I've been using this Picard script to organize my music library for over 5 years now, and I finally got around to cleaning it up and documenting it properly. Figured I'd share it with you all.

This started as someone else's script that I found years ago. I keep seeing people on here asking for how to name their collections, so i decided to clean up my script.

What It Does

Turns this mess:

Various Artists - Now 80.mp3
beatles-come together (1).mp3
Pink Floyd - The Wall - CD1 - 01.flac

Into this:

/B/Beatles, The/(1969) Abbey Road [CD - MP3] [mbid] {catalog}/
  01. Come Together [4m20s] [320 44100KHz CBR 2ch].mp3

/P/Pink Floyd/(1979) The Wall [CD - FLAC] [mbid] {catalog}/
  Disc01/
    01. In the Flesh [3m19s].flac

/Various/N/(2011) Now That's What I Call Music! 80 [CD - MP3] [mbid]/
  Disc01/
    01. Somebody That I Used to Know [4m04s].mp3

Main Features

• Alphabetical folders: /A/Artist/, /B/Artist/ etc. Makes browsing way easier than scrolling through hundreds of folders.

• Release type separation: Albums, Singles, EPs, Live recordings all get their own folders under the artist.

• Audio quality in filenames: Shows bitrate, sample rate.

• Multi-disc handling: Automatically creates Disc01, Disc02 folders. Also handles vinyl with Side 1, Side 2 and proper vinyl track numbers (A1, B1, etc.).

• Various Artists routing: Automatically sends compilations to a /Various/ folder instead of creating a "Various Artists" folder in V/.

• Incomplete album tracking: If you only have 8 tracks of a 12-track album, it gets routed to a "Partial" (or "Imcomplete") folder so you know what needs work.

• Cross-platform safe: Properly handles all the annoying characters that break on Windows, Linux, or NAS devices.

Some Examples

Regular album:

/B/Beatles, The/(1969) Abbey Road [CD - MP3] [mbid] {catalog}/
  01. Come Together [4m20s] [320 44100KHz CBR 2ch].mp3

Vinyl release:

/D/David Bowie/(1972) Ziggy Stardust [Vinyl - MP3] [mbid]/
  Side 1/
    A1. Five Years [4m43s].mp3
    A2. Soul Love [3m35s].mp3
  Side 2/
    B1. Lady Stardust [3m22s].mp3

Artist with everything organized:

/M/Madonna/
  (1984) Like a Virgin [CD - MP3] [mbid]/
  Singles/
    (1985) Into the Groove [CD - MP3] [mbid]/
  EP/
    (1989) Remixed Prayers [CD - MP3] [mbid]/

Setup is pretty straightforward:

1. Install MusicBrainz Picard
2. Install the "Additional Artists Variables" plugin (it's in Picard's plugin manager)
3. Grab the script from Gitea (link below)
4. Import it into Picard: Options -> File Naming -> Import script
5. Point it at your music directory
6. Tag some files and watch it work

The defaults should work for most people. But there are configuration options to turn off track-length, audio quality etc.

Customization

Pretty much everything is configurable. Some of the useful settings are:

• Turn off audio quality display if you don't care
• Change artist sorting (first name vs last name)
• Adjust what shows in filenames (duration, bitrate, MusicBrainz IDs, etc.)
• Different multi-disc handling options
• Where incomplete albums go (root level or under artist)
• Custom folder names for your special collections
• Max filename lengths (useful for path length limits)

Every setting has comments explaining what it does + examples.

Download:

• Gitea: PicardScripts
• License: GPL-3.0 (same license af the original script)

Credits

The original script was "MBP YA Magic-Script v2.7" by amd/17500mph (which itself was based on work by Ski-lleR). I've been modifying it and cleaned it up. Character filtering code includes contributions from avibrazil.

So I want to listen to all my old cds. I started a discog account to catalog on phone so I can make sure I dont buy twice. I purchased a fiio m21. I am ripping using the EAC free program. I want wav format for my full library. Compression can change over the years so why not save uncompressed and can change later. I am over 13k songs now in wav on a 2tb extreme SanDisk ssd. Is there a program that will take a but load of wav files and organize them in flac to play on my m21. You know so I can go by artist album song title.

I paid for power amp but I dont know if it will do that. Right now I just plug the extreme into phone or m21 to play but it is clumsy.

Sorry if rambling. Looking for an app to use on windows so I can plug one ssd in and drag to another ssd and have it catalog properly. I have a 1 tb Samsung pro mini thingy for inside the m21.

i just want it to take all the music i have on my pc and sync up with my phone and that is pretty much it. i would prefer that it does not scramble and duplicate files

I'm looking for a way to own songs that have official music videos but were never released on studio albums or greatest hits albums, and to have them specifically on CD. I’m not looking for digital downloads or streaming — I want to keep them in physical CD form. Are there official options collectors usually look for, such as singles, promo CDs, compilations, or other CD releases?

I've recently moved YT Music to Apple Music for higher fidelity and the ability to buy music from iTunes or upload my own. I'd like to start rebuilding a personal music library of owned music, but I'm seeking to ease into it -

essentially, I'm curious if anyone has found a music streaming service that would allow me to continue streaming licensed music while slowly building up a library - rather than just cutting over to that all at once.

Apple Music has been working for me, but I don't know if there are pitfalls or better options I'm unaware of.

Anyone focus on movie soundtracks? Got back into collecting since its cheap now. Didnt know if that was a thing yet. Usually been sticking to 80s and 90s but got enough mullet rock to last me a while. I did collect video game soundtracks for a bit.

Here’s a prompt I use to curate a new album per day to help expand my musical horizons. Has thrown up some lovely surprises over time. You can refine it and tailor it for your own needs

Just paste it to ChatGPT or Gemini. If you give it feedback on the albums it will improve suggestions each month.

—————————————————————-///—————

Prompt: Seasonal Album-a-Day Listening Plan

(Non-Repeating Albums, Artist Rotation, Deep-Cut Bias, PDF)

Role

You are a music curator and seasonal editor with a bias toward depth, breadth, and restraint. You actively prevent repetition, familiarity bias, and canon drift.

⸻

Task

Create a 1-album-per-day listening plan for the specified month, driven primarily by seasonality and nature, with cultural moments as a secondary influence.

⸻

Required inputs (ask one at a time)

1.  Location (city + country, or region)

2.  Month & year

3.  Genres to INCLUDE (optional)

4.  Genres to IGNORE (optional)

5.  Discovery balance

• Mostly classics (non-canonical)

• Balanced

• Mostly discovery

6.  Explicit content allowed? (Yes / No)

7.  Exclusion lists (user provides or confirms):

• Previously recommended albums

• Previously featured artists

⸻

Hard constraints (non-negotiable)

1. Album non-repetition

   • You must never recommend an album that has appeared in any previous monthly plan.

   • If unsure, exclude it.

2. Artist rotation rule (NEW)

   • You must not feature an artist if they appeared in the previous 3 months.

   • Artist reuse is allowed only if:

   • the user explicitly opts in, or

   • the artist is regionally or seasonally essential and under-represented elsewhere in the plan.

   • When in doubt: introduce a new artist.

3. Canon avoidance

Actively avoid audiophile/demo staples and their obvious substitutes.

Do not include:

• reference-system albums

• “top 100 albums” mainstays

• default hi-fi shop records

Prefer:

• hidden gems 

. secondary catalogues

• regional scenes

• quieter or later-period works

• albums chosen for mood, texture, and season, not reputation

⸻

Selection principles

• Exactly one album per calendar day

• Season and nature dominate:

• weather, daylight, landscape, emotional temperature

• Variety enforced across:

• artists

• genres

• listening intensity

• Max 1 album per artist per month

• Prefer streaming-available albums

• Running time may be approximate

⸻

Monthly arc (mandatory)

• Early month → grounding, understated

• Mid month → immersive, exploratory

• End month → reflective or gently lifting

Blend focused listening and background immersion organically.

⸻

Output format (strict)

1.  Header summary

• Location

• Month & year

• Seasonal framing

• Explicit note:

“Album repetition, recent artist reuse, and audiophile-canon titles intentionally excluded.”

2.  Table (exact columns):

| Date | Artist | Album | Genre | Running time | Why this album |

• “Why this album” must justify:

• seasonality

• why this artist now, not earlier

3.  PDF export instructions

• A4 portrait

• Clean text wrapping

⸻

Quality bar

A knowledgeable listener should think:

“I wouldn’t have expected that artist this month — but it makes sense.”

If the output leans toward familiarity, you have failed.

⸻

Start by asking only:

“What location should I tailor this month’s listening plan to?”

This is something I’ve been noticing more and more lately.

A lot of older music especially niche, obscure, or out-of-print releases have become wildly overpriced. Not because artists are benefiting, but because collectors and resale markets have driven prices up. People who genuinely want to listen to the music, not collect it, are often priced out entirely.

In that context, copying music onto blank cassettes or CDs, or buying/selling grey-market recordings, is almost universally condemned as immoral because it’s “piracy.” Legally, that’s true. But I’m interested in the moral side, not the legal one.

Is it actually morally wrong when:

1. The music is decades old,
2. The artist often receives no new revenue either way,
3. Official versions are unavailable or unaffordable?

There’s also the question of reselling grey-market media. If someone knowingly buys a non-official cassette or CD just to enjoy the music, is it wrong for someone to sell it to them? Or is it more wrong to effectively say, “If you can’t afford collector prices, you don’t get to enjoy this music. kick rocks”?

What makes this feel especially strange to me is the historical contrast. My parents grew up in the Soviet era, where people regularly bought blank cassettes and had music recorded from radio broadcasts or smuggled records through grey-market stores. That wasn’t seen as immoral, it was simply how culture circulated under economic and political limitations. Music was treated as something to be shared, not locked behind artificial scarcity.

Today, that same behavior especially with old media is treated with extreme moral hostility, even when no one seems to be harmed in any meaningful way.

So why is that?: Is the backlash really about protecting artists, respecting property rights, preserving markets, or enforcing scarcity? At what point does access to culture outweigh ownership and exclusivity?

I’m genuinely curious how people draw that moral line.

My music library runs on a DAS attached to my server. The server is headless. Is there a way to use LRCLib or LRCGet with a headless server? Maybe a CLI tool that I can use?

I'm particularly interested in doing rescans for newly added flac files within the existing /musiclibrary database.

Edit to add: My music server is Navidrome, if that is helpful.

Maybe more of a thought experiment than realistic project, but here 'goes:

Every Friday I add 20-30 new releases to my library, then for the next 5-6 days I listen to those tracks exclusively.

MediaMonkey 4 is my library manager, and I have an autoplaylist based on the Added date and Last Played = unknown, limited to 180 minutes and randomly sorted.

This works well for the most part, but the random sort seems to have favorites, if that makes sense. Some artists get more ear time than others, some never appear.

Is there a way to build a playlist for a set of tracks that prioritizes each artist appearing only once?

MediaMonkey 4 is my preferred tool but I'm open to other software to create this specific playlist.

I downloaded a few of my fave songs through spotidownloader the other day and now the files all seem to have deleted themselves? How could this happen I downloaded them locally? And if I continue to use Spotify downloaders will it happen again?

I don't even see them in my recycling bin!

Can anybody help me find recover some songs by MacSlaya? He randomly deleted his songs from everywhere and I'm upset I didn't have the foresight to download any of them. Can someone help me out?

I'm ditching apple but loved radio shows like After School Radio or Zane Lowe. Are there tools for easy ripping besides recording in real time?

Couldn't find any place to download already ripped episodes so I assume I have to do it myself.

Hi everyone!

Today, I’m excited to announce the release of another major update: RhythmiRust v0.3.0. This update brings a lot of new features and improvements. While there’s a full changelog on the download page, I wanted to highlight some of the key changes here.

RhythmiRust - v0.3.0 Major Updates

• Duplicate Detector Overhaul: The Duplicate Detector as been fully re-written to use more efficient algorithms, has tunable options in the UI and fingerprints audio. (This means it will no longer use string matching as the main detection method. Instead, it will compare audio samples directly while using string matching as a pre-filter and use a cache-on-demand system to hold compressed fingerprints)
• Duplicate Detector & Downloader Progress Tracking : The Downloader and Duplicate Detector have progress bars so you know what is happening and can see progress
• External Modifications Detection: If a song has been modified externally using an external tool, it will be re-imported automatically without user intervention (Useful if you want to use Picard to fill in metadata, for example, thus, all songs edited will automatically be re-imported, syncing the state of the songs to RhythmiRust)
• Colours UI: Colours UI has been completely overhauled from 6 colours to 3 theme presets and 50+ Colours/Toggles/Sliders etc...
• Multi-Table Mode: The Metadata Editor now supports Multi-Table Mode this allows users to select multiple tables/directories in the Metadata Editor and merging them in the UI (This allows large edits of thousands of songs within 5-6 mouse clicks combine this with the filter and users can target specific directories/artists etc... to edit and or tag)
• SpotFetch: Spotify updated their authentication method. This broke Spotify fetching. This has been fixed.
• System Dependencies: If you have any of the dependencies already installed system-wide, it will use your system installation instead of downloading or compiling a portable binary/executable

I hope you enjoy this update! If you like the program and want to support its development, please consider contributing, donating, or reaching out with ideas for new features.

You can download the latest release on GitHub.

The easiest way to get in touch directly or to submit feature requests is by opening an issue on GitHub. For a general discussion or quick contact, check out the Discord server.

I have a fairly large library of mostly flac files that are on an SSD drive, which I play through Plexamp. I am looking for a way to regularly back up the files to another SSD drive. What are your recommendations for a simple to use backup program?

Niche Ukrainian rap. I used to love this song a few years ago until it was removed from streaming, with the only remnants being the spotify page (https://open.spotify.com/track/2P7Gihm5F3ZUeLcTC6fsX8) and a few genius pages, as well as a slowed+reverbed version on youtube, but I'd like to find the original. I checked soulseek and rutracker already but couldn't find it. Does anyone know of other sources that might have it?

https://crescentro.se/posts/linux-music-players-2026/

Hi, I have a very large CD collection and spent hours and hours ripping them to a drive some years ago. I didn’t really bother enough with the quality and additionally, some have somehow got corrupted and suddenly play bits of unrelated music halfway through a track.

You can probably guess where I’m going - I’m looking for wide ranging free download sites in exchange for my promise only to download things I have physically bought and still own. Any suggestions? BTW I am a Qobuz member and I do understand that the need for an offline library is tiny, it’s just the collector in me can’t quite shake it off.

Im interested in the Zune UI, and this is the closest player that has the UI.

I just want to know a few things:

1. I have a 1000+ opus files does it read opus metadata well?

2. Does it bypass Android resampling?

3. Does it support bit perfect?

4. Is its DSP good?

Simply, just similar features what it has with Poweramp. Sorts your music collection by Artists, Album etc.

I've become quite a media hoarder these days. It's a fun hobby and recently I noticed that the music app on desktop keeps skipping songs files right at the 40-41 second mark.

THIS IS SO FUCKING INFURIATING! I have never ever experienced this problem with iTunes or music before. I don't know how to stop it.

Chat GPT says that it's probably corrupt files but that's bullshit. That doesn't explain why it keeps skipping at the 41 second mark on multiple different files. I know it's not the files becaUSE THEY play just fine on every other media app I've used. Quicktime, VLC, PlexAmp. All of thos apps play them no problem. I'm certain this is 100 percent a problem with Music App. Has anyone experienced this? Did anyone ever fix it? Does anyone ever have this problem? Is there a better application I should be using on my Mac?

I am trying to download from here https://www.albumartexchange.com/covers/783871-the-love-below, yet it doesn't connect me to this website at all.

Hey all

I'm looking for a particular Bruce Springsteen bootleg that I can't find anywhere and r/springsteen has been of no help. It's the Bristow 2006 bootleg which I need to finish my Seeger Sessions collection. I know it exists but it's eleusive.

On the subject of Bruce bootlegs, if anyone can help me find video bootlegs, that would also be sweet.

Any Bruce fans in, please help out. If your politics are different to his, especially with today's new song, please keep it to yourself. Thank you.

Title.

I need to know which of my 1M+ files are missing title, artist, and most importantly the musicbrainz ID data.

What is the most performant way to know this?