How ingestion works
Getting a catalogue into Mercury is two deliveries that meet in the middle:
- A metadata CSV describing labels, albums, tracks, versions, tags, writers, publishers and codes. Uploading it under Ingest → Metadata creates the releases, recordings, albums and tracks. See Prepare your metadata CSV and Import metadata.
- The audio and artwork files named in that CSV, delivered to your organisation’s storage with the Ingestigator app or a Dropbox folder. Mercury matches them to tracks by filename, transcodes previews and generates waveforms. See Deliver audio and artwork.
Either can come first. Until both are in, tracks exist without playable audio and show a No file state under Ingest → Assets.
What happens to your CSV
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Uploaded, queued | The file is stored and waiting for validation |
| Valid or invalid | Validation passed, or failed with per row errors (see Fix import errors) |
| In progress | Releases and tracks are being written; a progress bar shows tracks and albums done |
| Complete | Everything imported |
| Complete with errors | Some releases failed; open the errors to see which |
| Failed or aborted | Nothing further will happen; fix and upload again |
Uploading the same catalogue again updates existing records by code rather than duplicating them, so the normal way to correct metadata in bulk is to fix the CSV and reimport.
Where audio and artwork go
Each track’s audio row starts as Pending, becomes Queued and Processing while it is found and transcoded, and ends Available, No file (the filename was not found where Mercury looked) or Failed (the file could not be processed). Artwork follows the same states. Rescan buttons tell Mercury to look again after you have added files.
Subpublishing
Releases created on a label covered by a publishing agreement are queued for the agent automatically, or delivered straight away if the agreement auto delivers. See Outgoing releases.