Plugins¶

Plugins extend beets’ core functionality. They add new commands, fetch additional data during import, provide new metadata sources, and much more. If beets by itself doesn’t do what you want it to, you may just need to enable a plugin—or, if you want to do something new, writing a plugin is easy if you know a little Python.

Using Plugins¶

To use one of the plugins included with beets (see the rest of this page for a list), just use the plugins option in your config.yaml file, like so:

plugins: inline convert web

The value for plugins can be a space-separated list of plugin names or a YAML list like [foo, bar]. You can see which plugins are currently enabled by typing beet version.

Each plugin has its own set of options that can be defined in a section bearing its name:

plugins: inline convert web

convert:
    auto: true

Some plugins have special dependencies that you’ll need to install. The documentation page for each plugin will list them in the setup instructions. For some, you can use pip’s “extras” feature to install the dependencies, like this:

pip install beets[fetchart,lyrics,lastgenre]

Using Metadata Source Plugins¶

Some plugins provide sources for metadata in addition to MusicBrainz. These plugins share the following configuration option:

source_weight: Penalty applied to matches during import. Set to 0.0 to disable. Default: 0.5.

For example, to equally consider matches from Discogs and MusicBrainz add the following to your configuration:

plugins: discogs

discogs:
   source_weight: 0.0

Autotagger Extensions¶

chroma: Use acoustic fingerprinting to identify audio files with missing or incorrect metadata.
discogs: Search for releases in the Discogs database.
spotify: Search for releases in the Spotify database.
deezer: Search for releases in the Deezer database.
fromfilename: Guess metadata for untagged tracks from their filenames.

Metadata¶

absubmit: Analyse audio with the streaming_extractor_music program and submit the metadata to an AcousticBrainz server
acousticbrainz: Fetch various AcousticBrainz metadata
bpm: Measure tempo using keystrokes.
bpsync: Fetch updated metadata from Beatport.
edit: Edit metadata from a text editor.
embedart: Embed album art images into files’ metadata.
fetchart: Fetch album cover art from various sources.
ftintitle: Move “featured” artists from the artist field to the title field.
keyfinder: Use the KeyFinder program to detect the musical key from the audio.
importadded: Use file modification times for guessing the value for the added field in the database.
lastgenre: Fetch genres based on Last.fm tags.
lastimport: Collect play counts from Last.fm.
lyrics: Automatically fetch song lyrics.
mbsync: Fetch updated metadata from MusicBrainz.
metasync: Fetch metadata from local or remote sources
mpdstats: Connect to MPD and update the beets library with play statistics (last_played, play_count, skip_count, rating).
parentwork: Fetch work titles and works they are part of.
replaygain: Calculate volume normalization for players that support it.
scrub: Clean extraneous metadata from music files.
zero: Nullify fields by pattern or unconditionally.

Path Formats¶

albumtypes: Format album type in path formats.
bucket: Group your files into bucket directories that cover different field values ranges.
inline: Use Python snippets to customize path format strings.
rewrite: Substitute values in path formats.
the: Move patterns in path formats (i.e., move “a” and “the” to the end).

Interoperability¶

aura: A server implementation of the AURA specification.
badfiles: Check audio file integrity.
embyupdate: Automatically notifies Emby whenever the beets library changes.
fish: Adds Fish shell tab autocompletion to beet commands.
importfeeds: Keep track of imported files via .m3u playlist file(s) or symlinks.
ipfs: Import libraries from friends and get albums from them via ipfs.
kodiupdate: Automatically notifies Kodi whenever the beets library changes.
mpdupdate: Automatically notifies MPD whenever the beets library changes.
play: Play beets queries in your music player.
playlist: Use M3U playlists to query the beets library.
plexupdate: Automatically notifies Plex whenever the beets library changes.
smartplaylist: Generate smart playlists based on beets queries.
sonosupdate: Automatically notifies Sonos whenever the beets library changes.
thumbnails: Get thumbnails with the cover art on your album folders.
subsonicupdate: Automatically notifies Subsonic whenever the beets library changes.

Miscellaneous¶

bareasc: Search albums and tracks with bare ASCII string matching.
bpd: A music player for your beets library that emulates MPD and is compatible with MPD clients.
convert: Transcode music and embed album art while exporting to a different directory.
duplicates: List duplicate tracks or albums.
export: Export data from queries to a format.
filefilter: Automatically skip files during the import process based on regular expressions.
fuzzy: Search albums and tracks with fuzzy string matching.
hook: Run a command when an event is emitted by beets.
ihate: Automatically skip albums and tracks during the import process.
info: Print music files’ tags to the console.
loadext: Load SQLite extensions.
mbcollection: Maintain your MusicBrainz collection list.
mbsubmit: Print an album’s tracks in a MusicBrainz-friendly format.
missing: List missing tracks.
mstream: A music streaming server + webapp that can be used alongside beets.
random: Randomly choose albums and tracks from your library.
spotify: Create Spotify playlists from the Beets library.
types: Declare types for flexible attributes.
web: An experimental Web-based GUI for beets.

Other Plugins¶

In addition to the plugins that come with beets, there are several plugins that are maintained by the beets community. To use an external plugin, there are two options for installation:

Make sure it’s in the Python path (known as sys.path to developers). This just means the plugin has to be installed on your system (e.g., with a setup.py script or a command like pip or easy_install).
Set the pluginpath config variable to point to the directory containing the plugin. (See Configuration.)

Once the plugin is installed, enable it by placing its name on the plugins line in your config file.

Here are a few of the plugins written by the beets community:

beets-alternatives: Manages external files.
beet-amazon: Adds Amazon.com as a tagger data source.
beets-artistcountry: Fetches the artist’s country of origin from MusicBrainz.
beets-autofix: Automates repetitive tasks to keep your library in order.
beets-audible: Adds Audible as a tagger data source and provides other features for managing audiobook collections.
beets-barcode: Lets you scan or enter barcodes for physical media to search for their metadata.
beetcamp: Enables bandcamp.com autotagger with a fairly extensive amount of metadata.
beetstream: Is server implementation of the SubSonic API specification, allowing you to stream your music on a multitude of clients.
beets-bpmanalyser: Analyses songs and calculates their tempo (BPM).
beets-check: Automatically checksums your files to detect corruption.
A cmus plugin: Integrates with the cmus console music player.
beets-copyartifacts: Helps bring non-music files along during import.
beets-describe: Gives you the full picture of a single attribute of your library items.
drop2beets: Automatically imports singles as soon as they are dropped in a folder (using Linux’s inotify). You can also set a sub-folders hierarchy to set flexible attributes by the way.
dsedivec: Has two plugins: edit and moveall.
beets-follow: Lets you check for new albums from artists you like.
beetFs: Is a FUSE filesystem for browsing the music in your beets library. (Might be out of date.)
beets-goingrunning: Generates playlists to go with your running sessions.
beets-ibroadcast: Uploads tracks to the iBroadcast cloud service.
beets-importreplace: Lets you perform regex replacements on incoming metadata.
beets-jiosaavn: Adds JioSaavn.com as a tagger data source..
beets-mosaic: Generates a montage of a mosaic from cover art.
beets-noimport: Adds and removes directories from the incremental import skip list.
beets-originquery: Augments MusicBrainz queries with locally-sourced data to improve autotagger results.
beets-plexsync: Allows you to sync your Plex library with your beets library, create smart playlists in Plex, and import online playlists (from services like Spotify) into Plex.
beets-popularity: Fetches popularity values from Deezer.
beets-setlister: Generate playlists from the setlists of a given artist.
beet-summarize: Can compute lots of counts and statistics about your music library.
beets-usertag: Lets you use keywords to tag and organize your music.
whatlastgenre: Fetches genres from various music sites.
beets-xtractor: Extracts low- and high-level musical information from your songs.
beets-ydl: Downloads audio from youtube-dl sources and import into beets.
beets-yearfixer: Attempts to fix all missing original_year and year fields.