beets/docs/plugins/lastgenre.rst
2011-12-01 14:26:30 -08:00

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LastGenre Plugin
================
The MusicBrainz database `does not contain genre information`_. Therefore, when
importing and autotagging music, beets does not assign a genre. The
``lastgenre`` plugin fetches *tags* from `Last.fm`_ and assigns them as genres
to your albums and items. The plugin is included with beets as of version
1.0b11.
.. _does not contain genre information:
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/General_FAQ#Why_does_MusicBrainz_not_support_genre_information.3F
.. _Last.fm: http://last.fm/
The plugin requires `pylast`_, which you can install using `pip`_ by typing::
pip install pylast
After you have pylast installed, enable the plugin by putting ``lastgenre`` on
your ``plugins`` line in :doc:`/reference/config`, like so::
[beets]
plugins: lastgenre
The plugin chooses genres based on a *whitelist*, meaning that only certain tags
can be considered genres. This way, tags like "my favorite music" or "seen live"
won't be considered genres. The plugin ships with a fairly extensive internal
whitelist, but you can set your own in the config file using the ``whitelist``
configuration value::
[lastgenre]
whitelist: /path/to/genres.txt
The genre list file should contain one genre per line. Blank lines are ignored.
For the curious, the default genre list is generated by a `script that scrapes
Wikipedia`_.
.. _pip: http://www.pip-installer.org/
.. _pylast: http://code.google.com/p/pylast/
.. _script that scrapes Wikipedia: https://gist.github.com/1241307
Canonicalization
----------------
The plugin can also *canonicalize* genres, meaning that more obscure genres can
be turned into coarser-grained ones that are present in the whitelist. This
works using a tree of nested genre names, represented using `YAML`_, where the
leaves of the tree represent the most specific genres.
To enable canonicalization, first install the `pyyaml`_ module (``pip install
pyyaml``). Then set the ``canonical`` configuration value::
[lastgenre]
canonical:
Leaving this value blank will use a built-in canonicalization tree. You can also
set it to a path, just like the ``whitelist`` config value, to use your own
tree.
.. _YAML: http://www.yaml.org/
.. _pyyaml: http://pyyaml.org/