# Search MusicBrainz

The action performs a MusicBrainz search equivalent to the search performed by the MusicBrainz wizard.

All text fields may contain any of the escape sequences described in Escape Sequences.

You can search using album and artist metadata or by barcode.

When searching by barcode the barcode field must not resolve to be empty. At runtime all characters which are not decimal digits are removed before searching.

When not searching by barcode you must specify at least one of the album or artist fields.

The search results are returned as list of matches which are separated by the List Secondary Delimiter \: (●). Each match is stored as a key-value list. The key-value list is constructed such that items are separated by the default list delimiter \~ (⏎). Keys are separated by values with the list key-value delimiter \k (≔).

The following keys may be present: Album, Artist, Compilation, Country, Discs, Label, Media, Release id, Release Group id, Tracks and Year.

Any item which has more than one value will separate the values with the multi-value delimiter \m.

As in the MusicBrainz Wizard you can specify the maximum number of results to return. You can override this at runtime by setting named variable Search Discogs/MusicBrainz Limit to the number you'd prefer. The number is adjusted to be one of 25, 50, 75 or 100. If the named variable is empty, the specified value will be used. Note that the named variable is also used by the Search Discogs statement.

If a network error occurred, the Data Source Access Error will describe the error.

These types of requests are rate limited and can pause an action if multiple requests are made. While running, one or more status messages may be displayed in the main window's status bar. If the Status Bar Message Suffix named variable is not empty, it's contents will be appended to the displayed message. This can be used to display a means of soft cancelling a repeated sequence. For example you can test if a modifier key is pressed.