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# MusicBrainz Submit Plugin

The `mbsubmit` plugin provides extra prompt choices when an import session fails to find a good enough match for a release. Additionally, it provides an `mbsubmit` command that prints the tracks of the current album in a format that is parseable by MusicBrainz’s track parser. The prompt choices are:

- Print the tracks to stdout in a format suitable for MusicBrainz’s track parser.

- Open the program Picard with the unmatched folder as an input, allowing you to start submitting the unmatched release to MusicBrainz with many input fields already filled in, thanks to Picard reading the preexisting tags of the files.

For the last option, Picard is assumed to be installed and available on the machine including a `picard` executable. Picard developers list download options. other GNU/Linux distributions may distribute Picard via their package manager as well.

## Usage

Enable the `mbsubmit` plugin in your configuration (see Using Plugins) and select one of the options mentioned above. Here the option `Print tracks` choice is demonstrated:

    No matching release found for 3 tracks.
    For help, see: https://beets.readthedocs.org/en/latest/faq.html#nomatch
    [U]se as-is, as Tracks, Group albums, Skip, Enter search, enter Id, aBort,
    Print tracks, Open files with Picard? p
    01. An Obscure Track - An Obscure Artist (3:37)
    02. Another Obscure Track - An Obscure Artist (2:05)
    03. The Third Track - Another Obscure Artist (3:02)

    No matching release found for 3 tracks.
    For help, see: https://beets.readthedocs.org/en/latest/faq.html#nomatch
    [U]se as-is, as Tracks, Group albums, Skip, Enter search, enter Id, aBort,
    Print tracks?

You can also run `beet mbsubmit QUERY` to print the track information for any album:

    $ beet mbsubmit album:"An Obscure Album"
    01. An Obscure Track - An Obscure Artist (3:37)
    02. Another Obscure Track - An Obscure Artist (2:05)
    03. The Third Track - Another Obscure Artist (3:02)

As MusicBrainz currently does not support submitting albums programmatically, the recommended workflow is to copy the output of the `Print tracks` choice and paste it into the parser that can be found by clicking on the “Track Parser” button on MusicBrainz “Tracklist” tab.

## Configuration

To configure the plugin, make a `mbsubmit:` section in your configuration file. The following options are available:

- format: The format used for printing the tracks, defined using the same template syntax as beets’ path formats. Default: `$track. $title - $artist ($length)`.

- threshold: The minimum strength of the autotagger recommendation that will cause the `Print tracks` choice to be displayed on the prompt. Default: `medium` (causing the choice to be displayed for all albums that have a recommendation of medium strength or lower). Valid values: `none`, `low`, `medium`, `strong`.

- picard_path: The path to the `picard` executable. Could be an absolute path, and if not, `$PATH` is consulted. The default value is simply `picard`. Windows users will have to find and specify the absolute path to their `picard.exe`. That would probably be: `C:\Program Files\MusicBrainz Picard\picard.exe`.

Please note that some values of the `threshold` configuration option might require other `beets` command line switches to be enabled in order to work as intended. In particular, setting a threshold of `strong` will only display the prompt if `timid` mode is enabled. You can find more information about how the recommendation system works at Autotagger Matching Options.