Playlist Maker

Playlist Maker is a fast and simple console application that allows users to create playlists using a query like:

Play((AlbumArtist("Joji") | C_Artist("Tom Misch")) & !InPlaylist("old_loved_songs"))

The program extracts information from Id3 tags and verifies if they match the query issued.

Query Features

The query can be build using the following tokens:

• Main options:
  • Play (creates a playlist);
  • Index (creates an index, csv with song details, of all matching songs to speed up following queries).
• Song tag frames (any case):
  • path;
  • title;
  • artist;
  • album;
  • albumartist;
  • year | date;
  • beforeyear | beforedate (only for literal tags);
  • afteryear | afterdate (only for literal tags);
  • genre;
  • track | tracknumber;
  • discnumber | disc.
• Query objects:
  • literal song tags;
  • regex in song tags (R_);
  • partial song tags (C_);
  • m3u playlists.
• Basic lang support:
  • and operator (&);
  • or operator (|);
  • not operator (!);
  • parenthesis (()).

Query Examples

Index(Afteryear("100"))

Creates an index with all music, assuming you don't have any song made before the year 100. This index can then be used instead of the normal folder with songs.

Play((AlbumArtist("Joji") | C_Artist("Tom Misch")) & !InPlaylist("old_loved_songs"))

Creates a playlist where all songs have the album artist Joji or the artist contains the string Tom Misch and aren't in the old_loved_songs playlist.

Command-line options

Create playlists using a query language

Usage: playlist-maker [OPTIONS] --query <QUERY>

Options:
  -i, --input <INPUT>        Directory with songs or file with indexed songs to query from (can be repeated if needed)
  -o, --output <OUTPUT>      File to write the query results to (if not specified send to stdout)
  -p, --playlist <PLAYLIST>  Path to m3u playlist to be used in the query (can be repeated if needed)
  -q, --query <QUERY>        Query to execute
  -h, --help                 Print help information
  -V, --version              Print version information

Installation

The only OS where this application was properly tested was archlinux.

Direct via Cargo

If rust and cargo are installed in the machine run:

git pull https://github.com/FilipeMCruz/playlist-maker pl-maker
cd pl-maker
cargo build --release

Arch Linux via AUR

Install package by running:

paru -S playlist-maker-rs

OR (for the binary version)

paru -S playlist-maker-rs-bin

OR (for the latest commit version)

paru -S playlist-maker-rs-git

Integration

I use this script to directly play the songs collected by pl-mker:

# Invoke example: <script_name> 'C_Artist("Drake")'
mpc clear
# command cut is there to normalise the path. For some reason my mpd only accepts paths starting inside $MUSIC
pl-mker --query "Play($1)" -i $MUSIC/index | cut -d '/' -f 5- | mpc add

mpc play

Tips

I usually index my entire music folder with:

pl-mker --query 'Index(C_Artist("a") | !C_Artist("a"))' -i $MUSIC -o $MUSIC/index

And then use the index to create playlists faster:

pl-mker --query 'Play(<your query>)' -i $MUSIC/index

Small Caveats

• The id3 crate in use reads the id3v2.4 "year" tag as a TYER frame instead of a TDRC frame, as i was expecting.

Future work

• Document the application;