No Release option (Release Group only) on import?

[michaelkrieger]

Picard has the 'no_release' plugin. Its documentation states "do not store specific release information in releases of unknown origin".
Effectively, after tagging, this strips a list of tags, by default: asin,barcode,catalognumber,label,media,releasecountry,releasestatus when it is flagged as such.

In some cases you have a release but don't know its origin. You want to sort it, but you don't really know if it's a digital download, CD release, vinyl rip, US or UK or Canadian or Japanese version. But it most certainly is a 15-track version of the album within the release group.

Is there any way to accomplish this in Beets?

I don't want to guess, but do want to get the metadata from the release itself and tag the RELEASE_GROUP without tagging the RELEASE itself.

[RollingStar]

I don't think it exists, but I've wanted it.

[Serene-Arc]

I don't think this is possible in the current beets tool. Perhaps you could open an enhancement request?

[michaelkrieger]

Where would I do that? I assumed this "Ideas" discussion was just that?

I guess the idea is to add a prompt on import that may show the available matching releases (vs just the album) if there are multiple ones and one of the options will be "unknown" release of album ____ based on ____, which would then clear those specific release information items (but leave the release group), but use the information to tag.

Bonus points if it uses a ripping log file in the same folder to determine the disc ID and use that to match confidence and skip the prompt if there is only one matching discID.

[kergoth]

This is a good suggestion. Of course you can always do it after import with beet modify. I use the alias plugin to have a beet norelease command for this. But having it on import would absolutely be more convenient. I'd expect someone could potentially create a plugin for this functionality.

[michaelkrieger]

This is a good suggestion. Of course you can always do it after import with beet modify. I use the alias plugin to have a beet norelease command for this. But having it on import would absolutely be more convenient. I'd expect someone could potentially create a plugin for this functionality.

I would love to see the function your alias calls if you’re willing to share it @kergoth

[kergoth]

Of course. I don't often use it, so let me know if any of the fields are missing, but this is what I have now:

aliases:
  # Useful in cases where the precise release is unknown, or is not in
  # MusicBrainz yet.
  norelease:
    help: Strip release-specific tags
    command: modify 'asin!' 'isrc!' 'barcode!' 'catalognumber!' 'label!' 'media!' 'releasecountry!' 'releasestatus!' 'mb_albumid!' 'mb_workid!' 'mb_trackid!' 'mb_releasetrackid!' 'mb_releasegroupid!'