I vibecoded my own youtube downloader that does metadata completion via deezer’s api. Before that I was using Jellyfin + Finamp, tried Picard but it a) required downloading something onto my pc b) felt clunky and took ages to complete runs. Fixed it by using a bash script for managing metadata. Now my own platform does it.

I’ve spent hours trying to satisfy Jellyfin and it never fully works correctly.

So, I don’t.

beets.io, with a a good chunk imported as is

picard was pita, beets takes some getting used to but can run on a potato and eat tb’s of music at a time

I’ve gone back and forth on this, but ultimately, I enjoy the tagging process and accept it as part of my workflow.

When i’m adding a release to my collection, I throw it into a temo directory, open the album folder in MP3Tag, query MusicBrainz (or Discogs if necessary) for the basics, replace the cover image if I’m not happy with the one from the source, add additional genre tags and do cleanup, auto renumber tracks/discs. Once it all looks good, I use the tags-to-filename feature to rename everything to AlbumArtist/[OriginalYear] Album/### - Title (### - Artist - Title for multi artist releases) then copy it to my library.

It sounds like a lot, but it isn’t bad. Like I said, I enjoy it.

Updating tags shouldn’t change the actual music though. That seems really strange and like something else is going on.

I don’t

I just started properly tagging new music at some point and now my library is largely tagged correctly.

For tagging I use kid3, great KDE application for that.

I also sort my music into a folder layout like this to know where I got it from and potentially upgrade the quality.

MusicRaw
  - Artist1
    - Bandcamp
      - Album1
    - Tidal
      - Album2
      - Album3
    - Youtube
      - ytrip album
  - Artist2
    - Album1 (not moved to a separate source)
    - Tidal
      - Album2
      - Album3
    - ytrip album

I then have a script to loudness-normalize (come fight me) all music and write it to another subfolder.
A second script takes those normalized files and symlinks them into a structure like this:

Music
  - Artist1
      - Album1
      - Album2
      - Album3
      - ytrip album
  - Artist2
      - Album1
      - Album2
      - ytrip album

I tried switching to Picard, but for somewhat obvious reasons it doesn’t support my insane structure.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.

[Thread #127 for this comm, first seen 13th Oct 2026, 19:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Usually beets is the solution but it uses the same source as picard. Songs shouldn’t get shorter though? Sorting should be the same though, independent of the software.

Music/artist/release/title

I gave up a couple of years ago. It is too much work for too little gain.

• Music directory -> directory for each artist -> directory for each album
• All files are properly tagged, also contain album art
• Lrc or text lyrics files next to mp3/flac files
• Locally, directory is reachable on SMB network share and DLNA for network players
• Navidrome serves the whole thing for streaming on the internet when I’m not home and presents everything in a browser for convenience when no app is used, on android I listen with Tempus
• Nextcloud can also reach it
• lrcget used for lyrics, mp3tag used for tagging
• Generally deal with full albums only

I have a TBO (to be organized) folder where I dump things that I can’t clearly categorize right away. Eventually, I spend a few hours sorting everything manually. I sort my music by genre, not by artist or year, so when im in the mood for say, some DnB, I don’t have to recall the artist or album, I just hit shuffle on my DnB folder

I don’t rely on auto-taggers, because I discover artists from soundcloud and YouTube that may not have their info readily available on such websites.

This is a recurring, and I never see wrtag mentioned. Has anyone tried it?

It also uses MusicBrainz. Unlike beets, it stores metadata in the music files. It is from the author of Gonic.

I group my albums by artist, and I sort them by artist, then year of release, then album name.
Each song in the album is sorted by track number.

Music/Albums/Pink Floyd/Pink Floyd (1973) - The Dark Side of the Moon/06 Pink Floyd - Money.flac

I also make sure all tags are set correctly so that they get sorted correctly in programs like Jellyfin and Finamp

I use Picard, I never had a issue of it changing the actual file, just adding mp3 tags and cover images. I didn’t even know it could mess with the length of the song, maybe check your settings? Most issues I’ve had with Picard have been connection issues, but that usually gets fixed with clicking the refresh thingy.

Anyway, I spent like a week doing 4-8 hours of “work” per day to get my existing music library tags and filenames sorted with Picard. Since then, all new music that gets added to the PC is put into a temp folder, ran through Picard and only then moved into the music library folder.

For the file tags I use the defaults that Picard comes with, I also have a plugin that adds additional musician information into the song. Picard also changes the directory and filenames into /Artist Name/Album Year - Album Name/01. Title.flac, so for example /Björk/1993 - Debut/01. Human Behaviour.flac

Recently I started adding lyrics as .lrc files, but that looks like its going to be more work than its worth. If I wanted all songs to have lyrics files, I’d have to go through most of my non-English language songs manually, the apps seem to have some issues with that. Also, for stuff like Kent, who have 2 albums in Swedish and English, the apps don’t seem to understand that and insist on using the English lyrics for the Swedish versions.

By Artist and Album, then let Plex handle the rest. It’s pretty much the standard format for torrents so 95% is just drop in and done. I occasionally do youtube DLs for very recent releases but those I rename and sort by hand.

Alphabetically.