Organizing a large music server

June 15, 2005 6:59 PM

I have a relatively large music library stored on my file-server. Can anybody recommend a server-side tool to help me keep the files and their metadata organized?

I have nearly 200 GB of mp3 files on my server. I currently access my music through iTunes on my desktop and laptop machines via daapd. This works great, except when I want to change the file metadata. I use a combination of command-line apps and kludged-together scripts to rename the mp3s according to their tags, and I'm getting sick of it.

Since the files exist on my server and I access them from several client machines, using a client-side program such as iTuness to manage my library would be slow and difficult. An ideal solution would run on the server, allow me to edit file metadata through a web or other client interface, and automatically rename the files. I'm not particularly interested in the streaming facilities of most server-based 'jukebox' programs (e.g., slimserver, mp[3]act), though I don't mind if that capability is there. I just want a good interface for importing and managing music.

posted by Eamon to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I've had a lot of success using MusicMatch, it seems to do alright with my 80Gb collection, the super tagging functions work quite well compared to Windows Media Player.
posted by nkeown at 9:00 PM on June 15, 2005

My only bright idea is that a faster network might make a client side tool more acceptable (I hear good things about Foobar2000) -- GigE crossover between the server and one of the clients, or maybe a Firewire network if you already have firewire in one of the systems.
posted by Good Brain at 9:15 PM on June 15, 2005

are you running linux on the server? this might be a huge stretch, but perhaps iTunes for windows would run under Wine?

i do the same thing as you, but i nfs mount my mp3 partition on my mac and manage it with iTunes. speed is not a problem... i've got a gigabit ethernet network going here.
posted by joeblough at 11:14 PM on June 15, 2005

Yes, the server is running Linux, but it's tucked away without a monitor connected to it or X installed. I don't have gigabit ethernet, but ip-over-firewire would be an option if I got an ieee 1394 card for the server.

I should also mention that I'm not running Windows on any of my machines. An OS X or Linux-based solution would be best.
posted by Eamon at 5:04 AM on June 16, 2005

EasyTag on linux (and it might be kludged to run under OSX, but I don't know and have never used OSX) works great as a tag editor. You should just be able to browse to your NFS/SMB mount that has your music, browse to the directory, and modify the tags.

As a player, I've really come to like AmaroK under KDE as a player and it has pretty good tag editing capabilities.
posted by Ikazuchi at 6:04 AM on June 16, 2005

maybe I'm missing the question here but why not just use Musicbrainz to keep the lags and filenames generated correctly?
posted by Cosine at 10:14 AM on June 16, 2005

Musicbrainz looks cool, but I haven't done much with it. Is there a "Musicbrainz daemon" that runs on Linux?

I don't mind manually updating tags, I just want it to be easier and faster. The majority of my music was properly tagged by grabbing cddb data while I ripped it.
posted by Eamon at 12:58 PM on June 16, 2005