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So I have a bunch of records by this Indian classical composer called Naresh Sohal, who appears in both Musicbrainz and Wikipedia, but MM does not recognise him and the only option I have next to the name is update properties... Any thoughts?

Which Build (Help > About) of MediaMonkey are you using and are you referring to the the Info Panel for the Artist not showing Artist details?

Bollen wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 10:16 pm So I have a bunch of records by this Indian classical composer called Naresh Sohal, who appears in both Musicbrainz and Wikipedia, but MM does not recognise him and the only option I have next to the name is update properties... Any thoughts?

He has an entry in Musicbrainz, but it is just a header, without (much) detail.
I replicated your issue by changing a track's artist tag to Naresh Sohal. I confirm what you report.
If I change the artist to someone with more data in MusicBrainz, then MM5 works as expected.
The MusicBrainz entry that worked OK for me (Neil Finn) had some discography, and some Genre tags at MusicBrainz.
Naresh had no (Genre) tags, and no albums in his discography.
He did have an extract from his Wikipedia biography. It seems a pity that MM5 did not at least pick that up, but maybe they gave up when the other information, that they display, is not there to be imported for Naresh.

You could enrol at MusicBrainz and supply some of the missing information for Naresh. Or you could try the MM5 MusicBrainz "update" that you mentioned. ... I have never tested that facility.

It is possible that MM have their own internal copy of the MusicBrainz db for efficiency reasons. I believe that they do this for Discogs, so MusicBrainz may be the same. If so they may have compacted that database to contain only artists whom have a meaningful amount of information. That would make sense because MusicBrainz is a community effort driven by volunteers, and their database probably is bloated with artists where people got started but never completed their project.

If you want to do something to fix this, I should try the MM5 "update" facility first. If MM do have their own copy of the MusicBrainz database, this would give you the best outcome, because you will not need to wait for MM to refresh their own database copy.

It would be useful if one of the Developers could comment. I think that it is a reasonable expectation that MM5 would have displayed his bio extract as it is available at MusicBrainz.

Hi,
Added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=18875

Test Note: Naresh Sohal is classified as ~ Person on MB not as ~ Group and Most likely that is why MM do not classify.

Anyway I added it for analyze.

Thanks Peke.

Peke wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 1:51 pm Test Note: Naresh Sohal is classified as ~ Person on MB not as ~ Group and Most likely that is why MM do not classify.

The other artist that I tested with was also classified as a person.

Replied in bug. This interesting case and I really wonder what can be done to improve things or there is some sort limit in MB API

Peke wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 4:31 pm RepI really wonder what can be done to improve things or there is some sort limit in MB API

Hopefully they will be able to show the available info, ie. the Bio.

Hi everyone, sorry for the late reply, I never got notified and I forgot about it. Thanks to everyone for your input, MM is now picking up the Bio and the correct name by default. No picture though and when I click on search it comes up with random ones that have nothing to do with him. Nevertheless, a minor inconvenience at this point.

I noticed other composers that barely have any info in MB showing up, so something is clearly working better now.

Thank you again!

What about when there is an error in the artist biography? I have a music collection featuring the vocal artist Connie Stevens and the biography summary at the top of MediaMonkey5 has a typo in the artist birth name. The artist's last name as noted in Wikipedia is "Ingolia" but MediaMonkey5 misspelled last her name as "Ingoglia". How is the short summary of the artist biography in MediaMonkey5 generated? Can this error be corrected?

The lookup likely happened when this error was present in Wikipedia, I just did mine and it was correct in MediaMonkey. Does using the 3-dots, and selecting the Artist again refresh the info to the correct information?

I tried to refresh in MediaMonkey5 but it doesn't refresh in MediaMonkey5. The information in Wikipedia and MusicBrainz is correct but the short biography in MediaMonkey5 doesn't correct the artist's lastname. If the information is sourced from Wikipedia, how does MediaMonkey5 update the information?

First try MediaMonkey 2024. You can also try selecting a different Artist match on Wikipedia, then selecting the correct Artist again.

I am a lifetime licensed user of MediaMonkey. I am not sure if installing MediaMonkey 2024 over the latest version of MediaMonkey5 would not cause any installation conflicts?

I was able to resolve this issue by selecting the 3 dots and then selecting the "Edit comment..." in the drop-down menu and then manually correcting the artist's lastname in the short biography in MediaMonkey5.

Thank you very much for your guidance on this issue.

MediaMonkey 2024 is a direct update to MediaMonkey 5. So you can install it on top, and a Lifetime License remains valid in MediaMonkey 2024.

Does MediaMonkey 2024 provide a better more stable build? Perhaps more features, etc.? I will install it if you recommend I do so. Can you please just let me know the core benefits of doing so?