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

autobpm

Use Librosa to calculate the BPM from the audio.

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.

advancedrewrite

Substitute field values for items matching a query.

substitute

As an alternative to rewrite, use this plugin. The main difference between them is that this plugin never modifies the files metadata.

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-more

Finds versions of indexed releases with more tracks, like deluxe and anniversary editions.

beets-mosaic

Generates a montage of a mosaic from cover art.

beets-mpd-utils

Plugins to interface with MPD. Comes with mpd_tracker (track play/skip counts from MPD) and mpd_dj (auto-add songs to your queue.)

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-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-ytimport

Download and import your liked songs from YouTube into beets.

beets-yearfixer

Attempts to fix all missing original_year and year fields.

beets-youtube

Adds YouTube Music as a tagger data source.