# Beets for Audiobooks and assorted spoken word audio

**URL:** <https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-for-audiobooks-and-assorted-spoken-word-audio/1588>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [November 26, 2020, 3:57am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-for-audiobooks-and-assorted-spoken-word-audio/1588 "2020-11-26T03:57:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![halloleo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@halloleo](https://discourse.beets.io/u/halloleo)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:57am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-for-audiobooks-and-assorted-spoken-word-audio/1588/1 "2020-11-26T03:57:19Z")

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Hi there

New to beets and wondering whether it could be useful for me:

I have lots of spoken word audio files like books, downloaded podcast episodes (which are not in my podcast player), randomly downloaded interviews, etc.

I usually copy them and then listen to in [Bound](https://bound.timbueno.com/), an iOS audio player. But in order to show up nicely grouped in Bound’s interface the id3 tags need to be set properly.

At the moment I do this with [eyeD3](http://eyed3.nicfit.net/), a simple id3 CLI. But it is tedious to do so, therefore I look for an easier/more automatic tool. So, can **beets** help me? I have to questions:

1. I understand I can tag the audio files, but are the tags then embedded as id3 tags _in_ the files? (That’s a must for Bound and other players)
2. I read that beets has an autotagger - does it work for audiobooks?

Thanks for any pointers!

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**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 2:30am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-for-audiobooks-and-assorted-spoken-word-audio/1588/2 "2020-12-02T02:30:57Z")

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Yep, beets does indeed write id3 tags! Unless you turn off the `write` config option. 😃

The autotagger probably will not work for audiobooks, unless the audiobooks are in [MusicBrainz](https://musicbrainz.org) (which would be surprising).

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**Author:** ![ctrueden](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/ctrueden/32/475_2.png) [@ctrueden](https://discourse.beets.io/u/ctrueden)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2020, 2:45am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-for-audiobooks-and-assorted-spoken-word-audio/1588/3 "2020-12-03T02:45:51Z")

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Might it be possible for someone to code a new autotagger source for audiobooks, similar to the beets-discogs plugin? Audible seems like a good choice. I found some code that looks close:

> **[macr0dev/Audiobooks.bundle](https://github.com/macr0dev/Audiobooks.bundle)**
>
> Plex metadata scraper for Audiobooks. Contribute to macr0dev/Audiobooks.bundle development by creating an account on GitHub.

From what I can tell, you start with the book title and author, and it finds matches and enriches the metadata. A motivated Python hacker could probably graft something together by adapting beets-discogs plus the above, no? Would that be at all helpful for your use case, @halloleo? I.e. are your audiobooks available on Audible? Or is there some other website(s) that would make sense to potentially scrape for metadata? (NB: I’m not volunteering to code this—I’ve got my hands full­ right now—just throwing ideas out there!)

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**Author:** ![halloleo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@halloleo](https://discourse.beets.io/u/halloleo)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2020, 12:57pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-for-audiobooks-and-assorted-spoken-word-audio/1588/4 "2020-12-03T12:57:55Z")

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Thanks @ctrueden. Some of myAudiobooks are on Audible - but they are normally pretty well tagged already.

I tried a few audiobooks which exist as CDs as well - and MusicBrainz wasn’ too bad. 🙂