thoughts.theden.sh

Organising One's Music Library

The Setup #

Recently I’ve made efforts to have a local lossless music collection. The setup is humble:

Here is the client on MacOS Wes Montgomery on Plexamp

Cool thing is it allows me to stream library when I’m outside, download locally, etc. most of the cool features that Spotify and Apple Music have, but without the negatives that come with it, like paying for a subscriptions, being tracked, or having your tracks from a playlist removed for whatever reason that the providers decide. ;

Organising Music #

Anyone that owned an iPod or MP3 player back in the day knows the pain of editing ID3 metadata and adding album art for their tunes so they appear clean on their device. Fortunately over the years, things have gotten easier—I’ll go through some tools I tried and my thoughts on what worked and what didn’t for me.

MusicBrainz Picard #

Comment: Probably my favourite tool, most used for me.

Pros:

Cons:

Beets #

Comment: Command line driven, very configurable, opinionated (in my opinion), but works well, and people seem to love the tool. However I just end up using MusicBrainz Picard most of the time.

Pros:

Cons:

Bliss #

Comment: Solid, but didn’t work for me and I got a refund. It could work really well for others.

Pros:

Cons:

Mp3tag #

Comment: Similar to MusicBrainz Picard, but I didn’t really use because it’s not open source, and doesn’t support linux. I’ve read it’s solid for Windows users (but Picard supports windows anyway). An open source version I’ve seen of Mp3tag is Puddletag.

MediaMonkey #

Comment: Also didn’t really use this since it’s Windows and Android only. Many that organised music in the early 2000s would remember MediamMonkey, good to know the project is still going strong. Note that although there is a free version, there are higher paid tier versions, so for serious use it’s probably not free.

Roon #

Comment: Too expensive for many ($13/mo or $700 lifetime subscription), closed source. Would replace my entire Plex setup for music (organising isn’t the main feature of roon). I’ve heard great things about it, especially with its features that appeal to audiophiles. There is a free trial, but if I like it I’d have to pay the sub, so you I can’t miss out on what I don’t know I guess?

Miscellaneous Tools #