Music Database

The first thing you will need to do before you can start browsing your albums is to set up your Music Database. You will need to configure your music sources via the Options window , and once these have been set up you can then use the Import options on the toolbar to load your initial music database, and to susequently update it incrementally.

Import menu

Muso can import its database from the following sources:

• LMS (Logitech Media Server, previously known as Squeezebox Server) - the source library for Squeezebox devices
• The file/folder system, via a folder scan (you set your source folders under Options / Music Sources / Music Folders) - the scan will read most common media tags - see Attribute Mapping
• iTunes

Each user of muso (on the same machine) can specify in the Options whether to use a personal database, or a shared database (available to all users).

Importing from any external source will pull in all the track attributes it can, but in some cases some attribute editing may be required in the muso database. Track editing is made easy in the Music Database page, which provides a detail grid of tracks and their attributes: you can edit in the grid but much more powerful is the ability to select multiple tracks (via control-click or shift-click or control-A to select all visible tracks) and choosing the "Edit Selected Tracks" option.

In the Edit Tracks window:

• attributes with a light blue background are those which do not have the same value in all the selected tracks (though any common prefix is shown followed by ...),
• attributes with a pink backround are those that you have edited which will be written back to all the selected tracks (those you do not edit explicitly will be left alone)
• attributes with light grey text on a white background show the displayed text in some of the selected tracks, the remainder being blank.

Important note: editing the attributes in the muso database does not automatically write any meta-data back to the files themselves - this data is private to muso, but you can choose one of the options to write tags to the files if you wish. Many users will prefer to get the external source tagging correct before importing into muso (directly from files or from Squeezebox Server/iTunes) - or if they are not correct after importing, editing the tags externally and re-importing.

If you do edit attributes in muso and subsuquently re-import from your external source, it will retain your edited attributes unless you turn on the "LMS is Master" option and re-import from Squeezebox Server (LMS) - this option indicates that LMS data takes precedence and will overwrite anything in the muso database (even if it has a value in muso and is blank in LMS).

After importing from an external source, muso can save the changes automatically or let you review them on the database edit screen first, depending upon an Option (Configuration / Importing / Preview Changes After Importing). If you choose to review, cancelling the database edit screen will throw away the imported changes (which are highlighted on the edit screen).

Muso automatically makes database savepoints as you go along, or you can add savepoints manually. Then you can revert your database to an earlier savepoint. This is all via the File / Savepoints menu option.

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