[Solved] Why is album not moved if albumartist/artist/album is changed?

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1

Hi,

I renamed an album manually, but it always stays in the same folder. Investigating this further, it turned out that the only thing beets changes is the filename, but not the names of the folders that the file is contained in. Neither the folder with the artists name, nor the folder with the album name. I hope I’m only doing something wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out myself. So I made a minimal example:

Steps to reproduce with an empty config:

$ cat ~/.config/beets/config.yaml 
~/Music$ rm ~/.config/beets/library.db 
~/Music$ beet import ../Import/Binhan/Lifante\ Pupa/Binhan\ -\ 03.\ Guiné\ nha\ terra\ \(feat.\ Monica\ Seka\).flac -A
/home/bzfschad/Import/Binhan/Lifante Pupa/Binhan - 03. Guiné nha terra (feat. Monica Seka).flac
~/Music$ ls Binhan/Lifante\ Pupa/
03 Guiné nha terra (feat. Monica Seka).flac
~/Music$ beet ls Guin
Binhan - Lifante Pupa - Guiné nha terra (feat. Monica Seka)
~/Music$ beet modify Guin title="Simple Title" # this works as intended
Modifying 1 items.
Binhan - Lifante Pupa - Guiné nha terra (feat. Monica Seka)
  title: Guiné nha terra (feat. Monica Seka) -> Simple Title
Really modify, move and write tags? (Yes/no/select) >
Enter one of Y, N, S: Y

~/Music$ ls Binhan/Lifante\ Pupa/
03 Simple Title.flac
~/Music$ beet modify Simple artist=Singer  # here, the file is not moved
Modifying 1 items.
Binhan - Lifante Pupa - Simple Title
  artist: Binhan -> Singer
Really modify, move and write tags? (Yes/no/select) Y

~/Music$ beet modify Simple albumartist=Singer # here, the file is not moved
Modifying 1 items.
Singer - Lifante Pupa - Simple Title
  albumartist: Binhan -> Singer
Really modify, move and write tags? (Yes/no/select) Yes

~/Music$ beet modify Simple album="Album Name" # here, the file is not moved
Modifying 1 items.
Singer - Lifante Pupa - Simple Title
  album: Lifante Pupa -> Album Name
Really modify, move and write tags? (Yes/no/select) Yes

~/Music$ ls Binhan/Lifante\ Pupa/ # it's still in the same place. I thought it would be in Album Name/Singer now
03 Simple Title.flac
~/Music$ ls
Binhan
~/Music$ beet mv
Moving 0 items (1 already in place).
~/Music$ beet config  # changed config
path:
    default: $albumartist/$album/$track $title

bzfschad@seneca:~/Music$ beet move
Moving 0 items (1 already in place).
bzfschad@seneca:~/Music$ beet config  # changed config
path:
    default: test/$albumartist/$album/$track $title

bzfschad@seneca:~/Music$ beet move
Moving 0 items (1 already in place).
~/Music$ ls Binhan/Lifante\ Pupa/  # Album still didn't move :-(  
03 Simple Title.flac
~/Music$

Am I doing something wrong? I found a bug report of a user with a similar problem: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=852241
Although the effect is different, I believe this user has a similar problem:
Of audiobooks and `beet move`

I use Debian 9, but installed beets using pip.

$ beet --version
beets version 1.4.8
Python version 2.7.13
no plugins loaded

Is this working as intended? As far as I understand, the file should at least be moved if I change the directory structure in the config file. Where is my fault?

Kind regards, Stanley

2

Now that I wrote this lengthy post, I figured out that I have to use the -a switch.

$ beet modify -a Binhan album="Album Name"
Modifying 1 albums.
Binhan - Lifante Pupa
  album: Lifante Pupa -> Album Name
Really modify, move and write tags? (Yes/no/select) Yes

~/Music$ beet modify -a Binhan albumartist="Singer"
Modifying 1 albums.
Binhan - Album Name
  albumartist: Binhan -> Singer
Really modify, move and write tags? (Yes/no/select) Yes

~/Music$ ls
Singer
~/Music$ ls Singer/
Album Name
~/Music$

What I still don’t understand is, why the Album does not move to test/Singer/Album Name, since I changed the default path in the config file:

$ beet config
path:
    default: test/$albumartist/$album/$track $title
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3

Ok, that’s because I wrote path instead of paths. :man_facepalming:

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4

Indeed! Looks like you discovered this pitfall, which is indeed confusing when you first encounter it:

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