My third attempt at using beets.io
What was frustrating is still somewhat frustrating, but less so
So, I recently decided that I would try using beets to sort my music and manage it again. This would be the third time doing so. However, unlike last time, I've opted to force it to ask me with every album and each time it bugs up, I abort, tag in Picard, and restart. So far? Everything has gone smoothly. I will have to transfer some files out of the old folders and new, especially the things I no longer can download from my music stores for some reason... Qobuz! It's right weird how they still sell Holst's The Planets as performed by the LSO, but won't allow me to redownload the CD.
On top of this, I'm using Gonic, a minimal subsonic server to serve my music to me. I didn't opt for Navidrome. Why? I already use Subsonic clients, like Feishin and Tempo on my own devices. Why do I need to have a web interface?
The one thing I can never seem to get right is inputting a Release MBID and using that. It just seems to run the search all over again, which is rather annoying. Hence why I abort, tag in Picard, then run beet import all over again with resume enabled.
The biggest issue I've run into was the fact that not all of the UMDGSO albums are on MusicBrainz. That's slowly being rectified by yours truly as well.
My configuration is still being tweaked to perfection, but the general idea is that Gonic and Beets are pointed at the same directory. Enabled in Beets is the Subsonic Update plugin. beet import is run on some music, beet tags and sorts the files, then sends the command to Gonic to rescan. Then, smart playlists are generated based on several criteria defined in the config file, dropping them in the folder for the right gonic user and sending a command to rescan at the same time.
Gonic picks up on these changes and makes it available right away, thanks to incremental scanning as defined in the OpenSubsonic API. All of this on Feishin leads to a beautiful experince, as seen below:
Or something like this (Tempo):
I certainly feel this will be the way forward, even though Beethoven, my next machine iteration of this project, might be the grounds for testing other server implementations. I do appreciate what Subsonic has defined and can't wait to play more.
Update - 22 September 2026: HOLY SHIT I CAN ADD FIELDS TO THE BEETS DATABASE AND QUERY THEM!!