Hi all :)
I’ve been using MediaMonkey on Windows 10 and Android to organise my music, playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts, including syncing them to my phone. MediaMonkey has let me down again, so I’m looking to switch, and as I’m trying to switch to Linux too, now would be a good time to get a Linux media manager.
One of the main ways that I use MM is by either building a playlist and transferring the whole thing, or adding to a playlist and just syncing the new tracks. I prefer the tracks to be placed in their artist / album directory though, rather than a directory for the playlist.
I also use MM on Windows to organise my tracks with online metadata, usually from Discogs, so that it matches the entry for the album. I store my media under music\sorted\album artist\album name\track no - artist - title, with a similar setup for audiobooks and podcasts, and would prefer to do the same with the new software.
Does anyone know of anything that can do this please?
I’ve looked at Strawberry and Cinnamon, but development seems to have stopped, and I don’t know enough about things like flaws and bugs to know if they’re still safe to use.
Thanks in advance for your help :)
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Music organization: Musicbrainz Picard, also available for windows if you want try it before migrating to linux: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/
For mobile sync I use Navidrome+Ultrasonic via Subsonic API. Navidrome is a music streaming server, but you can predownload songs, not just livestream them, so it’s possible to use it fully offline. https://www.navidrome.org/
I’ll have a look at those, thanks :)
You can use any media management solution on your PC and sync that to your devices using https://syncthing.net/
Thanks for replying :)
I’ve got too much to store on my phone, and a lot of media that I don’t want on there, like my kid’s music. I don’t want to have to break the media up into new directories to sync either.
Can Syncthing do it another way? I’ve only ever used it for syncing directories.
Syncthing can ignore files and directories, but I don’t know if that fits your use case. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/ignoring.html
Ah, no, it wouldn’t. I add whole albums sometimes, but I usually add playlists taken from the whole library, so all the tracks would have different paths.
It could be great for the audiobooks and podcasts though :)
Strawberry is still active. But I think you need Beets or Picard, as others have mentioned.
There are a handful of other tools that can help with sorting as well. I think Quod Libet and Ex Falso are available on may distros, I used to use Ex Falso for quick manual tagging and pulling in data from other sources.
As for the syncing, I couldn’t help you there. I have used Strawberry for this, for sure, but I tend to drag and drop to my DAP.
I haven’t heard of Quod Libet or Ex Falso, so I’ll look into those. If needs be, I can get used to other ways of syncing, I’d just prefer to be able to click a sync button and let the software get on with it while I do something else.
Thanks for the recommendations :)
My music workflow is the following: I’m using dynamic playlists based on last played timestamp. If a song was played, it gets a new timestamp and is removed from the playlist. Now a new song comes automatically in to the playlist where the timestamp doesn’t exist or is older as x-days. That’s easy to setup on strawberry and other applications. This playlist will be synced via whatever you want to your phone. In my case a SFTP service to keep it wireless. On the phone I use the same playlist with every player you want. Additional I’m using lastfm to scrobble the played music. This keeps the last played timestamp on the phone and can be synced with strawberry. I don’t know if other applicants can do the same.
Sounds complicated at first but after initial setup it’s a automatic process.
That sounds interesting. I generally prefer to have mostly static playlists, but that’s a good way to hear new tracks :)
Does the SFTP service sync automatically, or is it manual? If it’s manual, can it be triggered from the phone?
You’ve just reminded me that I need to sort out my playlists and pull them from MediaMonkey. It stores playlists in its own database, rather than as separate files, so by default they can’t be used in other players.
Media Monkey uses SQLite as database. I have used Media monkey to, before I switched to Linux. So I extracted the last played timestamp and play count with a simple SQL select and migrated this info to strawberry, which uses also SQLite. But be aware that both stores the date in an incompatible way. It’s not that easy to spot in Media monkey database.
You can also use a Windows program like Media Monkey or Musicbee on Linux through Wine. So you don’t have to migrate your database. Syncing will work for both with Media Monkey and Musicbee.
Regarding SFTP. You can have the server on the PC or the phone. It’s up to you which fit’s better your needs. Having the server on the PC is more common. Then you can use any file manager to get the needed files from your server/PC. You can also use USB, Samba or other services, but at least here SFTP is the fastest variant.
I was in your position a few years back. I missed MediaMonkey when shifting to Linux.
I found Tauon media player was a pretty solid replacement for playing local and network files, but ultimately settled on running Navidrome server and Feishin as a desktop client. I haven’t looked back.
For organising your collection, I’d look at using either Musicbrainz Picard (GUI based) or Beets (CLI, and it’s a little complicated at first). I generally use Beets with Musicbrainz database, and the Discog plugin for anything not found by MB.
I haven’t found anything that is a complete package like MediaMonkey, but with a bit of effort and once the parts are set up, it’s so much better.
Someone else suggested Navidrome and MusicBrainz Picard too, so I’ll definitely give them a try, thanks :)
Not a great replacement but Plex with Plexamp might be an option for music. I’m not sure it can handle audiobook or podcasts metadata automatically. It will host it anyway but you might have to find the metadata externally or import it manually.
Thanks for replying :)
I’ve got Plex, and have tried Plexamp, but it just didn’t do it for me. It’s been a while, but I think I could only stream, rather than sync to my device. I couldn’t get Plex to import the tracks in the way I wanted either.
Is there any particular reason you don’t like using Spotify?
I own a few hundred albums, so I begrudge paying for the ability to listen to them, or have ads, and I’m not always somewhere with a decent internet connection.
That’s a valid reason
