No results from Discogs on singletons

[ghbrown]

I don't get any results from the Discogs plugin when running on singletons like beet import -s track.mp3.

Does the Discogs plugin have the ability to search for single tracks using the Discogs API? I can enter search mode and successfully find the album to which a track belongs when messing around with beet import dir_containing_only_track, but entering search mode from a singleton call (-s) doesn't yield any results from Discogs.

I see from the python3-discogs-client that tracklist of a release is exposed, so if its not implemented right now I think it should be possible (right?).

My config is below, most notable is probably that I only receive results from Discogs since I've turned off Musicbrainz

directory: '~/Temporary/Beets Sandbox/Music Library'
library: ~/.config/beets/library.db

plugins: convert discogs fetchart embedart

import:
    move:  yes # move files into destination directory
    write: yes # permit editing of file tags

paths:
  singleton: $artist - $title

convert:
    format: mp3 # convert to MP3
    auto:   yes # automatically convert
    delete_originals: true

musicbrainz:
    enabled: no # disables Musicbrainz for releases after March 2022

discogs:
    source_weight: 0.0
    index_tracks: yes

[JOJ0]

-s is not implemented in the beets discogs plugin.

You should be able to import single files in regular album mode though. You will see missing tracks being reported in the importer ui. I use it often that way myself.

Have you tried using "Enter search" in the importer prompt and give artist and album title? That should find discogs matches alongside musicbrainz matches even when mb is still enabled!

[ghbrown]

Thanks! Yes, I can get that approach to work in album mode by searching and finding the incomplete album.

Unfortunately, I have my library arranged as a bunch of files all in one directory and so the most obvious way for me to ingest that would be using beet import -s. However, I think this means I won't be able to use Discogs (auto-tag or search) for my use case. If you have any other suggestions for coaxing Discogs into helping in such a case I would appreciate it.

Is there work to implement singleton mode for Discogs, or perhaps an underlying reason it isn't implemented?

For now, can this fact be added to the docs for the Discogs plugin (I wasn't able to find it anywhere, and had to do a bit of forensics to reach this conclusion)? I can make the PR if that makes things easier.

[JOJ0]

Adding to docs is a great idea. I'm sure a PR is welcome.

Singleton mode implementing is not the easiest with discogs since it's designed quite different than musicbrainz. Fun fact is that I thought about trying to implement singleton mode for discogs plug recently...other things in the way at the moment though.

Please do me a favor and search for issues that point to the missing singleton feature. I recall that this popped up a couple of months ago already. We could +1 there and someone might pick it up. Even if it's you or me in the end ;-)

[ghbrown]

Sounds good, I'll make that PR for the docs.

I'm not familiar enough with most of these tools, but I have also been thinking about ways to use the Discogs API to supply this feature, so I'll hack around and see if I can make heads or tails of it.

Noted about the outstanding issues/PRs, I'll take a look and post there if I find one.

[JOJ0]

That said, there is another way you can try with your "multi album folder":

beet import --group-albums folder/

I hope I've triggered you anyway to help with discogs singleton docs and feature pushing forward :-)

[ghbrown]

I found two issues: #2544, #3574
And actually one unmerged PR: #3682 (was supposed to be split into two PRs but went stale).

Nothing recent like you suggested though. Should I revive one or more of these issues/PRs?

[sampsyo]

It would be awesome to revive the stale PR you referenced! As the last comment in the thread suggests, a trimmed-down version that just implements item_candidates would be awesome.

[ghbrown]

Sounds good!

@JOJ0 Do you want dibs on this? If not, I'm happy to give it a go, but turn around may be a bit slower since I need to get familiar with how beets works internally.

[JOJ0]

No, please go ahead! If you feel motivated, I think it's a good oportunity to get started with beets hacking. As @sampsyo mentionend already implementing a simpler version than the PR tried to do back then is probably best. Even though I think that on the long run further advancing the plugin to also provide album information would be awesome, let's take one step at the time :-)

Perhaps taking this item_candidates method as a rough example helps: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/blob/master/beets/plugins.py#L751-L767 but note that the discogs plugin does not inherit MetadataSourcePlugin, it kind of does it's own thing. Back when MetadataSourcePlugin abstract class was implemented, discogs plug was not refactored to use it. I just mention it because it's a quite short method that might be easier to grasp than the one in the linked PR. HTH

[ghbrown]

Thanks for the suggestions! Taking a look now, and I'm sure I'll be reaching out for help or questions in the next few days.

[JOJ0]

Thanks to @ghbrown for implementing the feature and improving docs in #4634