There we go. I just released a new command line audio tagger called htagcli. You can check it out on my GitHub.
The Problem
As a longtime digital music enthusiast, I’ve spent decades curating my music library. Over the years, I’ve tried countless tools to keep it organized, ranging from Windows GUIs (forgive my younger self) to Linux command line utilities, and even web-based server apps.
My current workflow looks like this:
- Normalize audio files using mp3gain, aacgain, vorbisgain, or metaflac, depending on the format.
- Use beets to scrape metadata, tag files, and organize them.
- Check collection consistency with bliss.
- Edit tags as needed with various CLI tools, including eyeD3, id3, and tagutil.
Yes, it’s complicated. I need to simplify this workflow.
htagcli
Here is a short demo of htagcli in action:
While htagcli doesn’t yet streamline the entire process, it’s a solid step toward taking ownership of my music management workflow.
Currently, htagcli can replace both a command line tagger and bliss to check the library consistency. I plan to add auto-tagging features similar to beets, and I’m still considering how to handle normalization. We’ll see how it evolves.
I like these is a well-scoped personal projects, small but non-trivial, and which solve a real problem for me. Looking at the git history, I realized I started this three years ago but didn’t have the time to push it forward. I’m thrilled to finally have it in a very usable state.
Roadmap
Here are the features I plan to implement soon:
- Handle disc ID tags
- Check that cover art size is within a configurable range
- Ensure no missing tracks in an album
- Verify genre consistency at the artist level
Another major goal is to scrape metadata from third-party sources like MusicBrainz, Discogs, and Bandcamp to automatically tag files correctly.