MPDStats Plugin

mpdstats is a plugin for beets that collects statistics about your listening habits from MPD. It collects the following information about tracks:

  • play_count: The number of times you fully listened to this track.
  • skip_count: The number of times you skipped this track.
  • last_played: UNIX timestamp when you last played this track.
  • rating: A rating based on play_count and skip_count.

Installing Dependencies

This plugin requires the python-mpd2 library in order to talk to the MPD server.

Install the library from pip, like so:

$ pip install python-mpd2

Add the mpdstats plugin to your configuration (see Using Plugins).

Usage

Use the mpdstats command to fire it up:

$ beet mpdstats

Configuration

To configure the plugin, make an mpd: section in your configuration file. The available options are:

  • host: The MPD server hostname. Default: The $MPD_HOST environment variable if set, falling back to localhost otherwise.
  • port: The MPD server port. Default: The $MPD_PORT environment variable if set, falling back to 6600 otherwise.
  • password: The MPD server password. Default: None.
  • music_directory: If your MPD library is at a different location from the beets library (e.g., because one is mounted on a NFS share), specify the path here. Default: The beets library directory.
  • rating: Enable rating updates. Default: yes.
  • rating_mix: Tune the way rating is calculated (see below). Default: 0.75.

A Word on Ratings

Ratings are calculated based on the play_count, skip_count and the last action (play or skip). It consists in one part of a stable_rating and in another part on a rolling_rating. The stable_rating is calculated like this:

stable_rating = (play_count + 1.0) / (play_count + skip_count + 2.0)

So if the play_count equals the skip_count, the stable_rating is always 0.5. More play_counts adjust the rating up to 1.0. More skip_counts adjust it down to 0.0. One of the disadvantages of this rating system, is that it doesn’t really cover recent developments. e.g. a song that you loved last year and played over 50 times will keep a high rating even if you skipped it the last 10 times. That’s were the rolling_rating comes in.

If a song has been fully played, the rolling_rating is calculated like this:

rolling_rating = old_rating + (1.0 - old_rating) / 2.0

If a song has been skipped, like this:

rolling_rating = old_rating - old_rating / 2.0

So rolling_rating adapts pretty fast to recent developments. But it’s too fast. Taking the example from above, your old favorite with 50 plays will get a negative rating (<0.5) the first time you skip it. Also not good.

To take the best of both worlds, we mix the ratings together with the rating_mix factor. A rating_mix of 0.0 means all rolling and 1.0 means all stable. We found 0.75 to be a good compromise, but fell free to play with that.

Warning

This has only been tested with MPD versions >= 0.16. It may not work on older versions. If that is the case, please report an issue.