Skip to main content
`Ctrl`+`K`

# Lyrics Plugin

The `lyrics` plugin fetches and stores song lyrics from databases on the Web. Namely, the current version of the plugin uses Genius.com, Tekstowo.pl, LRCLIB, lrcmux and, optionally, the Google Custom Search API.

## Install

Firstly, enable `lyrics` plugin in your configuration (see Using Plugins). Then, install `beets` with `lyrics` extra

    pip install "beets[lyrics]"

## Fetch Lyrics During Import

When importing new files, beets will now fetch lyrics for files that don’t already have them. The lyrics will be stored in the beets database. The plugin also sets a few useful flexible attributes:

- `lyrics_backend`: name of the backend that provided the lyrics

- `lyrics_url`: URL of the page where the lyrics were found

- `lyrics_instrumental`: whether the backend marked the track as instrumental

- `lyrics_language`: original language of the lyrics

- `lyrics_translation_language`: language of the lyrics translation (if translation is enabled)

When a backend reports an instrumental track, beets leaves the lyrics text empty and sets `lyrics_instrumental` instead.

If the `import.write` config option is on, then the lyrics will also be written to the files’ tags.

## Configuration

To configure the plugin, make a `lyrics:` section in your configuration file. Default configuration:

    lyrics:
        auto: yes
        auto_ignore: null
        translate:
            api_key:
            from_languages: []
            to_language:
        dist_thresh: 0.11
        fallback: null
        force: no
        keep_synced: no
        google_API_key: null
        google_engine_ID: 009217259823014548361:lndtuqkycfu
        lrcmux:
          url: https://api.lrcmux.dev
          sources: []
        print: no
        rest_directory: null
        sources: [lrclib, google, genius, lrcmux]
        synced: no

The available options are:

- auto: Fetch lyrics automatically during import.

- auto_ignore: A beets query string of items to skip when fetching lyrics during auto import. For example, to skip tracks from Bandcamp or with a Techno genre:

      lyrics:
        auto_ignore: |
          data_source:bandcamp
          ,
          genres:techno

  Default: `null` (nothing is ignored). See Queries for the query syntax.

- translate:

  - api_key: Api key to access your Azure Translator resource. (see Activate On-the-Fly Translation)

  - from_languages: By default all lyrics with a language other than `translate_to` are translated. Use a list of language codes to restrict them.

  - to_language: Language code to translate lyrics to.

- dist_thresh: The maximum distance between the artist and title combination of the music file and lyrics candidate to consider them a match. Lower values will make the plugin more strict, higher values will make it more lenient. This does not apply to the `lrclib` backend as it matches durations.

- fallback: By default, the file will be left unchanged when no lyrics are found. Use the empty string `''` to reset the lyrics in such a case.

- force: By default, beets won’t fetch lyrics if the files already have ones. To instead always fetch lyrics, set the `force` option to `yes`.

- keep_synced: When enabled, tracks that already have synced lyrics are skipped even when `force` is set. Useful when re-fetching lyrics for a library that contains a mix of synced and plain lyrics and you only want to fill in the gaps. Default: `no`.

- google_API_key: Your Google API key (to enable the Google Custom Search backend).

- google_engine_ID: The custom search engine to use. Default: The beets custom search engine, which gathers an updated list of sources known to be scrapeable.

- lrcmux:

  - url: Base URL of the lrcmux instance to use. Override this to point at a self-hosted instance.

  - sources: List of lrcmux provider IDs to restrict the search to, e.g. `[ytmusic, kugou]`. Prefix an entry with `!` to exclude that provider instead, e.g. `["!musixmatch"]`. Leave empty (the default) to use all providers.

- print: Print lyrics to the console.

- rest_directory: The directory to which reStructuredText (ReST) rendered lyric documents will be output. See Rendering Lyrics into Other Formats.

- sources: List of sources to search for lyrics. An asterisk `*` expands to all available sources. The `google` source will be automatically deactivated if no `google_API_key` is setup. By default, `musixmatch` and `tekstowo` are excluded because they block the beets User-Agent.

- synced: Prefer synced lyrics over plain lyrics if a source offers them. `lrclib` and `lrcmux` both provide synced lyrics. Using this option, existing synced lyrics are not replaced by newly fetched plain lyrics (even when `force` is enabled). To allow that replacement, disable `synced`. When synced lyrics are written to an ID3-tagged file (MP3, AIFF, etc.) the plugin stores the timestamped data in the `SYLT` (synchronized lyrics) frame and plain text (without timestamps) in the `USLT` (unsynchronized lyrics) frame, so players that support only one of the two formats can still show the correct lyrics.

## Fetching Lyrics Manually

The `lyrics` command provided by this plugin fetches lyrics for items that match a query (see Queries). For example, `beet lyrics magnetic fields absolutely cuckoo` will get the lyrics for the appropriate Magnetic Fields song, `beet lyrics magnetic fields` will get lyrics for all my tracks by that band, and `beet lyrics` will get lyrics for my entire library. The lyrics will be added to the beets database and, if `import.write` is on, embedded into files’ metadata.

The `-p, --print` option to the `lyrics` command makes it print lyrics out to the console so you can view the fetched (or previously-stored) lyrics.

The `-f, --force` option forces the command to fetch lyrics, even for tracks that already have lyrics.

The `--keep-synced` option skips tracks that already have synced lyrics, regardless of the `force` flag. This is handy when you want to re-fetch plain lyrics without touching tracks that already have a synced version. Use `--no-keep-synced` to override a `keep_synced: yes` configuration for a single command run.

Inversely, the `-l, --local` option restricts operations to lyrics that are locally available, which show lyrics faster without using the network at all.

## Rendering Lyrics into Other Formats

The `-r directory, --write-rest directory` option renders all lyrics as reStructuredText (ReST) documents in `directory`. That directory, in turn, can be parsed by tools like Sphinx to generate HTML, ePUB, or PDF documents.

Minimal `conf.py` and `index.rst` files are created the first time the command is run. They are not overwritten on subsequent runs, so you can safely modify these files to customize the output.

Sphinx supports various builders, see a few suggestions:

Build an HTML version

    sphinx-build -b html <dir> <dir>/html

Build an ePUB3 formatted file, usable on ebook readers

    sphinx-build -b epub3 <dir> <dir>/epub

Build a PDF file, which incidentally also builds a LaTeX file

    sphinx-build -b latex <dir> <dir>/latex && make -C <dir>/latex all-pdf

## Activate Google Custom Search

You need to register for a Google API key. Set the `google_API_key` configuration option to your key.

Then add `google` to the list of sources in your configuration (or use default list, which includes it as long as you have an API key). If you use default `google_engine_ID`, we recommend limiting the sources to `google` as the other sources are already included in the Google results.

Optionally, you can define a custom search engine. Get your search engine’s token and use it for your `google_engine_ID` configuration option. By default, beets use a list of sources known to be scrapeable.

Note that the Google custom search API is limited to 100 queries per day. After that, the lyrics plugin will fall back on other declared data sources.

## Activate On-the-Fly Translation

We use Azure to optionally translate your lyrics. To set up the integration, follow these steps:

1. Create a Translator resource on Azure.

     Make sure the region of the translator resource is set to Global. You will get 401 unauthorized errors if not. The region of the resource group does not matter.

2. Obtain its API key.

3. Add the API key to your configuration as `translate.api_key`.

4. Configure your target language using the `translate.to_language` option.

For example, with the following configuration

    lyrics:
      translate:
        api_key: YOUR_TRANSLATOR_API_KEY
        to_language: de

You should expect lyrics like this:

    Original verse / Ursprünglicher Vers
    Some other verse / Ein anderer Vers