitly empty list.
• Selected albums must share one album artist. Additional-credit replacement is opt-in for selections or discs whose credits differ; review every affected album.
• Various Artists keeps track artists and track credits, and explicitly clears additional album artists in the review.
• Combine Multi-Disc Album Sets still blocks album metadata changes; track credit changes can proceed. Different additional album artists keep discs in separate displayed sets.
• All changes use the normal before/after review, current-value checks and read-back. Metadata changes have no automatic Undo; Change history records the actual saved credit IDs after confirmation.

Genre validation

The editor, server and cleanup now use 200 characters per genre label and 20 labels per track, including the main genre. These are Tagcast's limits. Overlong input shows a message beside the field and stays editable; it is never silently shortened. Existing values can remain untouched while editing other fields. The same length check applies to legacy single-genre writes.