beets-alternatives users? Streaming servers with "offline"?

[JOJ0]

Hi, I'd like to find out if there are a lot of users of the beets-alternatives plugin lurking around in this discussion forum? I realise that it's such a useful tool and I have several use-cases for it. Basically I think it's awesome, even though I do have a few issues with it. One of them is this one: geigerzaehler/beets-alternatives#69; Input certainly appreciated but the main thing why I'm here is actually:

My main use-case currently is to generate a complete duplicate of my library with one difference: All is mp3-vbr. This library is supposed to be used by streaming servers that for example share it to my mobile phone. That way transcoding on the fly is not required and it helps reduce load on the serving machin. Currently I'm using a crappy piece of software called Synology DS Audio, which has all kinds of flaws but does the job. My Synology NAS is rather old and transcoding audio seems to be not an option, way too slow. Most importantly "make songs available offline" was the key feature why I started to use it. I'm thinking about replacing this whole setup with something entirely Open Source.

Maybe Airsonic is the way to go? With beetsonic plugin? Other streaming server ideas? Offline copying to my mobile is the main feature that would be required.

Tell me how you use the alternatives plugin!

[sindreruud]

Hey!

I use the beets-alternatives plugin alot :) I am a music collector but also a DJ. I let beets organize my "master" library. Afterwards I listen to my music, and I select the songs I also want in my DJ collection. I actually add them to a big playlist, run a python script to fix the paths, and then use the playlist to query the beets library to edit a custom field to library=DJ. Then I can run beets-alternatives to copy the files to the DJ library, embed art, and transcode where necessary.
After that I am ready to use the library with my DJ software (Rekordbox).

When it comes to streaming I have tried Plex which i quite liked, with PlexAMP. Good transcoding options also. And lately I have also tried Navidrome server with different clients (Sonixd was the most polished one IMO)

[JOJ0]

Well, awesome, thanks so much for sharing!! I'm DJing as well and have a similar setup in mind / in the works. Currently my "master" beets library is controlled by my "work" laptop (a Linux machine) and saved on the mentioned NAS.

The task of integrating the music from my "DJing computer" (a MacBook running Rekordbox or sometimes still NI Traktor) is still to be done. At least the DJing computer has a beets library on its own, so tags are quite in order I guess. I'm planning to import everything to my "master" beets library, saving it on the NAS but keep it tracked where on the DJing machine the files were located exactly. I use to file my new music for DJing in folders like spin-yy-mm and never move them ever again, even if I tagged them (mp3tag back then, beets now) to make sure playlists and library in Rekordbox/Traktor stays in-tact.

Thanks for the ideas with library=DJ, I will probably do something similar, maybe library=spin-yy-mm, depending on which folder the track was residing on the DJing computer (let's call it "the monthly collections").

@sindreruud How are you managing the fact that DJing programs like Rekordbox usually don't like it if things are moved around? I love the ability of beets to bring folder names in order once and for all. I'm not yet sure how I could manage to use that neet beets feature on my DJing computer without breaking everything in Rekordbox.

For the streaming purposes (mainly to my phone for offline use) by now I have tested airsonic in a docker container on my Synology, which had rather poor performance, crashes and was not worth it IMO. Then I went to airsonic-advanced a more recent fork, again as a container on the NAS, which had disastrous performance, it was completely unusable.

I'm right now testing navidrome. I just found out how to import my beets smartplaylists....fingers crossed I finally find a FOSS streaming/offline-files solution that works. Thanks fo the sonixd client tip, I'll give that one a try! With my airsonic experiments I've used amperfy (iOS) which looked promising but went nuts with a crashing airsonic.

As for plex, I always read about it and researched a little but I always get mixed feelings about it. It does not feel right, it's not FOSS at all as far as I understand and I don't know if I want to put my hands in their decisions. Also I think their goals include a full fledged media center solution. I just require music. I just stream movies/shows from my syno nas via dnla, that's enough for my needs and super simple.

[arsaboo]

Plex is not FOSS, but Plexamp is the best client I have found so far for streaming. I also have Navidrome set up (along with Substreamer and Amperfy iOS clients), but I find it lacking. Sonic analysis on Plex takes it to a different level.

[sindreruud]

How are you managing the fact that DJing programs like Rekordbox usually don't like it if things are moved around? I love the ability of beets to bring folder names in order once and for all. I'm not yet sure how I could manage to use that neet beets feature on my DJing computer without breaking everything in Rekordbox.

Simple, I don't move stuff! Heh, easier said then done. But I organize my music in a very simple fashion:
Album artist/Album name/track number. track title

I never have a need for reorganizing as I am happy with this setup. My primary way of interacting with my music is through the metadata (genre, BPM, date added, etc). And as such, the path/organization doesn't matter, and in return my DJ software (Rekordbox) also stays happy as things doesn't move around once I have added it.

The only thing I'm sorely missing from my setup is a way to automatically add new tracks to the Rekordbox library once they are added to beets-alternatives. There are som Rekordbox python projects on github that interacts with the Rekordbox database/library. So I'm toying with the idea of making a plugin that would automatically update the Rekordbox library/database togheter with changes from beets-alternatives.

[JOJ0]

Ok so the good old "dont touch it" DJ-rule haha :-) Yeah same here, I always had my "monthly folders", so I dont have to rescan everything all the time. Just add a new "monthly" and never change filenames again. Just wanted to make sure there is other ways I dont know of...

Back then I didnt have beets. Sometimes I fixed my monthlies prior to rekordbox import with mp3tag, sometimes not because of lack of time. I could at least start to always pretag things now, since I have beets. That would give me fixed paths as well. Historical monthlies probably will stay messy forever...

The idea with the plugin is awesome! I'll test your prototype! (even though my setup with multiple computers currently wouldnt work with it but that might change in the future!)

[JOJ0]

I installed Navidrome recently and I finally found the solution I'd like to support. The project seems active, the project lead seems to be friendly and responsive. Most of all, Navidrome performs well and is focused on simplicity and performance on what I read, I love that. I have very dated hardware and it runs really really good with my mid-size library. I'm Impressed!

Nobody will convince me to support Plex as a server @arsaboo , I'm sorry :-) I would like to support a streaming server that is FOSS and would like to use analyzing features like probably "Sonic analysis" is, outside of the streaming server already. I want to use beets plus xtractor, listenbrainz, calliope, last.fm, and so on to build my personal smartplaylist system. :-)

I have a few questions about Navidrome posted over there, other than that I'm very happy with it: navidrome/navidrome#2326

This post also was about beets-alternatives usage for providing a "pre-transcoding" to improve performance on my dated hardware. It seems Navidrome (plus the two clients : play:sub, amperfy) is quick enough to transcode on-the-fly when I download stuff to my phone, which was one of the main usecases for building such a setup. Since I have an issue with beets-alternatives/convert not supporting embedding of art that is already embedded in the originals geigerzaehler/beets-alternatives#69 as well, I don't use beets-alternatives for this purpose anymore. It was an intermediate unpractical step that took a lot of time anyway and I now can spare it, which is pretty cool! I have other ideas for the use of beets-alternatives though and will keep reporting about it here :-)

[JOJ0]

Ah, now I realize a thing again that was always bothering me in RB: You have to delete each playlist one by one. There is no way to mark multiple playlists and hit delete for all of them. Especially when I reimport my beets generated lists, I'd like to quickly delete all of them and reimport. Do you know a way? (That is one task pyrekordbox could do for me hopefully)

[JOJ0]

And maybe, just maybe, we should request another feature for the smartplaylist plugin to be able to generate those m3u files with different relative path prefixes.....not sure if that's a doable idea but we could try. The start of everything would be a feature request issue on here.

Whoops! Just wanted to let you know @sindreruud that such a "path prefix" feature already exists in the plugin: https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins/smartplaylist.html#configuration

[sindreruud]

I was curious enough to investigate a little and found this: https://pyrekordbox.readthedocs.io/en/stable/quickstart.html#rekordbox-6-database
I suppose that is what you were referring to?

Yeah, that's the one! I actually have not tried it myself yet. But reading the docs it seems to be potential for some cool integrations with Beets. For example smart-playlist integration, or adding flex-attr (or genre) into the Rekordbox MyTAG system (which is really cool!). I use the Pioneer CDJ basically as a query engine. "Give me tracks within +/- 5bpm of the current track, with genre house, mood happy that contains female.vocals".

At the moment I add the MyTAG manually for each track, which is tedious, and it is not available to Beets and my main library. MyTAG information should live in Beets, and then get sent automatically to Rekordbox.

that such a "path prefix" feature already exists in the plugin:

I've tried this one. As I recall i got some issues with my workflow where i reference playlists in my query to Beets. So I would need multiple playlist folders. One "master" that beets can use for queries, and then a secondary one that references the alternative paths. I actually raised this as question over at discourse: https://discourse.beets.io/t/smart-playlists-with-backward-slashes/2250/3?u=sindreruud

And the answer I got (which I have yet to test) is under here:

One thing you could try is the -c flag. Doing beet -c otherconfig.yaml … lets you “overlay” a second set of config options, which might work to replace your smartplaylist config with a new one.

[JOJ0]

Yeah exactly config overlays might help here. I use them often for a lot of different things.

[sindreruud]

@JOJ0
Someone has actually started on a beets-rekordbox integration with pyrekordbox: rkbeets.

Currently a bit limited, but has support for exporting from beets to rekordbox (with a --missing flag to only export new tracks). And also a import feature to get metadata from rekordbox (bpm, colour, tonality, etc) into beets.

Looks promising and has potential for expansion.