How to Use Catalog Manager

Catalog Manager (Catalog -> Manager) is the best way to organize your catalog, set up contracts, and do any item cleanup not handled by Import Cleanup. It works much like a file browser. Use the left pane to view artist releases and tracks by clicking the arrow symbol on the left. Click on or use the search in the top-left to load the artist, release, or track in the main pane. Catalog manager also supports a variety of drag-and-drop functionality to assist in cleanup. Let's examine the available features.

Creating Artists and Releases

Use the "Create Artist" and "Create Release" buttons on top-left toolbar to add new objects to your catalog. If the release you're trying to create is available on Spotify, use the "Create from Spotify URL or URI" to automatically create the artist, release, and all tracks along with artwork all pulled straight from Spotify's public API. If you're starting from scratch, we recommend doing a data import using a source with good metadata to let our Import Cleanup tool create the bulk of your catalog. Bandcamp, Redeye, Secretly, and The Orchard are all great sources to start with.

Aliases

The same artist might be listed differently in metadata across your different distribution sources. For example, The Beatles, Beatles, The, and Beatles. IC creates artists for each of these variations, and lets you group them together using aliases. Set Artist A as an alias of Artist B to have all of Artist A's releases grouped under Artist B. Here's how you'd do it:

Click on Artist A from the left-side pane to load it in the main pane of the catalog manager
Select "Edit", update "Alias of" to "Artist B", and hit "Save"
Artist A will be removed from the sidebar, all of their releases will show up under Artist B, and they'll be listed in the "Aliases" section of Artist B's page.

Assigning and Moving Items

Catalog manager shows the items related to artists, releases, and tracks in tables on detail pages. Each item table lets you select multiple items, and either drag-and-drop or use the "Actions" drop-down menu to assign them to the appropriate object. You can also use the "Actions" menu unassign items from their current release or track.

Any leftover unassigned items from Import Cleanup will be easily visible from the "Unassigned Items" badges next to artists. Click the artist to see which items need to be assigned, and move them to their appropriate releases and tracks using the methods described above. When there are unassigned items without an artist in your catalog, there will be an (Unknown Artist) with an Unassigned Items badge to use for cleanup.

Assigning Contracts

Use "Edit" on the release and track pages to update their contracts. You can create new contracts, ledgers, and payees directly within the forms. Use "Assign Contract(s)" and "Unassign Contract(s)" in the "Actions" drop-down in item tables to update item-level contracts. Catalog manager uses several badges to assist with managing contracts, here's how each one of the works:

Missing Contracts: On the artist level, indicates there are releases without contracts within the artist. Individual releases without contracts are also marked similarly.
Track Contracts: Indicates the artist or release contains tracks with their own contracts. Individual tracks with contracts are also marked similarly.
Item Contracts: Indicates the artist, release, or track contains items with their own contracts.

Merging and Moving Releases and Tracks

Releases and tracks can be easily merged and moved within the Catalog Manager. In order to move a Release, drag-and-drop that release to another artist to change its artist. This can also be done by using the "Edit" function on the release page itself by updating the Artist field.

The Catalog Manager also supports merging releases. A merge moves all items from the source into the target, matching at track level where possible, and then deletes the source release and all of its tracks. Drag-and-drop a release into another one to merge them. Dragging Release A onto Release B will delete Release A and reassign all of its items to Release B.

Similar to releases, tracks can be drag-and-dropped onto releases to update their parent release, or onto other tracks to merge them.