Moe 2.5.0

The ultimate tool for managing your music library.

Moe is our resident Music-Organizer-Extraordinaire who’s sole purpose is to give you full control over your music library by streamlining the process between downloading/ripping music to your filesystem and listening to it with your favorite music player.

In short, Moe maintains a database of your music library that can be updated with various metadata sources, queried, edited, etc. through either an API or command-line interface. All of these features, and more, are made available by a highly extensible plugin ecosystem.

Because all of this functionality is available as a python API which doesn’t always require a database of music to operate on, Moe also provides an extensive suite of tools for handling and operating on music files. This can greatly simplify or enhance any other script/program that deals with music.

Usage

CLI

Moe comes with a command-line interface which is how most users will take advantage of the library management features. Below is a screenshot of Moe importing an album from the filesystem and adding it to the underlying database all while fixing tags, relocating the files, and anything else you can imagine.

Once added to Moe, querying your library or manipulating your music by editing tags, renaming files, etc. is all just a single command away. The ultimate goal is to automate away any tedius and time-consuming steps you have in your workflow without sacrificing the attention to detail. With the help of an extremely flexible plugin system, you can easily fine-tune your music library exactly how you like.

Library

As previously mentioned, all of Moe’s music management logic and functionality is also available as a python library. As an example, below is a standalone script that takes an album directory and Musicbrainz release ID from the command-line, and then updates the underlying files’ tags with any changes from Musicbrainz.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import argparse
from pathlib import Path

from moe.config import Config, ConfigValidationError
from moe.library import Album
from moe.write import write_tags
import moe_musicbrainz

def main():
    try:
        Config(config_dir=Path.home() / ".config" / "my_script", init_db=False)
    except ConfigValidationError as err:
        raise SystemExit(1) from err

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
        description="Update an album with musicbrainz tags."
    )
    parser.add_argument("path", help="dir of the album to update")
    parser.add_argument("mb_id", help="musicbrainz id of the album to fetch")
    args = parser.parse_args()

    album = Album.from_dir(Path(args.path))

    album.merge(moe_musicbrainz.get_album_by_id(args.mb_id), overwrite=True)

    for track in album.tracks:
        write_tags(track)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

This is just a small taste of what Moe is capable of and how it can make your life easier when dealing with music.

Why Moe?

While powerful music taggers like beets exist, Moe was developed to address several fundamental, long-standing issues in the music tagging space and aims to provide a more modern and extensible platform for both users and developers.

Key Differentiators

• First-Class Support for “Extras”: Moe treats “extra” files like artwork, booklets, and log files as integral components of an album and manages them as first-class objects in your library.

• Multi-Value Tag Support: Moe supports multi-valued tags, addressing a common limitation in other taggers often restricted to single values or limited multi-value tag support.

• Highly Extensible Plugin System: Moe’s plugin system is inspired by pytest, utilizing a powerful hook system. This allows plugins to extend or modify the behavior of Moe’s core components and even other plugins, simplifying plugin development and providing lots of customization options. It’s extremely easy to create local plugins to complement your configuration, or to publish ones to PyPI for others to use.

• Metadata-Source Agnostic: Metadata sources such as Musicbrainz are implemented as standalone plugins that can be added or removed based on your preferences.

• Modern, Maintainable, and Library-First Architecture:

  • Library First: Moe is built as a library before a CLI. This enables easy integration of Moe’s logic into other programs and supports the development of alternative user interfaces.

  • Modern Tooling: It leverages mature libraries such as SQLAlchemy for database management and pathlib for path handling. This approach greatly reduces the maintenance overhead that comes with hand-rolled solutions for complex issues.

  • Contribution Friendly: A lean core, high test coverage, and modern architecture make Moe approachable for new contributors and make it easy to introduce new changes.

If you want to learn more, check out the Getting Started docs.