MBSync Plugin

This plugin provides the mbsync command, which lets you synchronize metadata for albums and tracks that have external data source IDs.

This is useful for syncing your library with online data or when changing configuration options that affect tag writing. If your music library already contains correct tags, you can speed up the initial import by importing files “as-is” and then using mbsync to write tags according to your beets configuration.

Usage

Enable the mbsync plugin in your configuration (see Using Plugins) and then run beet mbsync QUERY to fetch updated metadata for a part of your collection (or omit the query to run over your whole library).

ID lookups use each item’s stored data_source. If a row has no data_source, mbsync falls back to MusicBrainz.

This plugin treats albums and singletons (non-album tracks) separately. It first processes all matching singletons and then proceeds on to full albums. The same query is used to search for both kinds of entities.

The command has a few command-line options:

• To preview the changes that would be made without applying them, use the -p (--pretend) flag.

• By default, files will be moved (renamed) according to their metadata if they are inside your beets library directory. To disable this, use the -M (--nomove) command-line option.

• If you have the import.write configuration option enabled, then this plugin will write new metadata to files’ tags. To disable this, use the -W (--nowrite) option.

• To customize the output of unrecognized items, use the -f (--format) option. The default output is format_item or format_album for items and albums, respectively.