mpd_sima.cfg

Name

mpd_sima.cfg — mpd-sima will try to maintain some titles ahead in the queue following different policies. This manual document the configuration file for mpd-sima.

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly mpd-sima configuration options available in user configuration file (see the section called “FILES”).

EXAMPLES

Album queue mode.

Here is an example of album queue configuration.

[MPD]
host=example.org
port=8000

[sima]
history_duration=48  # 2 days
queue_length=5

[lastfm]
queue_mode=album
album_to_add=2

[crop]
# keep 30 played tracks in playlist
consume=30

Configuration file

The configuration file consists of sections, led by a [section] header and followed by name: value entries, with continuations in the style of RFC 822 (see section 3.1.1, “LONG HEADER FIELDS”); name=value is also accepted. Lines beginning with '#' or ';' are ignored and may be used to provide comments (Nota Bene: inline comment are possible using '#').

The default values are used in the options lists below.

MPD section

This section is meant to configure MPD access, MPD host address / port and password if necessary.

[MPD]
host=localhost: Set MPD host. Use IP or FQDN.
port=6600: Set host port to access MPD to.
password=s3cr3t: Set MPD password to use. Do not use this option if you don't have enabled password protected access on your MPD server.

log section

Configure logging.

[log]
logfile=: File to log to, usually in dæmon mode.
Defaut (empty or unset) is to log to stdin/stdout.
verbosity=info: Logging verbosity among debug, info, warning, error.

Process daemonization

Configure process daemon.

[daemon]
daemon=false: whether to daemonize process or not.
pidfile=: Where to store process ID.

sima section

Core mpd_sima.cfg configuration.

contrib=

internal=Lastfm, Random, Crop

mpd-sima's plugin management for internal source plugin and contrib (ie. external plugins).
Plugins list is a comma separated string list.
Optional plugin's configuration lays in its own section.
For instance a "AwesomePlugin" declared here gets its configuration from the corresponding section "[awesomeplugin]".

The default list of plugins to load at startup: Lastfm,Random,Crop.
Crop is an utility plugin, it does not queue any tracks (cf. below).
Random will queue a track at random if other plugins did not return any tracks.

You can add here as many plugins you want, currently shipping Lastfm and EchoNest only.
The priority may be used to order them.

history_duration=8

How far to look back in history to avoid to play twice the same track/title (duration in hours).
The history_duration is also used to give priority to not recently played artists.

queue_length=2

Threshold value triggering queue process.

musicbrainzid=true

Use MusicBrainzIdentifier to search music (mainly for artists). Default is True, switch to False if you don't have MusicBrainzIdentifier set for at least 80% of you music library.
Consider using these metadata as it enhances a lot artist/album/tracks identification. Use Picard to tag your file: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/.

[sima]

Crop section

crop plugin's configuration:

[crop]

consume=10

How many played tracks to keep in the queue. Allows you to maintain a fixed length queue. Set to some negative integer to keep all played tracks.

priority=10

Plugin priority

Random section

Random plugin's configuration:

[random]

flavour=sensible

When no similar tracks are found, falling back to random queuing. Different mode, aka random flavour, are available: pure, sensible, genre.

pure, pure random choice, even among recently played track.
sensible, use play history to filter chosen tracks.
genre, Not implemented yet.

priority=50

Plugin priority

LastFm section

LastFM plugin's configuration.

[lastfm]
queue_mode=track: Queue mode to use among track, top and album (see the section called “QUEUE MODES” for info about queue modes).
max_art=10: Number of similar artist to retrieve from local media library.
When set to something superior to zero, it tries to get as much similar artists from media library.
depth=1: How many artists to base on similar artists search.
The first is the last played artist and so on back in the history. Highter depth generates wider suggestions, it might help to reduce looping over same artists.
single_album=false: Prevent from queueing a track from the same album (it often happens with OST).
Only relevant in "track" queue mode.
track_to_add=1: How many track(s) to add. Only relevant in top and track queue modes.
album_to_add=1: How many album(s) to add. Only relevant in album queue modes.
cache=True: Whether or not to use on-disk persistent http cache.
When set to "true", sima will use a persistent cache for its http client. The cache is written along with the dbfile in:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd_sima/http/WEB_SERVICE.
If set to "false", caching is still done but in memory.
priority=100: Plugin priority

EchoNest section

EchoNest plugin's configuration.

Options for EchoNest are exactly the same as LastFm (same default as well), except for cache plugin which is always needed to limit number of requests to the service.

[echonest]
queue_mode=track
max_art=10
depth=1
single_album=false
track_to_add=1
album_to_add=1
priority=100

QUEUE MODES

mpd-sima offers different queue modes. All of them pick up tracks from artists similar to the last track in the queue.

mpd-sima tries preferably to chose among unplayed artists or at least not recently played artist. Concerning track and album queue modes titles are chosen purely at random among unplayed tracks.

track

Queue a similar track chosen at random from a similar artist.

top

Queue a track from a similar artist, chosen among "top tracks" according to last.fm data mining.

album

Queue a whole album chosen at random from a similar artist.

Nota Bene:
Due to the track point of view of database build upon tracks tags an album lookup for a specific artist will return albums as soon as this artist appears in a single track of the album.
For instance looking for album from "The Velvet Underground" will fetch "Last Days" and "Juno" OSTs because the band appears on the soundtrack of these two movies.
A solution is for you to set AlbumArtists tag to something different than the actual artist of the track. For compilations, OSTs etc. a strong convention is to use "Various Artists" for this tag.

mpd-sima is currently looking for AlbumArtists tags and avoid album where this tag is set with "Various Artists". If a single track within an album is found with AlbumArtists:"Various Artists" the complete album is skipped and won't be queued.

FILES

${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/mpd_sima/mpd_sima.cfg: Configuration file.
${XDG_DATA_HOME}/mpd_sima/sima.db: SQLite DB file.
${XDG_DATA_HOME}/mpd_sima/WEB_SERVICE/: Persistent http cache.

Usually XDG_DATA_HOME is set to ${HOME}/.local/share and XDG_CONFIG_HOME to ${HOME}/.config.
You may override them using command line option --var-dir and --config (cf. mpd-sima(1))

FEEDBACK/BUGS

The maintainer would be more than happy to ear from you, don't hesitate to send feedback, http://kaliko.me/id/.

XMPP users are welcome to join the dedicated chat room at kaliko.me@conf.azylum.org.