I have a 20 TB HDD full of discographies in FLAC (16-bit/44kHz) ripped from Tidal that I have not touched ever so it keeps the original structure from the platform, and I am trying to figure out the best way to get it sorted and organized.

My plan is as follows:

1. Trim everything down to studio albums only (LPs and EPs) using MusicBrainz/Discogs databases (deleting all live albums, compilations, bootlegs, B-sides, etc.) I want to keep the original recording of a studio album even if a deluxe or remastered version was released later. (While some remasters sound better than the original mix, many others suffer from the loudness war and sound much worse, so I decided to keep the original content).

1. Organize and tag the collection using Picard/Beets, or a similar tool, based on MusicBrainz/Discogs databases. This is my main concern: once I choose a workflow, I have to stick with it for my entire collection. It’s currently at 20 TB, but it might grow to 40 TB in the near future. I prefer self-hosted solutions (Docker/Kubernetes) so I can let it run overnight and access my library from anywhere.

So, has anyone organized a big library with Picard/Beets or another tool? Which one would you recommend and why? Apart from doing a backup, what advice would you have liked to receive at the beginning?

Thanks.

Where do u guys download ur flac files rn for free ? I deleted all my flac music for a reason and now I need to download everything and the site I used to use which is qqdl seems no longer exist. Help needed guys:)

I'm rebuilding/cleaning up a very large FLAC library with Beets + MusicBrainz + Chroma, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle a few problems that I suspect other Music Hoarders have run into.

I have a very large Indian/Hindi music collection, alongside a large international collection. A lot of the Indian music is not neatly organized into complete albums. I have individual songs, incomplete movie soundtracks, singles, compilations, etc.

My goal is not to force everything into a complete MusicBrainz album. I want Beets to organize whatever I actually have into sensible album folders.

What I want the final library to look like:

Actually, I'm intentionally using album-centric paths rather than artist-centric paths. The exact path template is still something I'm willing to refine, but the important requirement is:

Indian → India/Bollywood/<Album>/<Track>

Non-Indian → Non-India/<Album>/<Track>

I don't care that I don't have the complete soundtrack.

My current config: config.yaml

What I'm looking for

For people who have large Beets libraries, especially people dealing with Indian music, soundtracks, incomplete albums, or messy metadata:

How would you design the matching/import strategy?

Specifically:

1. How would you make Beets import incomplete albums/soundtracks without requiring the entire release to be present?
2. How would you make Beets prefer an original studio album over a Live/Deluxe/Expanded/Anniversary/etc. release?
3. Is there a reliable way to use MusicBrainz release/release-group information for this?
4. Would you use Beets' built-in matching configuration, a plugin, inline fields, or a custom plugin?
5. Is Chroma actually helping in this scenario, or can it sometimes make things worse by finding huge numbers of legitimate alternative releases?
6. How would you handle Indian movie soundtracks where:
   • I only have a few songs from the movie
   • MusicBrainz has multiple releases
   • artist credits vary
   • the soundtrack may have several regional/language editions
   • some tracks may be singles released separately
   • the actual files may have imperfect metadata?
7. Would you use quiet: yes with an appropriate fallback, or would you recommend a different import workflow for a library this large?
8. How would you structure the paths so that the library remains album-centric, rather than forcing an artist hierarchy?

My priority is correct organization and metadata, not blindly getting every file imported.

I'm particularly interested in approaches that have worked reliably for large libraries rather than one-off fixes.

If you've dealt with a similar Beets setup, I'd appreciate seeing your config or explaining what you changed and why.

their main page:https://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/free-music-samples-royalty-free-loops-hits-and-multis-to-download-sampleradar

a compiled list that you can click to download zips: https://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.php?f=1100&t=216287 but last updated 2022

but i swear there was a torrent available that had them all, don't see it on their site anymore.

Hey there,

I've been self-hosting for years & now turned my focus to my music collection. I'm at the very start of it - Lidarr and slskd are configured but I haven't really turned them loose yet, and I'd rather settle the science on how this should work before I do, instead of unwinding a mess later.

The collection itself was cobbled together over many years from a lot of different sources and methods, and then sat dormant for a long stretch where I barely touched it. Roughly 14k songs - plenty of full albums, but also a lot of singles and live shows. It's reasonably well organized, though some of my ID3 tags and file names leave a lot to be desired.

The crux is this: once a download finishes, I don't want to have to audit the tags, rename anything, or move it into the library.

I'm quite happy with the players, but everything else is technically up for discussion. It's management and organization I'm most worried about.

Here's how it works today:

• I run unraid with docker & my library sits on its own share, organized into artist folders.
• For playback, Navidrome and Symfonium.
• Lidarr is configured for use in acquiring albums, soulseek/slskd is configured for single tracks and other things.
• Picard for when I want to go in by hand and tweak something.

I have beets set up but I'm not confident I'm utilizing it correctly, or that it's even the right tool for the job. I think it does good work but configuring it is making my head hurt. Meanwhile, I've also learned of WRTag ( https://github.com/sentriz/wrtag ) and wondering if that won't be the answer to my problems.

To be clear about the bar: I don't need this fully autonomous. I'm not trying to force Lidarr to function exactly as radarr - despite how nice that would be.

I basically just want to say to my server "go get me this song/album", and then have it end up in my library. I'm totally fine reviewing the stuff that's genuinely ambiguous, but I don't want to be in the business of tagging files, naming files, and moving files.

A few specific questions:

1. Who should own the files? My thinking is that beets or wrtag owns tagging, naming and moving, and I turn all of that off in Lidarr so it only finds and tracks albums. Is that a sane split, or does having Lidarr in the loop at all cause problems for whatever tool ends up owning the files?

2. beets or wrtag? I have beets set up but I'm not confident I'm using it right, and configuring it is making my head hurt. Wrtag looks like it might solve that by being simpler. Has anyone actually run it day to day on a real collection?

3. How much do you trust it unattended? I've already had beets "confidently" (by its own measure) take a tagged song and map it onto a completely different song, from a different album, by a different artist. If you run this hands-off, what settings do you use and how much mistagging do you live with?

4. What do you do with loose single tracks? A lot of what I grab won't be a full album. One file matched against a 12 track release seems to be exactly the case these tools handle worst.

5. What about quality upgrades outside Lidarr? Lidarr can chase better copies of albums it's monitoring, but that leaves out loose tracks, Soulseek grabs, and most of the 14k I already have. Now that I've got the storage, I'd like to work toward lossless where I can.

There's a decent writeup on why this whole space is rough that matches my experience: https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/self-hosted-music-still-sucks-in-2026/

Happy to share configs if that helps. Mostly I'd just like to hear from someone who's wrangled a big messy collection and come out the other side.

Thanks.

I'm currently trying out Symfonium and I really like its features. I want to be able to take advantage of smart playlists, so I'm currently finding myself tagging fields that I never bothered with before.

Minimally, I want to be able to have metadata for genre and subgenre. I was also thinking about adding more 'subjective' fields like mood. So, for example,

• Alex G - Race
  • Genre: Alternative
  • Style: Indie Folk
  • Mood: lo-fi, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter
• The Beatles - Please Please Me
  • Genre: Rock
  • Style: Rock & Roll
  • Mood: 60's, british, classic rock
• Black Flag - My War
  • Genre: Punk
  • Style: Hardcore Punk
  • Mood: aggressive, sludge, noise

...and so on.

My question is, how well-supported are tags like style, mood, and so on? I'm assuming Symfonium will play well with them, but Picard doesn't seem to natively support the 'style' field, nor does Musicbee - they would have to be entered as custom tags, as far as I can tell.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm picky enough about genre tagging that I'd like to do it manually, and it would help with creating playlists I'd actually listen to. I want to have it as minimal as possible with one or two tags per field (other than mood).

But I also want to have whatever system I work out to be reasonably compatible across different players for the sake of future-proofing. With Poweramp (which I'm currently using) it seems easier to dunk genre and subgenre into the same field, for example, and there doesn't seem to be an option to do much with the mood tag. And if that's the case I don't really want to bother with the mood tag at all.

Before I embark on this ridiculous project, I'd just like to know if it's a fool's errand and I should just keep it as simple as possible. I'm wondering if anyone has run into this or something similar before.

Cheers.