With Lidarr being not very functional due to the Unable to communicate with LidarrAPI - Lidarr API “Internal Server Error” 500 | Invalid response received from LidarrAPI | HTTP Request Timeout · Issue #5498 · Lidarr/Lidarr I have been thinking about getting rid of it altogether. I have only started using it recently and don’t like it.
What I use Lidarr for:
- Find metadata for music
- organize files in a consistent way base on metadata
- obtain album art
- create .nfo or other files
- Identify desired music and instruct download utility to get it (this is optional for me— I can handle myself if needed)
- Do the above via a web interface which can be browsed nicely
I don’t like about Lidarr:
- The not-really-open-source nature of it, e.g. this current problem, where you are reliant on their external server to run your own home server. I feel this might be a more pervasive issue in the Arrs but not sure of all the implications
- How unsupported it is to include work that the lidarr servers don’t know about. There will never be a metadata database which includes all music. There is just too much music in the world!
- no audiobook/podcast support
I also have Jellyfin going for the actual serving/streaming of the music. Am not sure if it is able to fully manage the metadata and files?
Lots of options in the awesome-selfhosted list.
I could use a linux desktop app if it was better than a selfhosted server.
Thoughts?
You must log in or register to comment.
I use beets. highly configurable, good documentation. cli, though. I think someone was working on a browser plug-in…🤔
I tried beets but it takes so long to do any task. Even if I just ask it to look up 1 album.
beet import /path/to/albumI got frustrated trying to learn it.Was surprised about being unable to find any --verbose argument so I could at least see what was going on. Does it just take forever to do anything?
I’d recommend going through the documentation for beets, they have great guides on using the auto tagger and importing music!
(If it is ‘taking forever’ to look up 1 album there is likely an issue with your config or beets install, following the docs can help with this!)
I’m using Picard musicbrainz.
This is a difficult problem to solve, because everyone has their own (valid) way to name, organize and tag music.
That’s why lidarr is so disappointing to many folks.
Most of us use a couple of tools, I personally use MusicBrainz Picard.
I stopped to retag and rename music files. Right now I prefer them to be as original as possible because preservation reasons. I shoud look for an alternative using sidecar files. In the past I used Musicbrainz Picard.
in theory if you wanted to you could use hardlinks to retain the original file structure while also having a nicely organized version available. most of the Arrs support this although TBH I do not trust them with the files I wish to preserve in this way. Since there’s not too many of them I just zip up copies of anything I want to retain exactly and let the software work with a duplicate. And hardlinks of course would still be subject to editing like retagging.
Of course if you are accustomed to your library being organized in this manner and it suits you, then there is no reason to change. :)
Yes, I am aware of hard links. But renaming is not the main issue. The main issue is retagging. Thanks anyway.
