Lyrics Plugin

The lyrics plugin fetches and stores song lyrics from databases on the Web. Namely, the current version of the plugin uses Lyric Wiki, Lyrics.com, and, optionally, the Google custom search API.

Fetch Lyrics During Import

To automatically fetch lyrics for songs you import, just enable the plugin by putting lyrics on your config file’s plugins line (see Plugins). When importing new files, beets will now fetch lyrics for files that don’t already have them. The lyrics will be stored in the beets database. If the import.write config option is on, then the lyrics will also be written to the files’ tags.

This behavior can be disabled with the auto config option (see below).

Fetching Lyrics Manually

The lyrics command provided by this plugin fetches lyrics for items that match a query (see Queries). For example, beet lyrics magnetic fields absolutely cuckoo will get the lyrics for the appropriate Magnetic Fields song, beet lyrics magnetic fields will get lyrics for all my tracks by that band, and beet lyrics will get lyrics for my entire library. The lyrics will be added to the beets database and, if import.write is on, embedded into files’ metadata.

The -p option to the lyrics command makes it print lyrics out to the console so you can view the fetched (or previously-stored) lyrics.

The -f option forces the command to fetch lyrics, even for tracks that already have lyrics.

Configuring

To disable automatic lyric fetching during import, set the auto option to false, like so:

lyrics:
    auto: no

By default, if no lyrics are found, the file will be left unchanged. To specify a placeholder for the lyrics tag when none are found, use the fallback configuration option:

lyrics:
    fallback: 'No lyrics found'