In this part of the wizard you specify the text search string. Remember that you are attempting to locate a release of an album. You can specify separate search information for the name of the album and the name of the artist. Any one of the fields can be left empty if you want to generalize your search. Note that if every file selected in the main window has the same album and/or artist information, the search field will be pre-filled with the common names.
While searching Discogs it is possible to explicitly constrain a pattern to a particular database field. This can be forced in the via the Explicit checkboxes. It has been found that non explicit searches are far more forgiving as to how data is specified. While Yate contains numerous workarounds for the explicit data representations there are likely more exceptions which have not been accounted for. Performing a search without any explicit components more closely matches the results found when searching on discogs.com. It is possible that explicit searches can return a smaller more meaningful set of results.
If for any reason you want to manually specify a Discogs release id, you can specify the id number in the id field. If you want to specify a Discogs master id, prefix the id with the letter m. Note that when an id is specified, the Album and Artist fields are ignored. The id can be specified in any of the following forms:
- #
- a release id
- r#
- a release id
- [r#]
- a release id
- m#
- a master id
- [m#]
- a master id
If you have a Discogs Release or Master id as described above, in the system clipboard, you can paste it in via the Command-I (⌘I) keyboard shortcut. The id search field will be set appropriately and the Album and Artist search fields will be cleared. Note that you do not have to give the focus to the id search field.
If you want to search by barcode place a UPC/EAN number in the id field with a U (case insensitive) anywhere in the field.
Example: if you are searching for John Doe's Really Good album:
- John Doe (non explicit), Really Good (non explicit)
- Will search all of Discogs for "John Doe Really Good"
- John Doe (explicit), Really Good (non explicit)
- Will search all of Discogs for "Really Good" and only artist fields for "John Doe"
- John Doe (non explicit), Really Good (explicit)
- Will search all of Discogs for "John Doe" and only album fields for "Really Good"
- John Doe (explicit), Really Good (explicit)
- Will search only artist fields for "John Doe" and only album fields for "Really Good"
You can also specify how many results you want to return on any one search request. If you cannot find your desired release in the returned list, you can request additional results. You cannot issue more than one request per second to the Discogs API. The Auto mode will issue one request per second until all of the search results have been accumulated. This may take a while. You can view your progress in the status bar at the bottom of the window. If you get tired of waiting you can Cancel the accumulation. You can always manually request additional information on the next screen of the wizard.
When results (or all the results if Auto is specified) are available, the result list will be displayed.
Note that if all the files in the current selection already have a common Discogs release id, the wizard will open immediately to the release display. If you want to look for a different release, you can click on the New Search button.