Lidarr Importing

building a library

Posted by on September 23, 2023 · 1 min read

So, I finally got sick of Youtube Music constantly playing me the same 10 songs when say “OK Google, play some music” to my house speakers. I still remember the good old days of the Google Play Music service when that prompt would result in a nice mix of old favorites and also music I’d not encountered before. Tragically, Google knifed GPM a few years ago, despite Youtube Music being a far inferior service.

Instead, I’ve dusted off my decades old collection of MP3s, ripped from my long-gone CDs. After pointing Lidarr at my collection, I was able to start adding additional artists. I was intrigued by the list of “1001 Albums to Listen to Before You Die” by Robert Dimery.

After initially trying to use a Trackt list to import into Lidarr, I had just a mess of incorrect matches. So, restarting after a cleanup, I wrote my own Python script to add the correct albums into Lidarr. This took a bit of time as fuzzy matching was required for differing namings between the book editor and the MusicBrainz database that Lidarr uses.

Eventually, I was able to get a lot of neat new music (to me anyway) loaded in. Now I listen around the house with Plex and find myself discovering interesting new artists from past decades.