beets 1.4.8

This release is far too long in coming, but it's a good one. There is the usual torrent of new features and a ridiculously long line of fixes, but there are also some crucial maintenance changes. We officially support Python 3.7 and 3.8, and some performance optimizations can (anecdotally) make listing your library more than three times faster than in the previous version.

The new core features are:

• A new config-aunique configuration option allows setting default options for the aunique template function.
• The albumdisambig field no longer includes the MusicBrainz release group disambiguation comment. A new releasegroupdisambig field has been added. #3024
• The modify command now allows resetting fixed attributes. For example, beet modify -a artist:beatles artpath! resets artpath attribute from matching albums back to the default value. #2497
• A new importer option, ignore_data_tracks, lets you skip audio tracks contained in data files. #3021

There are some new plugins:

• The playlist can query the beets library using M3U playlists. Thanks to @Holzhaus and @Xenopathic. #123 #3145
• The loadext allows loading of SQLite extensions, primarily for use with the ICU SQLite extension for internationalization. #3160 #3226
• The subsonicupdate can automatically update your Subsonic library. Thanks to @maffo999. #3001

And many improvements to existing plugins:

• lastgenre: Added option -A to match individual tracks and singletons. #3220 #3219
• play: The plugin can now emit a UTF-8 BOM, fixing some issues with foobar2000 and Winamp. Thanks to @mz2212. #2944
• gmusic:
  • Add a new option to automatically upload to Google Play Music library on track import. Thanks to @shuaiscott.
  • Add new options for Google Play Music authentication. Thanks to @thetarkus. #3002
• replaygain: albumpeak on large collections is calculated as the average, not the maximum. #3008 #3009
• chroma:
  • Now optionally has a bias toward looking up more relevant releases according to the preferred configuration options. Thanks to @Archer4499. #3017
  • Fingerprint values are now properly stored as strings, which prevents strange repeated output when running beet write. Thanks to @Holzhaus. #3097 #2942
• convert: The plugin now has an id3v23 option that allows you to override the global id3v23 option. Thanks to @Holzhaus. #3104
• spotify:
  • The plugin now uses OAuth for authentication to the Spotify API. Thanks to @rhlahuja. #2694 #3123
  • The plugin now works as an import metadata provider: you can match tracks and albums using the Spotify database. Thanks to @rhlahuja. #3123
• ipfs: The plugin now supports a nocopy option which passes that flag to ipfs. Thanks to @wildthyme.
• discogs: The plugin now has rate limiting for the Discogs API. #3081
• mpdstats, mpdupdate: These plugins now use the MPD_PORT environment variable if no port is specified in the configuration file. #3223
• bpd:
  • MPD protocol commands consume and single are now supported along with updated semantics for repeat and previous and new fields for status. The bpd server now understands and ignores some additional commands. #3200 #800
  • MPD protocol command idle is now supported, allowing the MPD version to be bumped to 0.14. #3205 #800
  • MPD protocol command decoders is now supported. #3222
  • The plugin now uses the main beets logging system. The special-purpose --debug flag has been removed. Thanks to @arcresu. #3196
• mbsync: The plugin no longer queries MusicBrainz when either the mb_albumid or mb_trackid field is invalid. See also the discussion on Google Groups Thanks to @arogl.
• export: The plugin now also exports path field if the user explicitly specifies it with -i parameter. This only works when exporting library fields. #3084
• acousticbrainz: The plugin now declares types for all its fields, which enables easier querying and avoids a problem where very small numbers would be stored as strings. Thanks to @rain0r. #2790 #3238

Some improvements have been focused on improving beets' performance:

• Querying the library is now faster:
  • We only convert fields that need to be displayed. Thanks to @pprkut. #3089
  • We now compile templates once and reuse them instead of recompiling them to print out each matching object. Thanks to @simonpersson. #3258
  • Querying the library for items is now faster, for all queries that do not need to access album level properties. This was implemented by lazily fetching the album only when needed. Thanks to @simonpersson. #3260
• absubmit, badfiles: Analysis now works in parallel (on Python 3 only). Thanks to @bemeurer. #2442 #3003
• mpdstats: Use the currentsong MPD command instead of playlist to get the current song, improving performance when the playlist is long. Thanks to @ray66. #3207 #2752

Several improvements are related to usability:

• The disambiguation string for identifying albums in the importer now shows the catalog number. Thanks to @8h2a. #2951
• Added whitespace padding to missing tracks dialog to improve readability. Thanks to @jams2. #2962
• The move command now lists the number of items already in-place. Thanks to @RollingStar. #3117
• Modify selection can now be applied early without selecting every item. #3083
• Beets now emits more useful messages during startup if SQLite returns an error. The SQLite error message is now attached to the beets message. #3005
• Fixed a confusing typo when the convert plugin copies the art covers. #3063

Many fixes have been focused on issues where beets would previously crash:

• Avoid a crash when archive extraction fails during import. #3041
• Missing album art file during an update no longer causes a fatal exception (instead, an error is logged and the missing file path is removed from the library). #3030
• When updating the database, beets no longer tries to move album art twice. #3189
• Fix an unhandled exception when pruning empty directories. #1996 #3209
• fetchart: Added network connection error handling to backends so that beets won't crash if a request fails. Thanks to @Holzhaus. #1579
• badfiles: Avoid a crash when the underlying tool emits undecodable output. #3165
• beatport: Avoid a crash when the server produces an error. #3184
• bpd: Fix crashes in the bpd server during exception handling. #3200
• bpd: Fix a crash triggered when certain clients tried to list the albums belonging to a particular artist. #3007 #3215
• replaygain: Avoid a crash when the bs1770gain tool emits malformed XML. #2983 #3247

There are many fixes related to compatibility with our dependencies including addressing changes interfaces:

• On Python 2, pin the jellyfish requirement to version 0.6.0 for compatibility.
• Fix compatibility with Python 3.7 and its change to a name in the re module. #2978
• Fix several uses of deprecated standard-library features on Python 3.7. Thanks to @arcresu. #3197
• Fix compatibility with pre-release versions of Python 3.8. #3201 #3202
• web: Fix an error when using more recent versions of Flask with CORS enabled. Thanks to @rveachkc. #2979: #2980
• Avoid some deprecation warnings with certain versions of the MusicBrainz library. Thanks to @zhelezov. #2826 #3092
• Restore iTunes Store album art source, and remove the dependency on python-itunes, which had gone unmaintained and was not Python-3-compatible. Thanks to @ocelma for creating python-itunes in the first place. Thanks to @nathdwek. #2371 #2551 #2718
• lastgenre, edit: Avoid a deprecation warnings from the PyYAML library by switching to the safe loader. Thanks to @translit and @sbraz. #3192 #3225
• Fix a problem when resizing images with PIL/pillow on Python 3. Thanks to @architek. #2504 #3029

And there are many other fixes:

• R128 normalization tags are now properly deleted from files when the values are missing. Thanks to @autrimpo. #2757
• Display the artist credit when matching albums if the artist_credit configuration option is set. #2953
• With the from_scratch configuration option set, only writable fields are cleared. Beets now no longer ignores the format your music is saved in. #2972
• The %aunique template function now works correctly with the -f/--format option. #3043
• Fixed the ordering of items when manually selecting changes while updating tags Thanks to @TaizoSimpson. #3501
• The %title template function now works correctly with apostrophes. Thanks to @GuilhermeHideki. #3033
• lastgenre: It's now possible to set the prefer_specific option without also setting canonical. #2973
• fetchart: The plugin now respects the ignore and ignore_hidden settings. #1632
• hook: Fix byte string interpolation in hook commands. #2967 #3167
• the: Log a message when something has changed, not when it hasn't. Thanks to @arcresu. #3195
• lastgenre: The force config option now actually works. #2704 #3054
• Resizing image files with ImageMagick now avoids problems on systems where there is a convert command that is not ImageMagick's by using the magick executable when it is available. Thanks to @ababyduck. #2093 #3236

There is one new thing for plugin developers to know about:

• In addition to prefix-based field queries, plugins can now define named queries that are not associated with any specific field. For example, the new playlist supports queries like playlist:name although there is no field named playlist. See extend-query for details.

And some messages for packagers:

• Note the changes to the dependencies on jellyfish and munkres.
• The optional python-itunes dependency has been removed.
• Python versions 3.7 and 3.8 are now supported.