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1

I want to make a copy of my current music library before I start doing any massive changes with beet. I used picard to import all of my music into it’s current location, then I imported it into beet. Picard named the folders using:
First letter of the albumartist_sort/albumartist_sort/album track title
It put all of an artist’s work in a single folder and added the album name to the file name.
I’d rather it be separate folders for each album and leave the album name out of the file name.

I thought this section of my config.yaml would do that

paths:
default: %left{$albumartist_sort,1}/$albumartist_sort/$album%aunique{}/$track $title
singleton: Non-Album/$artist_sort/$title
comp: Compilations/$album%aunique{}/$track $title

Then I ran this command:
beet move -p etheridge
I expected to see
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Skin (official-album)-08-Please Forgive Me (1).mp3
→ C:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Skin\08-Please Forgive Me (1).mp3
Instead I got:
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Skin (official-album)-08-Please Forgive Me (1).mp3
→ C:\Music__16 Unrecorded and Unreleased_08 Please Forgive Me.mp3

While I’m asking, Is there a way to get rid of the (1) while I’m at it? I’m getting ready to try to get rid of the duplicates I have, so that’s why I want to copy it to a new place in case I screw up royally I’ll still have the original to go back to.
Failing all that, Is there a way to just mimic the current folder/file name meaning the only thing that would change is D:\ becomes C:\

Thanks!

1 Like
2

Can you please include your full configuration? The directory option matters here.

3 
directory: C:\Music
library: D:\Music\musiclibrary.db
import:
    move: yes
    copy: no
    write: no
plugins: the chroma scrub missing lastgenre info
acoustid:
    apikey: 4zlgU3mcqC
embedart:
    auto: no
per_disc_numbering: yes
threaded: yes
paths:
    default: %left{$albumartist_sort,1}/$albumartist_sort/$album%aunique{}/$track $title
    singleton: Non-Album/$artist_sort/$title
    comp: Compilations/$album%aunique{}/$track $title
missing:
    format: $albumartist - $album - $title
    count: no
    total: no
chroma:
     auto: yes
match:
    strong_rec_thresh: 0.30
lastgenre:
    force: no
info:
4

Huh, that’s very strange—I don’t see right now why that would be. Can you check that the metadata for this song is what you expect it is?

beet ls -f '$albumartist_sort - $track - $title' etheridge
5

beet ls -f ‘$albumartist_sort - $track - $title’ etheridge
nothing
beet ls -f ‘$albumartist - $track - $title’ etheridge
nothing
beet ls etheridge

…
Melissa Etheridge - Acoustic - You Can Sleep While I Drive
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - Baracuda
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - Burning Love
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - Somewhere In The City
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - The Weakness In Me
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - Times Are Changin
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - 2001
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - You Shook Me All Night Long
Melissa Etheridge - Covers and More - Scarecrow - Live
Melissa Etheridge - Passion & Promise - Piece Of My Heart

6

OK, I played around a bit more and discovered that
beet ls -f’$albumartist_sort’ etheridge
returns a bunch of lines like this
‘’
I take that to mean that field is blank
When I look in picard, I get this:

Etheridge%20Picard
Etheridge Picard.PNG948×636 28.5 KB

Which is what I typically saw as I was importing everything via Picard. It appears that even though the album artist sort order is populated in picard, it doesn’t actually save it to the tags, or is it just a calculated field in picard?

7

paths:
default: %left{$artist_sort,1}/$artist_sort/$album%aunique{}/$track $title
singleton: Non-Album/$artist_sort/$title
comp: Compilations/$album%aunique{}/$track $title
Gets me closer, but now I have an issue with Feat - so and so. It creates a folder for
Etheridge, Melissa
and
Etheridge, Melissa feat. Osborne, Joan
I think I understand that is the difference between artist and albumartist. Now I just need to figure out why albumartist is blank.

8

Actually on closer look, it still wants to name everything
…\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\

$ beet move -p etheridge bring me some water
Moving 11 items.
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Acoustic (bootleg-album; live)-04-Bring Me Some Water.mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\04 Bring Me Some Water.mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Greatest Hits_ The Road Less T (official-album; compilation)-04-Bring Me Some Water.mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\04 Bring Me Some Water.mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\If I Wanted To (official-single)-03-Bring Me Some Water (live) (1).mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\03 Bring Me Some Water (live).mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\If I Wanted To (official-single)-03-Bring Me Some Water (live).mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\03 Bring Me Some Water (live).mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Live (official-single)-03-Bring Me Some Water (1).mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\03 Bring Me Some Water.mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Live (official-single)-03-Bring Me Some Water.mp3

→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\03 Bring Me Some Water.mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Melissa Etheridge (official-album)-09-Bring Me Some Water.mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\09 Bring Me Some Water.mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Radio3 Isabelle 1995 (-)-10-Bring Me Some Water (Acoustic).mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\10 Bring Me Some Water (Acoustic).mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Set Yourself Free (bootleg-album)-05-Bring Me Some Water.mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\05 Bring Me Some Water.mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Nowhere to Go (official-single)-02-Bring Me Some Water (live) (1).mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa feat. Osborne, Joan\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\02 Bring Me Some Water (live).mp3
D:\music\E\Etheridge, Melissa\Nowhere to Go (official-single)-02-Bring Me Some Water (live).mp3
→ C:\Music\E\Etheridge, Melissa feat. Osborne, Joan\16 Unrecorded and Unreleased\02 Bring Me Some Water (live).mp3

9

It kinda looks like smart quotes are getting into your command line? Can you make sure they’re proper, straight quotes as interpreted by your shell?

10

I’m sorry, I’m new to alot of this. I’m running python on windows. The google isn’t helping me figure out what you mean by smart quotes in the command line and straight quotes in the shell.

11

hmm. Ed Sheeran works just fine

$ beet move -p ed sheeran
Moving 13 items.
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-01-One.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\01 One.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-02-I’m a Mess.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\02 I’m a Mess.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-03-Sing.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\03 Sing.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-04-Don’t (1).mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\04 Don’t.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-04-Don’t.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\04 Don’t.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-05-Nina.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\05 Nina.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-06-Photograph.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\06 Photograph.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-07-Bloodstream.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\07 Bloodstream.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-08-Tenerife Sea.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\08 Tenerife Sea.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-09-Runaway.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\09 Runaway.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-10-The Man.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\10 The Man.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-11-Thinking Out Loud.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\11 Thinking Out Loud.mp3
D:\music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x (official-album)-12-Afire Love.mp3
→ C:\Music\S\Sheeran, Ed\x\12 Afire Love.mp3

12

By “smart quotes,” I mean the difference between the character ' and the character ‘ or ’, which you have used a few times in your messages above (I’m not sure if it’s intentional).

13

not so much intentional as copy/paste. I used that to take the suggested commands and paste them into command line, copied the results and pasted them back here.

I think for now, I’m going to just use teracopy to make a copy of everything and worry about renaming everything once I get rid of all the duplicates.

Thanks everyone for your help! It’s nice to know there are still some cool peeps in the world

1 Like
14

Hi, it might be something that you are already doing but just to be sure…
when I started using Picard I forgot to press the save button on the menu bar after the tags were corrected. I presumed falsely that Picard would save the tags right away.