MM5 2188 Lyrics are downloaded and displayed, not tagged, should not

[Linwood]

I have been noticing something and finally realized it looks like a bug.

I have a non-gold version that should not auto-tag. Right? Meaning unless I use the menu pick.

I have the lyrics column displayed on the All Tracks display. Most tracks do not have lyrics yet as I have not downloaded them. Periodically I'll suddenly see them pop up while I am working on something else, they simply appear.

I decided to test it, so I started clicking on individual tracks in that display. Quite a few then, within a second or two, had lyrics pop up that were not there before. If I go into properties they are indeed present.

HOWEVER, If I use another program (TagScanner 6.0.35 in this case) it does not show the lyrics, so they have not been saved in tags.

I also closed MM5 (crash -- probably related to to synchronizing with google at the time), restarted, and the lyrics were not there.

If I use the auto-tag menu option, and accept (Tag and Continue) from there, they are saved in the file in tags, properly. They survive.

So it appears that something is continually downloading lyrics for tracks as they are selected, showing them on the screen, but are not saving them to the file. It seems incorrect that it is even looking them up (in a non-gold version)? Should it not download lyrics only on request?

This seems fairly easy to reproduce, let me know if you want more information.

Linwood

[PetrCBR]

Check Options/Metadata lookup. Don't you have checked 'Look up missing lyrics' checkbox ?

[Linwood]

Check Options/Metadata lookup. Don't you have checked 'Look up missing lyrics' checkbox ?

Well, yes. But that seems rather silly (for a non-gold user). It looks it up then discards it when you restart the program?

But it's the implied link to the "Auto-Tag" section and manually invoked auto-tag feature that I do not quite understand. The Lookup Lyrics is the place you specify the sources of the lookup. It looks like you would have to check that box to enable the list of lyrics suppliers (but probably not in fact?). But I just tried un-checking it, and auto-tag still looked up lyrics. With that set of suppliers? Unclear.

I was checking that box to enable the lookup during auto-tag, something I realize now is not needed. Of course "Auto-tag" in this case is even more misleading.

Gold is required to "Automatically lookup Artwork and lyrics so that you don't have to". Yet... the MANUALLY invoked feature is called "Auto-Tag", which does not require Gold. The features that do require gold are not (apparently) the automatically looked up part, but the tagging part (in that I cannot check that box)?

It goes on to say, for gold only: "MediaMonkey can also download the metadata without updating the tags so that it isn't saved until you approve." I would assume that is the box I am not permitted to check for "Update Tags". This would seem to imply it can look up lyrics and then save them manually in some fashion in Gold only. Yet I just tried it in non-Gold -- I let this dynamic lookup occur, went into properties and it "OK" and it saved the lyrics to the tags (which would otherwise have been lost on program restart apparently). So this deferred manual save apparently does not require gold?

But... if I run the auto-tag feature, in spite of already having looked up the lyrics, I see it going through the step that says "Loading lyrics" (that takes the longest of any of the steps). So the manual lookup involved in "Auto" tag is not skipped from having done an automated lookup earlier.

I guess my feedback, as someone who has never used MM4, and as a non-Gold user, is that the whole gold vs. non-gold, and separately the "auto" vs manual, seem very confusing in the way they are worded and structured in the options. Especially that "Auto-Tag" is a manual thing, and the options that control it are labeled "Auto" but things like lyric lookup, which is even more automated is not part of the "auto" section?

Indeed, as a non-Gold user who is considering if there is value in Gold, I grow more and more confused what would actually happen if I was Gold. And with so many anomalies in the manual tagging that cause me to abort the run and edit manually in properties, to worry that I do not want Gold because it might run amok in background.

Incidentally, is the Gold really more about "Background" tagging? And the term "auto" which is non-gold is intended to be "we look it up for you" as opposed to "automatically invoked"?

Anyway, just generally confused by the terminology and design. Maybe it's a language thing?