So with the most recent Spotify nonsense I’ve finally had enough and I’m going back to mp3. Unfortunately, I haven’t had to do this since Bush left office and I do not have the free time to manually sort and document every single file I have. I’ve been using MusicBrainz Picard but I don’t know if the learning curve is steeper than I have traction for or if it’s just really picky.
Anyone got suggestions on how to better manage all my jams? I’m trying to make it user friendly as I can for the family and so far I’m not winning lol
on windows i used mp3tag, and on linux i use puddletag
Musicbrainz Picard, there is no better user friendly solution.
Yes, it can seem like a lot of work, but you can also look at the flip side: you can learn a whole lot about the music you like in the process.
If music metadata is missing for stuff you have and like, add it to musicbrainz yourself. No, it isn’t particularly fun, but someone has to do it. I do it sometimes for more “local” albums of which I own the physical record or CD.
If shit is really messed up and you have a historic collection of mp3s from back in the days when getting a full album took a long time: don’t be scared to throw stuff out and source it again. It’ll likely be much higher quality for same or smaller filesize and have better metadata from source already, which makes using musicbrainz a lot easier. And what took many hours back then takes seconds to minutes now.
I’m using MusicBrainz Picard. However there are some tricks to spare you some nerves:
- you can set weights to release types in the settings. Singles and compilations should have a lesser weight than albums.
- Don’t add too much music at once. Or you’ll get crazy selecting the correct releases. I usually go with one artist a time. Especially for older artists I just add one album a time. You can enable the file Browser in the view settings, than you can just drop them in one after the other.
- in the right pane you can just drag and drop whole releases to merge them together.
- Also noticable is the rename feature in the settings. It’s just awesome!
File names and directories🗿
Nicotine (soulseek) -> beets -> navidrome
MP3Tag + MusicBrainz Picard. I use MP3Tag to set the ID3 tags and picard to move them into the folder structure I want.
It takes a couple hours to set everything up, but I can’t rely on Musicbrainz alone because my music has no metadata on Musicbrainz, so I set the tags myself.
You can easily import music metadata to musicbrainz with userscripts: https://github.com/murdos/musicbrainz-userscripts
I use the discogs and bandcamp one frequently.
Install the userscript in your browser, and if you find your album on discogs or other sites, it adds a button there, and with few clicks it transfers the data to musicbrainz. Then in picard search again, or copy the link from musicbrainz to the searchbar in picard
Here’s another tool to import music metadata to musicbrainz.
Thanks. Didn’t know these existed.
Yes, 100% this. I use both of them regularly. A lot of new releases are on band camp and not even on discogs anymore. But combined with music brains Picard, they are awesome.
You can move files to new folders with Mp3Tag, too. It’s normally all I use for managing my files and metadata.
Picard and Lidarr
Lidarr works again? Last time I tried I wasn’t working
The metadata server is currently being nursed back to a working state
So I can’t just put it in docker and forget no?
Never were, seemingly never was.
There’s a docker build that has a patch for the metadata; It’s spotty, but I’ve been using it just fine. I will link it here in a few when I get to my compose file. Edit: blampe/lidarr:latest
Hey! Thanks for the checkup! Lidarr is up and running
You’re very welcome, congrats!
I’m using beets but it’s mostly a manual process.
Check this comment/it’s comments as well: https://lemmy.nocturnal.garden/comment/189300
Just do a few albums at a time. Your playlist will expand over time.
Highly customized Picard, I find that I get the most accurate metadata with it.
Lidarr + Picard when needed is about all I do, need for Picard is pretty rare at this point, except when pulling in tracks from burned CDs of esoteric mixes I made quite a long time ago.
Sonarr + Picard
Do you mean Lidarr? Sonarr is the TV one (confusingly).
Whoops! Brain no worky.
Fixed, thanks!
If you’re an Apple household, Apple Music (iTunes) is still great. I don’t pay for streaming services; I buy music on iTunes/Bandcamp and rip CDs.
Apple Music has a fantastic interface for managing metadata, creating playlists, and performing complex batch jobs with AppleScript. I sync my iPhone and iPod Nano every time I add a new album, and I host my media folder on NextCloud for listening on other devices.
Every time I’ve checked in to see if I can use Apple Music, it won’t do anything without a subscription. Are you using it without one?
The Music app (also called Apple Music, formerly iTunes) is a library manager at its core. You don’t need an Apple Music subscription to use it. It runs on macOS and Windows.
Hey, OOTL here, what spotify nonsense ar eyou referring to here?
- Continually increasing subscription prices
- Ripping off artists
- Introducing AI bullshit
- Blocking explicit songs unless users verify their age with a third party
Thanks, I noticed that clicking on an artists name now took you to their About page. Can’t find the artist’s top songs anywhere or atleast I can’t find them. Rage.
EasyTAG is a simple application for viewing and editing tags in audio files.
It supports MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Opus, Ogg Speex, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack, Monkey’s Audio, and WavPack files.
And works under Linux or Windows.Used to use this, but sometimes, opus encoded audio in ogg files gets somewhat corrupt when adding a cover image
Command line warrior here. I use wrtag. It rocks and is super fast and easy.
