Music library metadata convention

In order to choose which tracks to add, your music library needs to follow some conventions regarding metadata 1. Files in your library should be tagged with the metadata best describing the music file.

Be aware that the benefit from a well tagged library goes far beyond the use of MPD_sima alone. Any piece of software will take advantage of a well tagged library, especially music players. If you already use MPD as a player, you are already well aware of it.

A minimal set of tags required for MPD_sima to work would be ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE, but in order to work properly and with all plugins a more complete tag set is recommended.

MPD_sima is actually expecting: ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE, ALBUMARTIST, GENRE and some MusicBrainzIDs 2 as well: MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID, MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID and MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID.

There are very good tools to (auto)tag you music library, picard is highly recommended, beets is also a good alternative. Actually any piece of software tagging your files with the most common tags (albumartist especially) and MusicBrainzIDs 3 should be fine.

1

commonly named tags or ID3 tags for MP3, but most audio format have some metadata features.

2

MusicBrainz provides a reliable and unambiguous form of music identification; this music identification is performed through the use of MusicBrainz Identifiers (MBIDs).

3

cf 2