importing-music.rst

Importing music

From music directory on the server

You can import music files in Funkwhale assuming they are located on the server and readable by the Funkwhale application. Your music files should contain at least an artist, album and title tags, but we recommend you tag it extensively using a proper tool, such as Beets or Musicbrainz Picard.

You can import those tracks as follows, assuming they are located in /srv/funkwhale/data/music:

export LIBRARY_ID="<your_libary_id>"
python api/manage.py import_files $LIBRARY_ID "/srv/funkwhale/data/music/**/*.ogg" --recursive --noinput

When you use docker, the /srv/funkwhale/data/music is mounted from the host to the /music directory on the container:

export LIBRARY_ID="<your_libary_id>"
docker-compose run --rm api python manage.py import_files $LIBRARY_ID "/music/**/*.ogg" --recursive --noinput

Note

Library IDs are available in library urls or sharing link. In this example: https://funkwhale.instance/content/libraries/769a2ae3-eb3d-4aff-9f94-2c4d80d5c2d1, the library ID is 769a2bc3-eb1d-4aff-9f84-2c4d80d5c2d1

You can use only the first characters of the ID when calling the command, like that: export LIBRARY_ID="769a2bc3"

The import command supports several options, and you can check the help to get details:

docker-compose run --rm api python manage.py import_files --help

Note

For the best results, we recommand tagging your music collection through Picard in order to have the best quality metadata.

Note

This command is idempotent, meaning you can run it multiple times on the same files and already imported files will simply be skipped.

Note

At the moment, only Flac, OGG/Vorbis and MP3 files with ID3 tags are supported

In-place import

By default, the CLI-importer will copy imported files to Funkwhale's internal storage. This means importing a 1Gb library will result in the same amount of space being used by Funkwhale.

While this behaviour has some benefits (easier backups and configuration), it's not always the best choice, especially if you have a huge library to import and don't want to double your disk usage.

The CLI importer supports an additional --in-place option that triggers the following behaviour during import:

1. Imported files are not store in Funkwhale anymore
2. Instead, Funkwhale will store the file path and use it to serve the music

Because those files are not managed by Funkwhale, we offer additional configuration options to ensure the webserver can serve them properly:

• :ref:`setting-MUSIC_DIRECTORY_PATH`
• :ref:`setting-MUSIC_DIRECTORY_SERVE_PATH`

Warning

While in-place import is faster and less disk-space-hungry, it's also more fragile: if, for some reason, you move or rename the source files, Funkwhale will not be able to serve those files anymore.

Thus, be especially careful when you manipulate the source files.

We recommend you symlink all your music directories into /srv/funkwhale/data/music and run the import_files command from that directory. This will make it possible to use multiple music music directories, without any additional configuration on the webserver side.

For instance, if you have a NFS share with your music mounted at /media/mynfsshare, you can create a symlink like this:

ln -s /media/mynfsshare /srv/funkwhale/data/music/nfsshare

And import music from this share with this command:

python api/manage.py import_files "/srv/funkwhale/data/music/nfsshare/**/*.ogg" --recursive --noinput --in-place

On docker setups, it will require a bit more work, because while the /srv/funkwhale/data/music is mounted in containers, symlinked directories are not. To fix that, in your docker-compose.yml file, ensure each symlinked directory is mounted as a volume as well:

celeryworker:
  volumes:
  - ./data/music:/music:ro
  - ./data/media:/app/funkwhale_api/media
  # add your symlinked dirs here
  - /media/nfsshare:/media/nfsshare:ro

api:
  volumes:
  - ./data/music:/music:ro
  - ./data/media:/app/funkwhale_api/media
  # add your symlinked dirs here
  - /media/nfsshare:/media/nfsshare:ro

Album covers

Whenever possible, Funkwhale will import album cover, with the following precedence:

1. It will use the cover embedded in the audio files themeselves, if any (Flac/MP3 only)
2. It will use a cover.jpg or a cover.png file from the imported track directory, if any
3. It will fectch cover art from musicbrainz, assuming the file is tagged correctly

Getting demo tracks

If you do not have any music on your server but still want to test the import process, you can call the following methods do download a few albums licenced under creative commons (courtesy of Jamendo):

curl -L -o download-tracks.sh "https://code.eliotberriot.com/funkwhale/funkwhale/raw/|version|/demo/download-tracks.sh"
curl -L -o music.txt "https://code.eliotberriot.com/funkwhale/funkwhale/raw/|version|/demo/music.txt"
chmod +x download-tracks.sh
./download-tracks.sh music.txt

This will download a bunch of zip archives (one per album) under the data/music directory and unzip their content.

From other instances

Funkwhale also supports importing music from other instances. Please refer to :doc:`federation` for more details.