Filing and tagging self made compilations and band specific folders with single tracks

I’ve been trying to tackle the following with no luck so far.
I’ve got quite a few of the following…

a) homemade compilations (by friends) that are not properly tagged. I would like these to go properly tagged in their own folder in my compilations folder. I’ve set ‘chroma: auto: yes’ in my config for these imports.

b) folders with single tracks from an artist from which I don’t need full albums that I want to store in a folder named ‘single tracks’ within the artists folder. Same here with chroma.


a) I’ve tried to use a command like this:

beet import -t /path/to/folder --set album="name of compilation" --set comp=1 --set homemade=1

  • In this case Beets tried to find albums which of course didn’t work so I imported them ‘as is’. But that gave me untagged tracks with tracknumers before them.
  • I’ve tried the same with the -s condition but then they ended up in the Singletons folder.
  • I’ve tried to create specific paths in my config like this:

paths:
comp homemade:1: 'Compilations/$album (%if{$original_year,$original_year}) %if{$is_flac,($format $bitdepth-$my_samplerate),($format $av_bitrate)}/$title - $artist'

and also tried:

paths:
singleton homemade:1: 'Compilations/$album (%if{$original_year,$original_year}) %if{$is_flac,($format $bitdepth-$my_samplerate),($format $av_bitrate)}/$title - $artist'

I’ve tried these paths also with comp:1 homemade:1.
But I didn’t get it to work.
I presume others have come across this puzzle so I hope someone can share their solution.


b) I’ve used the command

beet import -t /path/to/folder --set album="Single Tracks" --set bandsingles=1

With the following path

paths:
bandsingles:1: 'Albums/%the{$albumartist}/$album %if{$is_flac,($format $bitdepth-$my_samplerate),($format $av_bitrate)}/$track - $title'

  • Also here I tried this with the -s condition but (not surprisingly) they ended up in the Singeltons folder.
  • I also created a path with “singleton bandsingles:1” before it

ps: indents are properly set in my config file but for one or other reason I didn’t succeed to reproduce them in this post.

I presume there is some smart combination of commands and paths that can achieve this but I’ve not found it. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot, Jan

I’m not sure what the best option is, but the second option seems like it’s on the right track. I’m surprised that your badsingles:1 path was “overridden” by the singleton path… did it appear before the singleton path in the list?

@adrian, When you talk about the second option are you talking about the “singleton bandsingles:1” option? Yes it was before the singleton path but when using -s they still ended up in the singelton folder.
Could the order make any difference? Like: bandsingles:1 singelton: {path}

How would you go about moving single tracks in a folder to a different location than the singleton folder and keeping them together?

Hmm… could you paste your entire paths: section of your config in that version?

A path format that matches them should work—to keep them together, you’d just have to use $album or something in the path so that a directory exists that contains all the tracks with the same “album” field.

I’m not sure what I was overlooking but with the following Paths section…

paths:
  default: 'Albums/%the{$albumartist}/$album (%if{$original_year,$original_year}) %aunique{albumartist album year, albumdisambig}%if{$albumdisambig,($albumdisambig $year) }%if{$is_flac,($format $bitdepth-$my_samplerate),($format $av_bitrate)}/%if{$multidisc,$disc-}$track - $title'
  dancetrack:1: 'Singles Dance/$artist - $title (%if{$original_year,$original_year}) %aunique{albumartist album year, albumtype label catalognum albumdisambig}%if{$albumdisambig,($albumdisambig$ $year)}($bpm bpm)'
  artistsingles:1: 'Albums/%the{$albumartist}/$album (%if{$original_year,$original_year})/$title'
  custcomp:1: 'Compilations/$album/$title - $artist'
  singleton: 'Singles/$artist - $title %aunique{albumartist album year, albumtype label catalognum albumdisambig}%if{$albumdisambig,($albumdisambig$ $year)}'
  comp: 'Compilations/$album (%if{$original_year,$original_year}) %aunique{albumartist album year, albumtype label catalognum albumdisambig}%if{$albumdisambig,($albumdisambig $year) }%if{$is_flac,($format $bitdepth-$my_samplerate),($format $av_bitrate)}/%if{$multidisc,$disc-}$track - $title - $artist'

…I’m able to achieve what I want. At first I’ve added ‘singleton’ before ‘artistsingles:1’ but that wasn’t necessary after all to be able to use the -s flag with custom tags and corresponding paths.
I’m not sure what I’ve missed. Your response made me try again and it’s solved now so thanks!

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Yay! I’m glad it’s working.

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