Pros and Cons of Databasing Music

Berticus · 2009-05-14 03:52:41

As I repopulate my hard drives, I'm thinking about how I will manage music. Previously, when it was only 60 GB, I would organize it as:

/data/music/artist/album/#. Title

And it would take mocp quite a while to go through that. I was thinking about making m3u playlists to help speed things up, but that was all before I lost everything. So now that I'm getting a clean start, I'd like to know people's thoughts on having a music database.

I've only databased my music once with Exaile, and the database wasn't very large, but that's what would take Exaile so long to start up.

So how do people manage large music collections, and why?

allbluedream · 2009-05-14 05:56:04

Quodlibet is said to be good at managing music databases.

I use mpd though. Startup time is negligible, since it is a daemon and when I use it, it is already up. Database update is quite fast, though not automatic, so it won't be any trouble adding songs or updating tags. However, my database is rather small (6 days and 12 hours of music...), and I cannot speak for those who need to deal with really large collections.

Last edited by allbluedream (2009-05-14 06:00:30)

Army · 2009-05-14 08:36:45

I have about 100 days of music and mpd runs phantastic :-) An update doesn't really take long.

Berticus · 2009-05-14 14:05:13

I read somewhere, don't remember where, that mpd's security may not be the best when it comes to streaming. So how do you two feel about it? Or do you do rely on ssh?

Also, do you guys still keep a strict file system hierarchy like the one I described? Or since you have something databasing your music, do you feel like it's unnecessary?

Lastly, is there a way to play an individual song, instead of adding it to a databse, discover I don't like it, and then remove it? Or do you guys just use a separate program for that?

Last edited by Berticus (2009-05-14 14:26:40)

brisbin33 · 2009-05-14 14:53:29

personally i use mpd, it's really fast and ncmpcpp is awesome (i have 18 days music but used to have alot more). if i'm playing just one song to check it out or something (doesn't happen often) i'll just open it in some other program depending in the situation. doubleclick from a file manager just uses vlc, if in terminal there's any number of quick utilities to use.

i stream with icecast, i let it accept any 192.168.0.* connections and just tunnel port 8000 though ssh if i'm outside my LAN; seems secure enough to me.

oh, and my tags and folder hierarchy are meticulously managed, i'm kind of OCD like that. files are ~/Music/artist/album/#_title (no spaces, no capitals) and tags are the normal versions of those (Proper Case with spaces). easytag is a godsend btw.

mpd can take some getting use to, but once you stop _setting it up_ and just start _using it_, you'll wonder how anyone uses anything else.

Procyon · 2009-05-14 15:04:20

I use mpd and have a really messy music directory. The only sorting I do is putting new music in a directory of the date I added it, and when I add new music I don't even look at what is in the archive either. So it's all up to mpd, I only go in the music dir when I need to delete duplicates. I even once found an entire game in there.

I don't play new songs before adding it to mpd (for other mp3s I use mplayer). I delete bad material or duplicates later, things often go unchecked though, because my entire database is in 1 playlist and it's >40 days.

2_Thumbs_Up · 2009-05-14 16:00:07

Berticus wrote:

Lastly, is there a way to play an individual song, instead of adding it to a databse, discover I don't like it, and then remove it? Or do you guys just use a separate program for that?

There is no official way but there is a small script (mpc-play) at the mpd wiki site which does just that. It works by adding a temporary symlink from the music database folder to the file you want to play and then playing it. It works very nice. When I double click a file in my file manager it simply starts playing without any interface popping up and I can stop it with my keyboard media keys.

Dheart · 2009-05-14 16:55:15

Well my music is organized exactly as you discribed in the first post
/mnt/usb/Music/Artist/Album
I use mpd + Sonata. I have a separate playlist for each artist in sonata and I can reach really fast anything I want.

utore · 2009-05-14 17:01:26

I forgo with organizing music by album. I give artists their own folders and that's it. I use Picard+Thunar's mass rename plugin to make sure everything ends up looking good. MPD runs great with 30 days and 60gb here.

Last edited by utore (2009-05-14 17:01:49)

Dieter@be · 2009-05-14 17:48:49

Imho putting effort in creating a specific categorisation on disk is a pointless waste of time. (something other then /artist/album/) You just need good software to tag your files and to organise your songs "at runtime" in the way you want (per category/artist/album/time/...) IMHO.
I use musicbrainz for automated tagging. For searching/playing music i use mostly ncmpcpp but I'm a bit new to it. I'm not sure if it does everything I want (especially the searching bit is a bit cumbersome)

eldragon · 2009-05-14 18:40:26

this thread raised an eyebrow since ive been looking for something like this, but there is a small catch, when people talk about tags, do you refer to idtagging the mp3s? or tagging like you would do on a forum, pictures, etcetera? cause thats what im looking for, and i cant seem to find the option in mpd / sonata. is there anything else im missing? is this even possible? i like the idea of a db that will handle everything, and rhythmbox's db is .. well...pitiful...

what im looking is: easy interface with the command line (already found that), possibility to tag files on the go (multiple tags allowed per file, not just genre, and of course, be able to create dynamic playlists based o a tag (or a binary operation of many)

this could prove much more useful for random playback and not have my ears bleed cause after a lowrider kind of song comes a megadeth tune...

sorry to hijack the thread.. on topic, i wan to db my music, never got around it

Procyon · 2009-05-14 19:06:09

@eldragon: database players like mpd don't pick up changes to id3tags of the mp3s.

eldragon · 2009-05-14 19:18:09

Procyon wrote:

@eldragon: database players like mpd don't pick up changes to id3tags of the mp3s.

yes, ive been reading further about mpd and it does not actually fit my requirements that well gotta play a bit more with it when i get the time.

Procyon · 2009-05-14 19:38:27

You could use playlists as tags. Add songs to tag them. And I think some clients can combine playlists. I add songs to a bookmarks playlists in mpd and my custom client highlights if the current song is (also) in the bookmarks playlist.

utore · 2009-05-14 19:44:29

eldragon wrote:

Procyon wrote:
@eldragon: database players like mpd don't pick up changes to id3tags of the mp3s.
yes, ive been reading further about mpd and it does not actually fit my requirements that well gotta play a bit more with it when i get the time.

MPD's not too difficult to understand. Install MPD and a client as well as mpc then bind 'mpc update' to some keys and wallah. You could even set up cron to update your db often if you know you're going to be constantly updating your id3 tags.

Last edited by utore (2009-05-14 19:45:37)

eldragon · 2009-05-14 19:45:26

Procyon wrote:

You could use playlists as tags. Add songs to tag them. And I think some clients can combine playlists. I add songs to a bookmarks playlists in mpd and my custom client highlights if the current song is (also) in the bookmarks playlist.

that sounds interesting... and can i say for example: play all songs that belog to playlist downtempo, and in playlist english, but dont belong to playlist 80ies? and of course, randomize it

Procyon · 2009-05-14 20:05:57

eldragon wrote:

that sounds interesting... and can i say for example: play all songs that belog to playlist downtempo, and in playlist english, but dont belong to playlist 80ies? and of course, randomize it

Yeah just make a new playlist: not sure if this will work, but you get the idea ( echo clear; (cat ~/.mpd/playlists/{downtempo,english}.m3u | sort | uniq; cat ~/.mpd/playlists/{80ies,90ies}.m3u) | sort | uniq -u | sed 's/^/add '; sleep 0.1; echo shuffle; echo close ) | nc localhost 6600

mcubed · 2009-05-14 20:36:58

I use QuodLibet, initially because of the accompanying tagger, Ex Falso. I find it priceless. I use the "Musicbrainz Lookup" plugin to tag all my music (works on any format QuodLibet will handle, which is pretty much every audio format around, provided you have the proper gstreamer0.10 libraries) -- no more typing out song titles, correcting cddb/freedb misspellings (which are legion), and so on. But I've also come to appreciate QL's capabililities as a music organizer. It's very easy to move files around and reorganize even large libraries, and it has never choked on me or slowed down as I've added more music (over 100 GB). I also really like it's searching capabilities, but some find it arcane. I think an Arch Linux user most likely wouldn't have any problem with it, though.

The drawbacks are that it does require gstreamer, so that's a big dependency if you aren't using anything else that needs gstreamer. It's nominally written for GNOME, but it doesn't have too many other GNOME-specific dependencies. Some of the plugins take advantage of GNOME features non-GNOME users won't be interested in, but you can just remove those. (You can get all the plugins via svn checkout, quick and easy.) Lots of XFCE users seem to use it. It's a GTK+ python app, so it also requires python. At this point, though, python is so ubiquitous I would think most people already would have it installed on a desktop system.

I've tried, for varying lengths of time, Rhythmbox, Exaile, and Banshee. All of them didn't seem to me as robust or stable as QuodLibet. Never tried Amorak because I'm not a KDE user and don't have any other QT apps, which would mean pulling in a load of libraries just for an audio player.

Good luck with whatever you use!

KimTjik · 2009-05-14 22:58:09

I've a organized collection, duplicated (a dedicated music-player and on my own desktop) both for different purposes and as backup. Only format I'm using is flac.

MPD works fine for me. Since it's flac 100GB isn't that much, but I've still many CDs in my collection to rip. Changing tags isn't in my opinion any issue, since it's a fast enough process to rebuild the database; just some few seconds.

MPD is perfect for me since it works as good back-end for both DE front-ends, terminal and webb-server applications.

eldragon · 2009-05-15 01:22:37

im being sold by the minute.....gonna fiddle with it during the weekend

Berticus · 2009-05-15 03:21:49

Yeah, if id3tags supported multiple tags, that would be great. Like a delicious for media files. I feel like having playlists like that sort of defeat the purpose of having a database.

mcubed wrote:

The drawbacks are that it does require gstreamer, so that's a big dependency if you aren't using anything else that needs gstreamer. It's nominally written for GNOME, but it doesn't have too many other GNOME-specific dependencies. Some of the plugins take advantage of GNOME features non-GNOME users won't be interested in, but you can just remove those. (You can get all the plugins via svn checkout, quick and easy.) Lots of XFCE users seem to use it. It's a GTK+ python app, so it also requires python. At this point, though, python is so ubiquitous I would think most people already would have it installed on a desktop system.

Unfortunately I'm sort of looking for a cli app...

procyon wrote:

@eldragon: database players like mpd don't pick up changes to id3tags of the mp3s.

So I have to fix the tags before databasing them? And if I find an error, I have to delete from the database and then re-add it?

allbluedream · 2009-05-15 04:41:42

Berticus wrote:

procyon wrote:
@eldragon: database players like mpd don't pick up changes to id3tags of the mp3s.
So I have to fix the tags before databasing them? And if I find an error, I have to delete from the database and then re-add it?

I use Ex Falso or Foobar (with wine) to edit the tags. You don't need to delete old entries in the mpd database. You update the database, and that update is fast.

I don't stream though, so I do not worry about security. I just love the lightness and the omnipresence of mpd.
(Foobar with wine is always a good alternative, if I can get sound to work right out of wine~~)

KimTjik · 2009-05-15 07:57:20

Berticus wrote:

So I have to fix the tags before databasing them? And if I find an error, I have to delete from the database and then re-add it?

If you've updated tags in whatever tool you choose all what's necessary is to temporarily stop mpd (maybe not, but in my experience that means 100 % success) and then as root run mpd --create-db. That command forces an update of the whole database. Start mpd and everything should be fine.

I do this too often because I'm not satisfied with how genre is tagged or struggling to get a coherent database of classical music.

Melson · 2009-05-15 21:19:35

A bit OT, but hopefully OK: I have been thinking about a general purpose file database which would allow tagging and commenting files. Wouldn't it be great?

Last edited by Melson (2009-05-15 21:20:09)

Berticus · 2009-05-17 14:50:26

I suppose I'll try out mpd and see how I like it in comparison with moc.

Melson, just like having a music database, it seems a bit redundant. If you've got a good strict filesystem hierarchy, it would sort of make tagging and commenting files sort of a moot point.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-05-14 03:52:41

Pros and Cons of Databasing Music

#2 2009-05-14 05:56:04

Re: Pros and Cons of Databasing Music

#3 2009-05-14 08:36:45

Re: Pros and Cons of Databasing Music

#4 2009-05-14 14:05:13

Re: Pros and Cons of Databasing Music

#5 2009-05-14 14:53:29

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#6 2009-05-14 15:04:20

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#7 2009-05-14 16:00:07

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Re: Pros and Cons of Databasing Music

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