Releases and metadata

Most music apps model “an album”: one title, one cover, one track list. Real collections don’t work that way. You might own the original CD, the remaster, and a vinyl pressing of the same record, and they differ in track lists, timings, artwork, and credits. bae models releases: each import is a specific pressing, and pressings of the same album are grouped together.

Albums group releases

In the library, an album with several pressings is one entry. The album page shows a release picker; each release keeps its own track list, cover, year, label, catalog number, and credits. One release is the primary: the one the album grid and playback default to. Set any release as primary with Set as primary release in the album menu, and pick a different release for listening at any time; bae remembers your choice per album.

What a release knows

Identified releases carry the databases’ knowledge, not just track names:

• Pressing details: label, catalog number, barcode, country, format, year.
• Credits: performers, producers, engineers, per release and per track.
• Classical structure: composers, works, and their parts, linked to the recordings of them. The library’s composer view is built from this; see Browsing and search.
• Identity: which exact MusicBrainz or Discogs release this is.

Once applied, these values are the release’s own: bae keeps no link back to the source, and edits change them in place.

Editing

Metadata is yours to correct. Edit… in the album menu opens the release editor, the same form the import uses: album title and artist, pressing details, and every track’s title, artist, and numbering. Save writes your changes; Cancel discards them.

Edits live in bae’s database only. Your files’ embedded tags are never rewritten; the files stay byte-for-byte as imported.

Identify again

If a release was imported as unknown, matched to the wrong pressing, or the database has since improved, the editor’s Identify controls run identification again on the existing release: Automatic identifies it from its files, and Search opens the typed search. Picking a pressing replaces the editor’s values at once; Save keeps them, and Cancel keeps what you had.

Covers

Every release has one display cover. Change cover offers the databases’ artwork and the image files that came with the release. bae keeps its own copy of the chosen cover, sized for display, so the original scan in your folder stays untouched. Tap a cover anywhere to open the full gallery of a release’s images.

Deleting

Deleting a release removes it from the library and, for a release in the cloud, its copies from your cloud home. Your own files are never deleted: bae only forgets about them.