(New in Helium 17.3, Premium)
This tool assists you in editing artist information for multiple artists efficiently.
You can manually edit artist details or download information for selected artists from Discogs.
Generating a List of Artists
When you start the tool, it generates a list of unique artists based on the underlying tracks from the view you launch it from.
If you start the tool from a track-list-based view, it will fully respect the selections and track filters applied in your active column filters.
Tool Layout
The tool is divided into two main sections:
- Artist List (left) – Displays all loaded artists.
- Edit Artist Control (right) – Allows you to edit data for the selected artist. This editing control offers all functionallity as when editing a single artist.
When you select an artist in the left-hand list, the information stored in Helium's library is loaded into the Edit Artist Control, enabling you to make changes.
To switch between artists:
- Ctrl+N – Move to the next artist in the list.
- Ctrl+B – Move to the previous artist in the list.
- Ctrl+Shift+N - Move to the next selected artist in the list.
- Ctrl+Shift+B - Move to the previous selected artist in the list.
If you make changes to the current artist, they are saved in memory before loading the next artist. Artists that have been modified are marked with the text "Artist changed" in the left-hand list.
Within the Edit Artist Control, you can press Alt to display accessibility shortcuts for quickly focusing specific fields (e.g., Alt+C to focus the Country field).
Filtering the List of Artists
You can filter the list of artists using the filtering control at the top right. The options include:
- All artists
- Artists with pictures
- Artists without pictures
Selecting Artists for Downloading
By default, all artists are selected, indicated by a checkbox to the left of each artist.
You can modify the selection using the Select button, which provides the following commands:
- Select all – Select all artists.
- Select none – Deselect all artists.
- Select all without pictures – Select artists that do not have pictures.
- Custom – Open a dialog to select artists matching specific criteria (e.g., artists without a country or formation year set).
You can also manually select or deselect artists by clicking their checkboxes in the list.
Click Download to fetch information for all selected artists.
Downloading Artist Information
If an artist in Helium's library has a Discogs Artist ID, the tool uses it to find the most accurate match on Discogs.
If no Discogs ID is available, the search will use the artist's name.
Handling Multiple Matches
When multiple results are returned from Discogs, a page with two sections is displayed:
- List of Artist Matches (left) – Shows possible matches, each with a preview picture (if available) and the artist's name.
- Preview Pane (right) – Displays the selected match as rendered on the Discogs webpage.
Select a match by clicking Select, then proceed to the next artist.
- Click Cancel to skip downloading for the current artist.
- Click Cancel All to stop the entire download process.
When an artist's information is downloaded, the in-memory cache is updated with the new data. Helium retrieves as much information as possible from Discogs and attempts to infer the born/formed year from the downloaded biography if available.
Saving Changes
All changes—whether made manually or via downloads—are stored in memory.
To save changes to Helium's library, click the Save button. Helium will iterate through all modified artists and save their information to the library.