albums 0.1.21

Manage music albums, automatically correct tags, organize and sync copies with interactive command line interface.

albums

Manage a library of music: configurably validate and fix tags and metadata, rename files, reformat and embed album art, import albums, and sync parts of the library to digital audio players or portable storage

• Read the documentation here

Overview

albums works with media files and tags, but primarily acts on "albums" rather than individual files. Everything is done locally and an Internet connection is not required. It's a command-line application that runs in a terminal, but it is designed to be user friendly, with interactive menus, rich text formatting, tables and even blocky graphics.

It scans a folder or a media library and can create a database to make subsequent operations fast. It has many automated checks and fixes for metadata related issues such as track numbering (sequence, totals, disc numbers), album-artist tags, embedding cover art, etc. It supports adding albums to "collections," for example to make a list of albums to sync to a digital audio player. It can also perform the sync.

Why use albums instead of other music library tools?

Use them all, you don't have to decide. If you have missing metadata or unidentified recordings and you want to use online databases to fill in the blanks, MusicBrainz Picard is good for that. For editing tags with some fancy features and automation, puddletag and MP3TAG (proprietary but no cost for Windows version) are nice, while EasyTAG is simple and quick.

albums has some functionality related to these tools, but a different focus. Its main use is to find and fix metadata issues and apply tag/filename policies one album at a time, potentially across a large collection. It does this with many individually-configurable "checks" which are mostly independent, letting the user decide which issues to address. And its DAP/external storage sync feature may prove useful.

Supported Media

FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3/ID3 and M4A containers are supported. WMA files are read but albums doesn't comprehend their tags yet so most checks are skipped. JPEG, PNG and GIF files in the album folder are loaded as candidates for cover art.

More formats and tag comprehension will likely be added if requested.

System Requirements

Requires Python 3.12+. Primarily tested on Linux and Windows. Should work on almost any 64-bit x86 or ARM system with Linux, macOS or Windows. (32-bit and wider OS support possible by dropping scikit-image library used for measuring image similarity.)