MBSync Plugin

This plugin provides the mbsync command, which lets you fetch metadata from MusicBrainz for albums and tracks that already have MusicBrainz IDs. This is useful for updating tags as they are fixed in the MusicBrainz database, or when you change your mind about some config options that change how tags are written to files. If you have a music library that is already nicely tagged by a program that also uses MusicBrainz like Picard, this can speed up the initial import if you just import “as-is” and then use mbsync to get up-to-date tags that are written to the files according to your beets configuration.

Usage

Enable the mbsync plugin in your configuration (see Using Plugins) and then run beet mbsync QUERY to fetch updated metadata for a part of your collection (or omit the query to run over your whole library).

This plugin treats albums and singletons (non-album tracks) separately. It first processes all matching singletons and then proceeds on to full albums. The same query is used to search for both kinds of entities.

The command has a few command-line options:

  • To preview the changes that would be made without applying them, use the -p (--pretend) flag.
  • By default, files will be moved (renamed) according to their metadata if they are inside your beets library directory. To disable this, use the -M (--nomove) command-line option.
  • If you have the import.write configuration option enabled, then this plugin will write new metadata to files’ tags. To disable this, use the -W (--nowrite) option.
  • To customize the output of unrecognized items, use the -f (--format) option. The default output is format_item or format_album for items and albums, respectively.