Browsing artists and groups

Overview

When you are on the Artist/group page (the page showing information about a specific artist or group) a complete artist/group description will be shown, including artist/group picture, artist/group biography, artist/group discography and much more.

Most of the data that you will see is collected from the tags on your digital music files, but there is some data that only can be added to each artist/group from the Music Information Browser.
Examples of this kind of data are:

• Born Name (An artists "real name", generally not available for groups)
• Born/formed date
• Died/disbanded date
• Aka ("Also known as" - other names that the artist/group produces music under)
• Member Of (Which other groups the artist/group is a member of)
• Artist/group home page
• Home Country
• Additional entries in the Discography list (Items that you don't have in your collection)
• Relations (Cross-relations to other artists and groups)
• A setting controlling if the entry is an artist or a group

There is also some calculated data shown, for example active years and the genres list. Active years represent the start and end years for which you have music from the artist (based on tag information) and the Genres list shows a list of all genres that the artist/group has released music in.
 

To modify data that is unique to the Music Information Browser, click the "Update Artist Information" link, located just below the biography.
A new dialog will be shown, containing several edit controls.

Updating artist/group information

Most of the controls in this dialog are self-explanatory, but there are a few things in this dialog which are worth mentioning:

• You can add or update the artist/group picture by either loading a file, pasting an image from the clipboard or drag 'n' dropping a picture from an external application to the image container. This is a useful technique which allows you to drop a picture from Firefox for example.

• You can download information for the selected artist/group by clicking the download button and then choosing one of the available plug-ins from the drop-down menu which is shown.

• You can use internal links in the biography text. An internal link is a link to a specific Music Information Browser page which will be shown when you click this link. You can create internal links of the following types: Artist/Group, Album, Genre, Publisher and Year.

• You can apply the current data for this artist/group to all tags for the files from this artist/group. To perform this operation simply click the button from the bottom toolbar. Please note that this operation will only be performed on your available files and that it can take a while to complete if there are many files that needs to be updated. The biography, the picture and the artist web page will be applied to the tags during this operation.

Artist/group discography

Below the biography on the artist/group page, the artist/group discography will be shown.

The discography shows all releases that you have from the selected artist/group in chronological order.
The releases are grouped into the available release types as the picture to the right shows.

You can optionally edit the artist/groups discography and add more releases which you don't have in your database. To edit the artist/groups discography simply click the "Update Discography" link.

After you have clicked this link, the discography editor will shown. You can add new items manually or download information using one of the available plug-ins as described above (downloading artist information).
You can also delete items from the discography editor, but only items that do not have a database match, in other words, items you have manually added or downloaded.

Appearances

Appearances are three lists (not all three may be available at the same time for an artist/group) of calculated data. The calculated data is a summarized presentation of the data related to the selected artist/group based on existing database data for this artist group.

The following types of appearances are available:

• Tracks appear on is a list which will display all unique albums/releases for which the artist/group appears on. For example, if you have an album which is not released from the selected artist/group because there are several different artists/groups on this release, it will be shown in this list.

• Remixes appear on is a list which will display all tracks for which the artist/group has produced a remix for.

• Appear as secondary artist will display all tracks for which the artist/group appears as a secondary artist.

Artist relations

Artist relations are cross-linked information to other artist/groups in the Music Information Browser. Relations can be of the following types:

• Similar Artists (Other artists/groups similar to the selected artist/group)
• Influenced By (Where this artist/group took their influences from)
• Followers (Artists/groups that were inspired by this artist/group)
• Performed Songs By (Other artists/groups that this artist/group has worked with)
• See Also (Other related artists/groups not matching the above relation types)

It's also worth to mention that Akas, Group Members and Member Of, which you edit in the artist/group editor (described above) are also relations which work in just the same way as these relations listed above.
 
Relations is a very powerful feature that will help you find connections between artists/groups that you might not be aware of.
The Now Playing pane uses artist/group relations to locate similar artists/groups to the artist/group that is currently being played, to take just one examples of why relations are important, useful and good to have.
 

Creating and editing relations
To modify relations for a specific artist/group, click the "Update Artist Relations" link.

A new dialog will be opened in which you can choose to download relations using plug-ins (highly recommended) or to manually add, edit or remove a relation.
At the top of the dialog there is a combo box in which you can select the relation type.
In the edit control below you are able to enter a new related artist/group name.
Each line in the edit control is treated as one relation.

To speed up manual linking you can click the "Get Artist..." button to pick one artist/group that already exists in your database.