# Multiple audio collections

**URL:** <https://discourse.beets.io/t/multiple-audio-collections/1084>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [February 1, 2020, 8:30pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/multiple-audio-collections/1084 "2020-02-01T20:30:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![juh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@juh](https://discourse.beets.io/u/juh)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2020, 8:30pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/multiple-audio-collections/1084/1 "2020-02-01T20:30:54Z")

</div>

Hi all,  
from some postings here I learned that beets does not support multiple audio collections. Is this correct or could I do it by loading beets with another configuration file pointing to an other database etc.

Background: I don’t want to manage my podcasts together with my music collection.

TIA  
juh

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![peterb](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/peterb/32/164_2.png) [@peterb](https://discourse.beets.io/u/peterb)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2020, 9:22am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/multiple-audio-collections/1084/2 "2020-02-02T09:22:50Z")

</div>

I don’t have any experience with multiple collections myself, but it looks like you should be able to do what you want with the global flags:

[https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/v1.4.1/reference/cli.html#global-flags](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/v1.4.1/reference/cli.html#global-flags)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janpeeters](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/janpeeters/32/182_2.png) [@janpeeters](https://discourse.beets.io/u/janpeeters)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/multiple-audio-collections/1084/3 "2020-02-03T16:41:08Z")

</div>

Hi @juh,

Not sure if this helps, but @macleodmike uses separate collections to separate MP3 and FLAC. Maybe his post can help you.

> [@Separating same album with different codec/bitdepth/bitrate](https://discourse.beets.io/t/separating-same-album-with-different-codec-bitdepth-bitrate/528/4):
>
> One problem I had was I wanted beets to keep the duplicate check logic, but only within a given format family. In the end, I found I had to use multiple beets libraries to accomplish what I wanted. It’s not super difficult, I just added the following aliases to my .bashrc: alias fbeet='beet -l ~/.config/beets/flac.blb' alias mbeet='beet -l ~/.config/beets/mp3.blb' As for keeping everything organized, here’s my path configuration: paths: # Albums/A/ASCI Artist Name, The/[YEAR] ASCI Album Nam…

Jan