Software update: MusicBrainz Picard 2.8

Version 2.8 of MusicBrainz Picard has been released. MusicBrainz is a open contentmusic database, which can be accessed to appropriately tag music tracks. Picard is the official program to request, edit and submit tags. MusicBrainz Picard is open source and is being developed for Linux, macOS and Windows. The most important changes made in this release are listed below for you:

Support for long path names on Windows

Picard is now able to read and save files with path names longer than 259 characters on Windows. The traditional Windows API limits the length of file paths to 259 characters, and Picard had to take care to shorten paths accordingly.

With this release Picard can now load files with a long path on all supported Windows versions. By default Picard will still enforce a 259 character limit when saving, but you can enable support for longer paths in the File Naming Options†

Be aware that some Windows software might not be able to properly access those files. In particular Windows Explorer, even on current Windows 10 or 11, cannot rename files with long path names or create new files inside folders if the resulting path length would exceed the length limit.

Loading advanced relationships on large releases

For releases containing more than 500 tracks, eg large box sets, the MusicBrainz web service does exclude the detailed per-track relationships from the web service response for performance reasons. That meant even if you had “Use track relationships” enabled in Picard, you would miss per-track information about eg performers or conductors on those releases.

Picard 2.8 now supports loading the relationships for those releases as well. Loading such a release takes a bit longer, because additional requests (one per 100 tracks) need to be made to fetch the data.

Lookup and submit disc IDs from CD ripper log files

Picard can now lookup and submit IDs from CD ripping log files created by EAC, XLD or Whipper. The documentation provides a detailed tutorial for this feature† Please note the known limitation that for EAC or XLD logs from discs with trailing data tracks the disc ID calculation will not be correct. Whipper logs are not affected by this.

Drop disc ID URLs

If you drag and drop the URL to a MusicBrainz disc ID page or paste such a URL into Picard’s search field the disc ID lookup dialog for this disc ID will open, allowing you to quickly load one of the linked releases.

Better error icons for file loading / saving errors

Picard now uses more descriptive error icons when loading or saving a file failed. Permissions errors are indicated by a lock icon, if a file or directory was not found this is indicated by a question mark and all other errors will have an exclamation mark.

AcousticBrainz integration has been removed

The AcousticBrainz integration has been removed. This follows the announcement from earlier this year that the AcousticBrainz project as it currently exists will be discontinued, see the blog post AcousticBrainz: Making a hard decision to end the project for details.