I’m finally making a real effort to add beets to my life. I’ve been hesitant because I like what I like and I (mostly) know what I’m doing, you know? I also have a lot of local independent albums that are just not likely to get tagged anyway.

But here I am. Yesterday I was able to work through:

  • Implementing my preferred directory structure and naming conventions
  • Adding album art (embedded and in the folder)
  • Embedding lyrics
  • Adding ReplyGain information

I use Navidrome as my server and have a collection of about 2000 albums.

What are some of your tips for using beets?

What cool things are you doing?

What should I be thinking about as I go about this?

  • 51dusty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 hour ago

    I’m not near my computer, rn, I’ll throw my config in here.

    I use the artifacts plug-in, auto transcode for certain formats and lastgenre

  • myrmidex@belgae.socialEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    hmmm tips, not sure. You have beets already, that’s the main tip :)

    I have it reformatting filenames, storing it in the proper paths, retrieve albumart, and that’s about it I reckon. In case I forgot anyting, I’ll update this message when home.

    As for unrecognized albums… That’s tough, I have a bunch of them too. I weighed storing them in the regular folders versus in a separate unrecognized/ folder. Went with the latter approach. I rescan that folder every month, sometimes new matches appear. That unrecognized folder is also shared to navidrome, so except for some missing album art and perhaps improper file/song names, not really an issue.

  • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    I also have a lot of local independent albums that are just not likely to get tagged anyway

    I feel your pain. I have a lot of Indie stuff from where I used to run a legit, licensed, internet radio station back in the pre-Napster days. A lot coming from the now defunct MP3.com and Bandcamp. Some of which is a bit obscure. For those, I had to tag them manually.

    • BruisedMoose@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      54 minutes ago

      Now you have me downloading 10GB of MP3.com pages so I can go searching for old albums. :D

      Do you keep those releases separated from your main library (file-wise)? I’m trying to decide if it makes sense to segregate them and manage them completely outside of beets.