Last Updated on September 1, 2020
In Operation
Beets is a strictly command-line only affair.
Start your adventures with the program’s import command. Direct it to a directory containing music files, and it’ll import those files into your library, correcting the tags along the way. And if you’ve defined plugins in the config.yaml file, it’ll also add album art and lyrics. Your music with corrected tags and metadata will be stored in the directory defined in that config.yaml file.
For example, you can import your music library and seek to correct the tags with the command:
where path is the top directory of your music collection.
The import command has a wide range of optional command flags for additional functionality.
I’ve had bad experiences with music taggers in the past. Therefore when I review this type of software, I use a small music library consisting of exclusively open source music albums for my initial testing. Some of these albums attract little attention, and metadata isn’t often available.
For each album, you’re offered a range of options. For example, in the image above, there are no matches for Junpei’s Candlegravity album. It isn’t in the MusicBrainz database. I can choose one of the candidates, skip the album, use as-is, and more. There are other options that crop up such as Apply, More candidates, etc.
How long it takes to import your library depends on the similarity checks with the MusicBrainz software. If there’s a matching release, it’s automatic. If not, you’ll be asked questions as to what beets should do. My test music library generated a lot of questions, but for most use cases, it shouldn’t take too long unless you’ve got a huge music collection.
Just like any database, you can perform queries on your music database, modify metadata, and move/copy/remove/update music from your library.
What makes beets really interesting is its range of plugins. The plugins add functionality to the software, letting you run new commands, fetch additional data, define new metadata sources, improve interoperability and more besides. There’s so many interesting plugins, I’ve only thoroughly explored a dozen. My particular favorites are fetchart, lyrics, lastgenre, and Chromaprint/Acoustid. The last one uses acoustic fingerprinting to identify audio files with missing or incorrect metadata.
You specify which plugins to use by using the plugins option in your config.yaml file.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary