Mastodawn

Spent the day fighting with metadata in my music library. Now I remember why I pay for Deezer.

I cannot get Jellyfin to actually do what I want it to do. I edit the metadata to what I want, and the damn artist just disappears! I find the music just fine, do their "Identify" thing, which I don't trust, and artist is still gone. I rescan the library, and the music is there, but the artist isn't listed in the artist list.

I want to self host my music so badly, but this is a pain in my ass, and I'm not sure it is actually worth the savings.

tootbrute Sep 11, 2025

@thelinuxcast yeah, i use spotdl to make 'backups' of my music from spotify for this reason. it tags it soooo well.

@tootbrute doesn't that just download the songs from YouTube?

Majid Iqbal Sep 11, 2025

@thelinuxcast @tootbrute it’s called spotdl because it downloads the song from Spotify, not from YouTube. You literally paste the Spotify song link and it’ll download it for you

@akinzekeel @tootbrute it literally says otherwise. https://github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader

GitHub - spotDL/spotify-downloader: Download your Spotify playlists and songs along with album art and metadata (from YouTube if a match is found).

Download your Spotify playlists and songs along with album art and metadata (from YouTube if a match is found). - spotDL/spotify-downloader

GitHub

Majid Iqbal Sep 12, 2025

@thelinuxcast @tootbrute if it just downloads it from YouTube though, then why is it so much worse than yt-dlp?

@akinzekeel @tootbrute Supposedly it does metadata better, IDK. I don't use it. I don't care to download my stuff from YT, simply because a lot of artists upload skits music videos, which means you get more than the song.

tootbrute Sep 12, 2025

@thelinuxcast @akinzekeel you won't.

it checks spotify album page

searches youtube for the tracks that spotify lists

you do sometimes get LIVE versions. i found that happened more frequently if I downloaded a random playlist from spotify. if i downloaded a canonical full album, it was rock solid.

YMMV of course. i don't know what music you're downloading.

@tootbrute @akinzekeel when it downloads stuff does it put it in proper directories, is it all done in one big directory per playlist?

tootbrute Sep 12, 2025

@thelinuxcast @akinzekeel sadly not. kinda manual process (maybe someone has better process?!?!)

the way i use it.

find spotify album link

make directory /artist/album_name

cd into that directory

run spodl LINK, downloads music

run a script to send it to Jellyfin server

done

@tootbrute @akinzekeel How long does it usually take you to download an album? My first one took almost an hour and never actually finished.

@thelinuxcast @akinzekeel some are 30 seconds and some like yours are super slow.

Think it depends on rarity of the music. If it fails, run again. I think there are some time out settings you could play with. I just keep running it until it downloads

@tootbrute I had this big plan to just redownload all the artists/albums in my library. Instant fix for my metadata, but after some errors and the slowness on some albums on mainstream artists, I think I'll just use it to replace the artists that have the worst metadata problems.

tootbrute Sep 13, 2025

@thelinuxcast yeah, there isn't a way to just fire hose everything in there. I wish there was a way I could feed it a list of URLs and it could make the folders and everything, but that doesn't exist as far as I know.

@tootbrute I made a script. It's still requires you to name everything but it's a little bit more automated.

tootbrute Sep 13, 2025

@thelinuxcast oh re-he-he-ally?

If you share it, let us know. 😆

@tootbrute Here you go: https://gitlab.com/thelinuxcast/scripts/-/blob/master/spotty.sh?ref_type=heads

It's not anything special.

spotty.sh · master · Matthew Weber / scripts · GitLab

These are my scripts

GitLab

tootbrute Sep 13, 2025

@thelinuxcast still useful. painful to make directories.

tootbrute Sep 13, 2025

@thelinuxcast using your script with some modifications

i also killed my fedora distrobox, reinstalled, installed pipx, and reinstalled spotdl. working much better now.

i think my install was borked.

tootbrute Sep 13, 2025

#!/usr/bin/env bash

MUSIC="/home/myname/Music"

read -rp "Artist name? " ARTIST
read -rp "Album name? " ALBUM
read -rp "Link? " LINK
mkdir -p "$MUSIC"/"$ARTIST"/"$ALBUM"
cd "$MUSIC"/"$ARTIST"/"$ALBUM"|| exit

spotdl --bitrate 192k --threads 8 $LINK
echo "Album Downloaded"