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# Discogs Plugin

The `discogs` plugin extends the autotagger’s search capabilities to include matches from the Discogs database.

Files can be imported as albums or as singletons. Since Discogs matches are always based on Discogs releases, the album tag is written even to singletons. This enhances the importers results when reimporting as (full or partial) albums later on.

## Genre Mapping

Discogs uses `styles` for the more specific classifications and `genres` for the broader ones. The plugin therefore uses Discogs `styles` as the primary source for the beets `genres` field, because beets treats `genres` as the main multi-valued genre field.

The broader Discogs `genres` values are written to the beets `style` field. If `append_style_genre` is enabled, those broader Discogs `genres` values are also appended to beets `genres`.

For example, a Discogs release with `styles` set to `["Techno"]` and `genres` set to `["Electronic"]` becomes beets `genres` = `["Techno"]` and `style` = `"Electronic"` by default. With `append_style_genre` enabled, beets `genres` becomes `["Techno", "Electronic"]`.

## Installation

To use the `discogs` plugin, first enable it in your configuration (see Using Plugins). Then, install `beets` with `discogs` extra

    pip install "beets[discogs]"

You will also need to register for a Discogs account, and provide authentication credentials via a personal access token or an OAuth2 authorization.

Matches from Discogs will now show up during import alongside matches from MusicBrainz. The search terms sent to the Discogs API are based on the artist and album tags of your tracks. If those are empty no query will be issued.

If you have a Discogs ID for an album you want to tag, you can also enter it at the “enter Id” prompt in the importer.

### OAuth Authorization

The first time you run the import command after enabling the plugin, it will ask you to authorize with Discogs by visiting the site in a browser. Subsequent runs will not require re-authorization.

### Authentication via Personal Access Token

As an alternative to OAuth, you can get a token from Discogs and add it to your configuration. To get a personal access token (called a “user token” in the python3-discogs-client documentation):

1. login to Discogs;

2. visit the Developer settings page;

3. press the Generate new token button;

4. copy the generated token;

5. place it in your configuration in the `discogs` section as the `user_token` option:

       discogs:
           user_token: "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

## Configuration

This plugin can be configured like other metadata source plugins as described in Using Metadata Source Plugins.

### Default

    discogs:
        apikey: REDACTED
        apisecret: REDACTED
        tokenfile: discogs_token.json
        user_token:
        index_tracks: no
        append_style_genre: no
        separator: ', '
        strip_disambiguation: yes
        featured_string: Feat.
        extra_tags: []
        anv:
            artist_credit: yes
            artist: no
            album_artist: no
        data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.5
        search_limit: 5

index_tracks (default: `no`)

  Index tracks (see the Discogs guidelines) along with headers, mark divisions between distinct works on the same release or within works. When enabled, beets will incorporate the names of the divisions containing each track into the imported track’s title.

  For example, importing divisions album would result in track names like:

      Messiah, Part I: No.1: Sinfony
      Messiah, Part II: No.22: Chorus- Behold The Lamb Of God
      Athalia, Act I, Scene I: Sinfonia

  whereas with `index_tracks` disabled you’d get:

      No.1: Sinfony
      No.22: Chorus- Behold The Lamb Of God
      Sinfonia

  This option is useful when importing classical music.

append_style_genre (default: `no`)

  Appends the broader Discogs `genres` values to beets `genres` after the specific Discogs `styles` values already stored there. See the Genre Mapping section above for the default field mapping and an example.

separator (default: `", "`)

  How to join multiple Discogs `genres` values when writing the beets `style` field.

  Changed in version 2.7.0: This option now only applies to the `style` field as beets now only handles lists of `genres`.

strip_disambiguation (default: `yes`)

  Discogs uses strings like `"(4)"` to mark distinct artists and labels with the same name. If you’d like to use the Discogs disambiguation in your tags, you can disable this option.

featured_string (default: `Feat.`)

  Configure the string used for noting featured artists. Useful if you prefer `Featuring` or `ft.`.

extra_tags (default: `[]`)

  By default, beets will use only the artist and album to query Discogs. Additional tags to be queried can be supplied with the `extra_tags` setting.

  This setting should improve the autotagger results if the metadata with the given tags match the metadata returned by Discogs.

  Tags supported by this setting:

  - `barcode`

  - `catalognum`

  - `country`

  - `label`

  - `media`

  - `year`

  Example:

      discogs:
          extra_tags: [barcode, catalognum, country, label, media, year]

anv

  This configuration option is dedicated to handling Artist Name Variations (ANVs). Sometimes a release credits artists differently compared to the majority of their work. For example, “Basement Jaxx” may be credited as “Tha Jaxx” or “The Basement Jaxx”. You can select any combination of these config options to control where beets writes and stores the variation credit. The default, shown below, writes variations to the artist_credit field.

      discogs:
          anv:
             artist_credit: yes
             artist: no
             album_artist: no

### Contributor credits

When Discogs provides artist roles on a track, beets uses them to separate main artists from other credited contributors. Main artist fields such as `artist`, `artists`, `artist_credit`, `artists_credit`, `artist_id`, and `artists_ids` keep the primary artist credits, while featured artists from track roles are appended using `featured_string`.

Discogs contributor roles are also imported into beets’ multi-value performer fields when available. This includes remixer, lyricist, composer, and arranger credits, which populate `remixers`, `lyricists`, `composers`, and `arrangers` respectively.

data_source_mismatch_penalty (default: `0.5`)

  Penalty applied when the data source of a match candidate differs from the original source of your existing tracks. Any decimal number between 0.0 and 1.0

  This setting controls how much to penalize matches from different metadata sources during import. The penalty is applied when beets detects that a match candidate comes from a different data source than what appears to be the original source of your music collection.

  Example configurations:

      # Prefer MusicBrainz over Discogs when sources don't match
      plugins: musicbrainz discogs

      musicbrainz:
          data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.3  # Lower penalty = preferred
      discogs:
          data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.8  # Higher penalty = less preferred

      # Do not penalise candidates from Discogs at all
      plugins: musicbrainz discogs

      musicbrainz:
          data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.5
      discogs:
          data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.0

      # Disable cross-source penalties entirely
      plugins: musicbrainz discogs

      musicbrainz:
          data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.0
      discogs:
          data_source_mismatch_penalty: 0.0

  Tip

  The last configuration is equivalent to setting:

      match:
          distance_weights:
              data_source: 0.0  # Disable data source matching

source_weight (default: `0.5`)

  Deprecated since version 2.5: Use data_source_mismatch_penalty instead.

search_limit (default: `5`)

  Maximum number of search results to return.

## Troubleshooting

Several issues have been encountered with the Discogs API. If you have one, please start by searching for a similar issue on the repo.

Here are two things you can try:

- Try deleting the token file (`~/.config/beets/discogs_token.json` by default) to force re-authorization.

- Make sure that your system clock is accurate. The Discogs servers can reject your request if your clock is too out of sync.

Matching tracks by Discogs ID is not yet supported. The `--group-albums` option in album import mode provides an alternative to singleton mode for autotagging tracks that are not in album-related folders.