MusicBrainz

tie-fm can look albums and tracks up on MusicBrainz and write the result into the tie store. Two places use it:

• Import as albums… (local directories): match each scanned album before or during review; the chosen release drives the album metadata, the rendered destination, per-track titles/numbers and (optionally) cover art — or, with Only import tags from MusicBrainz, just adds the release’s genres/community tags.
• tie: paths: right-click an album directory or an audio file → MusicBrainz… to match and re-tag an already imported item.

Backends

Chosen in Menu → MusicBrainz…:

Both backends return the same model, so the UI is identical. The local backend matches album titles fuzzily in Go (normalised exact/prefix/contains + token overlap + year/track-count bonuses) after narrowing by artist, so mistyped tags still find the release.

The settings dialog has a Test connection button and persists to tie-fm’s own config.toml:

[MusicBrainz]
Source = "local"
DBDSN = "postgres://musicbrainz:musicbrainz@127.0.0.1:5432/musicbrainz_db?sslmode=disable"
WebBaseURL = "https://musicbrainz.org"
CoverArtBaseURL = "https://coverartarchive.org"
AutoMatch = true
FetchCoverArt = true

Album import

1. Right-click local directories → Import as albums….
2. The form gains three options (defaults from the settings):
   • Look up releases on MusicBrainz — after the scan, every album is searched and the best match (score ≥ 0.55) is applied automatically.
   • Only import tags from MusicBrainz (no metadata) — keep the album’s own tags/placement and apply only the matched release’s genres/community tags after import (the same union the tag panel’s tags-only action uses). Requires the lookup; it disables the cover-art option and neither MBIDs nor track/album metadata are written. The review dialog still shows the match and lets you pick another release, but picking one does not re-render the destination.
   • Download missing cover art — when the album has no cover/thumbnail and the release has a front image in the Cover Art Archive, it is downloaded after import (not available in tags-only mode).
3. In the review dialog each row shows MB: Artist — Album (year) when matched, plus an MB… button to search again/choose another release. Picking a release re-renders the destination from the template, so {albumartist}/{year} - {album} uses the matched values (full-metadata mode only).
4. Import writes the normal tags first, then a single background pass applies:
   • album dir: artist, album-artist, album, year, genres as tags, musicbrainz-release-id, musicbrainz-release-group-id, musicbrainz-artist-id;
   • tracks: title, artist, album, album-artist, year, track, disc, track-total, disc-total, musicbrainz-recording-id, musicbrainz-track-id, release/group/artist IDs;
   • IndexCollection refreshes the album summary/member-of edges;
   • the front cover becomes the album’s thumbnail relation (blob uploaded with infinite retention) when cover art is enabled. In tags-only mode the pass writes just the album directory’s genres/community tags (union with the tags entered for the import) and nothing else. Track matching is by (disc, track), then track number (single-disc), then normalised title, then remaining order — so files with partial tags still line up.

Tags only (tag panel)

The right-hand tag panel (the “tag bag”) is the tags-only entry point:

1. Browse a tie:/… location and select an album row (the leftmost icon column; clicking the name opens the folder).
2. In Tags of selection, press Add MusicBrainz tags….
3. Pick the release. Only its genres + community tags are unioned into the album’s tags — no artist/album/year, no MBIDs, no track metadata, no cover art. Existing tags and their spelling are preserved; duplicates are ignored case-insensitively.
4. With several albums selected, each is matched automatically and its own tags are added; a summary lists unmatched/failed albums.

The newly added chips appear in the editor immediately; the full-metadata match remains available from the row context menu’s MusicBrainz… action.

tie: paths

Right-click a row in a tie:/… listing:

• album directory → release search (prefilled with the directory’s album-artist/album/year), apply writes the same metadata as above;
• audio file → recording search (prefilled with artist/title), apply writes title, artist, the containing album/year, and musicbrainz-recording-id/musicbrainz-release-id;
• multiple selected tracks → treated as their shared parent album.

A failed cover-art download is reported as a non-fatal omission: the tag writes stand.

Tests

go test ./cmd/tie-fm/internal/musicbrainz ./cmd/tie-fm/internal/ui

TIE_FM_MB_TEST=1 go test ./cmd/tie-fm/internal/musicbrainz -run TestLocalProviderIntegration -v

The web provider tests use httptest fixtures; the local integration test is opt-in and skips without TIE_FM_MB_TEST.