Importing your collection from Discogs
Seed your crate from a Discogs CSV export, and what to expect while it runs.
If you have been cataloguing on Discogs, you don’t have to start again. Export your collection as a CSV, hand the file to Vinyl Crate Space, and it works through the rows one by one, matching each against MusicBrainz and building your crate for you.
Start with a CSV from Discogs
You’ll need a CSV export of your Discogs collection. That part happens on Discogs, using their own export tool, and those steps are theirs to change. Once you have the file, the rest happens here.
Run the import
Do this on a computer, in the web app. On a phone, switching to another app pauses the import, so it’s the wrong tool for a long run.
- Go to Preferences → Import.
- Choose the CSV you exported.
- Look over the preview, then start the import.
- Leave the tab open until it finishes.
What comes across
- Every row we can match, CDs and other formats included, not just vinyl.
- Your Discogs folders, which become crates. Uncategorized is skipped by design, since it isn’t really a folder.
- Notes, with multi-line notes kept as you wrote them.
- Ratings.
- Media and cover condition grades.
Cover art arrives in the background. Records appear straight away and the artwork fills in over the following minutes.
How long it takes
Roughly 4 to 7 seconds a record, so 600 to 800 rows is somewhere around 45 to 70 minutes. That pace is the MusicBrainz lookups doing their work, not a fault. Start it, put a record on, and come back to it.
Stopping partway is safe
Closing the tab or losing your connection loses nothing. Run the same file again and it carries on from where it stopped, without making copies.
Re-runs aren’t quiet yet. Rows matched to records you already own get checked again on every run, so a second pass still takes a few minutes and shows the “already owned” group again. Nothing is duplicated by it.
Worth knowing
The preview can undercount what you already own. Records added before the import, by photo or by hand, usually carry no Discogs release id, so the preview may say none are already owned. The matching happens as records are added, and the final report shows the true number.
Expect a small number of doubles. In our testing against real collections, about 4 to 5 percent of rows came through as a second copy, nearly all of them against older records added by hand or by photo that carry no import identity. Have a browse through afterwards. See Spotting and merging duplicates.
Some records keep the placeholder cover. Around 87 to 90 percent come out with proper artwork. The rest mostly have no release group in MusicBrainz, which is where canonical artwork comes from, so there is nothing to fetch. We don’t use Discogs images. Add your own photo for those. See A record’s cover art looks wrong.
The slot warning can overstate. If the import warns that a number of records won’t fit your plan, it’s counting rows in the file. Rows matched to records you already own don’t use a slot, so more of them, often all, will fit. See Understanding the free plan and What happens if you go over your record limit.
Several pressings of one album are fine. If you own two pressings of the same record, the import adds each as its own copy.