What is the proper way to retag an already imported album?

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1

I’m using Musicbrainz for metadata.

What is the best way to retag an album after it has already been imported? eg: There is a different release ID (or updates to the currently linked release ID).

I know that I can target the exact album that I want to retag using beet ls album:ALBUM artist:ARTIST,

2

Hello! There are two possible answers here. To get new data for a given release (for the same release ID), this is the sole purpose of the mbsync plugin:
https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/mbsync.html

To re-tag an album “from scratch,” which is necessary if you want to match a new release, you’ll want a “re-import” (mentioned a few times in the docs if you search). You can use beet import -L <query> to re-import an album that you can match with beet ls -a.

3

Thanks for your response! Does the mbsync plugin have a timid mode, so I can verify the changes? For example, if I want to re-sync my whole library.

4

That documentation page, linked above, mentions a --pretend option that may fit the bill. (Try it out!)