9 votes

How do you manage your music collection?

Posted by gco (edited )
Tags: ask.recommendations

Hey everyone!

This year I've started getting into music collecting, and I'm wondering what everyone around here uses/recommends to manage a music collection. Basically what I'm after is software where:

  1. I can pick the albums that I own.
  2. I can pick albums that I want to own.
  3. I get notifications when one of tmy tracked artists releases a new album.
  4. Should not be a mobile exclusive app.

I've looked at Discogs but this one goes a level of complexity beyond what I need (It tracks all the different releases of a same album) and MusicBrainz which seems more what I'm after but not sure if it does #3; though I could supplement that with a different service. Looking for suggestions on software available online or self-hosted.

13 comments

  1. [6]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. gco
      Link Parent
      Not sure beet will meet my needs for this, but will look into it. I may still want to use it to organise the files themselves. Thanks!

      Not sure beet will meet my needs for this, but will look into it. I may still want to use it to organise the files themselves. Thanks!

      3 votes
    2. FluffyKittens
      Link Parent
      Seconding this - my personal setup is a bunch of folders for different input sources of music, beets to combine those sources, and airsonic-advanced (reverse-proxied with Caddy for TLS) to serve....

      Seconding this - my personal setup is a bunch of folders for different input sources of music, beets to combine those sources, and airsonic-advanced (reverse-proxied with Caddy for TLS) to serve. Everything’s more or less hands-free with shell scripts and cronjobs. I realize it doesn’t cover OP’s #2 use case, which I can’t relate to for… “redacted” reasons, but all the others should be covered solid in an automated fashion with the right beets config.

      Took a few days of investment, but I’ve been really happy with the results.

      3 votes
    3. [3]
      Akir
      Link Parent
      This is basically what I do except mine is semi-manual. I rip the CD (in my 30s makes me a dinosaur, right?), use MusicBrainz Picard to tag everything, and then I use Foobar2000 to rename the files.

      This is basically what I do except mine is semi-manual. I rip the CD (in my 30s makes me a dinosaur, right?), use MusicBrainz Picard to tag everything, and then I use Foobar2000 to rename the files.

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        Don_Camillo
        Link Parent
        Picard can tag, rename and move your files to a desired location. its all i use these days. get the album, put it in Picard, usually just click save. thats it

        Picard can tag, rename and move your files to a desired location. its all i use these days. get the album, put it in Picard, usually just click save. thats it

        2 votes
        1. Akir
          Link Parent
          I knew it had that capability. Basically the only reason why I'm doing it the way I do it is because it's something of a zen routine and it has my preferred file naming scheme already stored in it.

          I knew it had that capability. Basically the only reason why I'm doing it the way I do it is because it's something of a zen routine and it has my preferred file naming scheme already stored in it.

          1 vote
  2. [6]
    tomf
    Link
    it isn't perfect, but some folks use Lidarr with downloads disabled to track new releases. MusicBrainz can be slow with new releases, but its one of the better options... or at least one option to...

    it isn't perfect, but some folks use Lidarr with downloads disabled to track new releases. MusicBrainz can be slow with new releases, but its one of the better options... or at least one option to include in the pool of solutions.

    Its self-hosted / local, too, which is nice. I haven't use this part of it, but you can have it sync with your spotify and last.fm follows, too.

    As for notifications, I also don't use this -- but there are options for email, pushbullet, discord, and more.

    If you do want to set it up to download, you can also do that. It plays well with usenet and torrent sites. For torrent sites, it works with Gazelle and some others. If the software isn't listed, you can use Jackett

    You can also have Lidarr rename / organize your downloads. I have mine go into a Process directory where I fix id3 tags and all that.

    5 votes
    1. [5]
      gco
      Link Parent
      I'm familiar with Lidarr but hadn't thought about it for this use case, will check it out. Thanks!

      I'm familiar with Lidarr but hadn't thought about it for this use case, will check it out. Thanks!

      1 vote
      1. [4]
        tomf
        Link Parent
        it'd be so nice to have a general media tracker that tracked the release of new shows, movies, etc. You can handle this with lidarr, sonarr, and radarr -- but a standalone would be really nice,...

        it'd be so nice to have a general media tracker that tracked the release of new shows, movies, etc. You can handle this with lidarr, sonarr, and radarr -- but a standalone would be really nice, especially if it incorporated suggestions from various services.

        There was MusicButler, but its closing down and the dev doesn't seem to have any interest in open sourcing it.

        3 votes
        1. [2]
          kfwyre
          Link Parent
          A week after the dev of MusicButler posted the shutdown notice they sent out another message saying that they were reconsidering the shutdown. Here's the text of the email I got about it:

          A week after the dev of MusicButler posted the shutdown notice they sent out another message saying that they were reconsidering the shutdown. Here's the text of the email I got about it:

          A week ago I announced that MusicButler was going to be shutdown mid-February.

          Since then, I've been floored by the kindness, generosity, and just all-around awesomeness of MusicButler's members. Internet strangers are the best kind of strangers. Regardless of what ends up happening, I will eventually reply to each and every one of you that wrote to me.

          The responses in the emails and the comments I've read led me to look for alternatives other than shutting down. As it stands, the only viable option remains making some of MusicButler's core-features gated behind a subscription fee. Some of the members have suggested that as well.

          So now I'm asking for a favor: honesty. Here's a link to a poll I created only for MusicButler members. It asks whether you'd be willing to pay a certain monthly/yearly fee for using all of MusicButler's features, as well as supporting its further development with new features. I'd appreciate if you took the time to answer it honestly, it will take less than a minute.

          If you don't feel comfortable replying with a "no", you can simply ignore this email.

          3 votes
          1. tomf
            Link Parent
            it'd be nice if they kept it up. I can't imagine the overall cost being too high on their end, but who knows. So far as I can tell, the APIs themselves are all free. I just found that site a few...

            it'd be nice if they kept it up. I can't imagine the overall cost being too high on their end, but who knows. So far as I can tell, the APIs themselves are all free.

            I just found that site a few days ago and was saddened with the announcement.

            3 votes
        2. gco
          Link Parent
          Oooh! MusicButler looks awesome. I'll keep an eye on it.

          Oooh! MusicButler looks awesome. I'll keep an eye on it.

          1 vote
  3. wcerfgba
    Link
    Rather than following / subscribing to artists, I track labels instead. Bandcamp is great for this if a label is using it, because I can subscribe to their newsletter and get email alerts any time...

    Rather than following / subscribing to artists, I track labels instead. Bandcamp is great for this if a label is using it, because I can subscribe to their newsletter and get email alerts any time they publish a new release.

    Why do I follow labels instead of artists? Two reasons. First, labels aren't clearly surfaced in the metadata in my music player, whereas the artist is. If I'm listening to a release and I'm wondering "hmm have they released any more music recently?" it only takes me a couple of minutes to look it up on the Web while I'm listening to their music. Keeping up to date with artists in this on-demand way is working fine for me. Second, labels, especially smaller ones, provide a form of curation and network knowledge around the music I like. If I find an artist I like, and I want to find more artists I might like, I look at the labels they've released on to find new artists and releases. This has worked really well for me so far for building up a network of artists and broadening my horizons. I have a few artists I love but then it's always frustrating when I want 'more' and it doesn't exist. Labels help me solve that problem.

    2 votes
  4. 0x29A
    Link
    Simple local folder structure with mp3s. MP3Tag for tagging. AIMP for playing files on PC. I have some MP3Tag actions I run on all music files to standardize them. I prefer minimal metadata/tags...

    Simple local folder structure with mp3s. MP3Tag for tagging. AIMP for playing files on PC.

    I have some MP3Tag actions I run on all music files to standardize them. I prefer minimal metadata/tags and I clean/standardize tags and artwork size so that my car which has an old (V1?) version of "Ford Sync" can play them without a problem. That system is very particular about certain aspects of tags (artwork dimensions/file size, file naming conventions, non-English letters, etc) and the car is one of the places I listen to music the most, so my entire library is standardized for use there (via massive USB drive).

    Works well for me and the music looks/plays fine on PC and streams well to my home theater system via Plex to AppleTV (though looking into Jellyfin to AppleTV instead)

    2 votes