Beets

This release is far too long in coming, but it\'s a good one. There is the usual torrent of new features and a ridiculously long line of fixes, but there are also some crucial maintenance changes. We officially support Python 3.7 and 3.8, and some performance optimizations can (anecdotally) make listing your library more than three times faster than in the previous version.

The new core features are:

- A new `config-aunique` configuration option allows setting default options for the `aunique` template function.
- The `albumdisambig` field no longer includes the MusicBrainz release group disambiguation comment. A new `releasegroupdisambig` field has been added. 3024
- The `modify` command now allows resetting fixed attributes. For example, `beet modify -a artist:beatles artpath!` resets `artpath` attribute from matching albums back to the default value. 2497
- A new importer option, `ignore_data_tracks`, lets you skip audio tracks contained in data files. 3021

There are some new plugins:

- The `playlist` can query the beets library using M3U playlists. Thanks to \Holzhaus and \Xenopathic. 123 3145
- The `loadext` allows loading of SQLite extensions, primarily for use with the ICU SQLite extension for internationalization. 3160 3226
- The `subsonicupdate` can automatically update your Subsonic library. Thanks to \maffo999. 3001

And many improvements to existing plugins:

- `lastgenre`: Added option `-A` to match individual tracks and singletons. 3220 3219
- `play`: The plugin can now emit a UTF-8 BOM, fixing some issues with foobar2000 and Winamp. Thanks to \mz2212. 2944
- `gmusic`:
- Add a new option to automatically upload to Google Play Music library on track import. Thanks to \shuaiscott.
- Add new options for Google Play Music authentication. Thanks to \thetarkus. 3002
- `replaygain`: `albumpeak` on large collections is calculated as the average, not the maximum. 3008 3009
- `chroma`:
- Now optionally has a bias toward looking up more relevant releases according to the `preferred` configuration options. Thanks to \archer4499. 3017
- Fingerprint values are now properly stored as strings, which prevents strange repeated output when running `beet write`. Thanks to \Holzhaus. 3097 2942
- `convert`: The plugin now has an `id3v23` option that allows you to override the global `id3v23` option. Thanks to \Holzhaus. 3104
- `spotify`:
- The plugin now uses OAuth for authentication to the Spotify API. Thanks to \rhlahuja. 2694 3123
- The plugin now works as an import metadata provider: you can match tracks and albums using the Spotify database. Thanks to \rhlahuja. 3123
- `ipfs`: The plugin now supports a `nocopy` option which passes that flag to ipfs. Thanks to \wildthyme.
- `discogs`: The plugin now has rate limiting for the Discogs API. 3081
- `mpdstats`, `mpdupdate`: These plugins now use the `MPD_PORT` environment variable if no port is specified in the configuration file. 3223
- `bpd`:
- MPD protocol commands `consume` and `single` are now supported along with updated semantics for `repeat` and `previous` and new fields for `status`. The bpd server now understands and ignores some additional commands. 3200 800
- MPD protocol command `idle` is now supported, allowing the MPD version to be bumped to 0.14. 3205 800
- MPD protocol command `decoders` is now supported. 3222
- The plugin now uses the main beets logging system. The special-purpose `--debug` flag has been removed. Thanks to \arcresu. 3196
- `mbsync`: The plugin no longer queries MusicBrainz when either the `mb_albumid` or `mb_trackid` field is invalid. See also the discussion on [Google Groups](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/beets-users/mbsync%7Csort:date/beets-users/iwCF6bNdh9A/i1xl4Gx8BQAJ) Thanks to \arogl.
- `export`: The plugin now also exports `path` field if the user explicitly specifies it with `-i` parameter. This only works when exporting library fields. 3084
- `acousticbrainz`: The plugin now declares types for all its fields, which enables easier querying and avoids a problem where very small numbers would be stored as strings. Thanks to \rain0r. 2790 3238

Some improvements have been focused on improving beets\' performance:
- Querying the library is now faster:
- We only convert fields that need to be displayed. Thanks to \pprkut. 3089
- We now compile templates once and reuse them instead of recompiling them to print out each matching object. Thanks to \SimonPersson. 3258
- Querying the library for items is now faster, for all queries that do not need to access album level properties. This was implemented by lazily fetching the album only when needed. Thanks to \SimonPersson. 3260
- `absubmit`, `badfiles`: Analysis now works in parallel (on Python 3 only). Thanks to \bemeurer. 2442 3003
- `mpdstats`: Use the `currentsong` MPD command instead of `playlist` to get the current song, improving performance when the playlist is long. Thanks to \ray66. 3207 2752

Several improvements are related to usability:

- The disambiguation string for identifying albums in the importer now shows the catalog number. Thanks to \8h2a. 2951
- Added whitespace padding to missing tracks dialog to improve readability. Thanks to \jams2. 2962
- The `move` command now lists the number of items already in-place. Thanks to \RollingStar. 3117
- Modify selection can now be applied early without selecting every item. 3083
- Beets now emits more useful messages during startup if SQLite returns an error. The SQLite error message is now attached to the beets message. 3005
- Fixed a confusing typo when the `convert` plugin copies the art covers. 3063

Many fixes have been focused on issues where beets would previously crash:

- Avoid a crash when archive extraction fails during import. 3041
- Missing album art file during an update no longer causes a fatal exception (instead, an error is logged and the missing file path is removed from the library). 3030
- When updating the database, beets no longer tries to move album art twice. 3189
- Fix an unhandled exception when pruning empty directories. 1996 3209
- `fetchart`: Added network connection error handling to backends so that beets won\'t crash if a request fails. Thanks to \Holzhaus. 1579
- `badfiles`: Avoid a crash when the underlying tool emits undecodable output. 3165
- `beatport`: Avoid a crash when the server produces an error. 3184
- `bpd`: Fix crashes in the bpd server during exception handling. 3200
- `bpd`: Fix a crash triggered when certain clients tried to list the albums belonging to a particular artist. 3007 3215
- `replaygain`: Avoid a crash when the `bs1770gain` tool emits malformed XML. 2983 3247

There are many fixes related to compatibility with our dependencies including addressing changes interfaces:

- On Python 2, pin the `jellyfish` requirement to version 0.6.0 for compatibility.
- Fix compatibility with Python 3.7 and its change to a name in the `re` module. 2978
- Fix several uses of deprecated standard-library features on Python 3.7. Thanks to \arcresu. 3197
- Fix compatibility with pre-release versions of Python 3.8. 3201 3202
- `web`: Fix an error when using more recent versions of Flask with CORS enabled. Thanks to \rveachkc. 2979: 2980
- Avoid some deprecation warnings with certain versions of the MusicBrainz library. Thanks to \zhelezov. 2826 3092
- Restore iTunes Store album art source, and remove the dependency on `python-itunes`, which had gone unmaintained and was not Python-3-compatible. Thanks to \ocelma for creating `python-itunes` in the first place. Thanks to \nathdwek. 2371 2551 2718
- `lastgenre`, `edit`: Avoid a deprecation warnings from the `PyYAML` library by switching to the safe loader. Thanks to \translit and \sbraz. 3192 3225
- Fix a problem when resizing images with `PIL`/`pillow` on Python 3. Thanks to \architek. 2504 3029

And there are many other fixes:

- R128 normalization tags are now properly deleted from files when the values are missing. Thanks to \autrimpo. 2757
- Display the artist credit when matching albums if the `artist_credit` configuration option is set. 2953
- With the `from_scratch` configuration option set, only writable fields are cleared. Beets now no longer ignores the format your music is saved in. 2972
- The `%aunique` template function now works correctly with the `-f/--format` option. 3043
- Fixed the ordering of items when manually selecting changes while updating tags Thanks to \TaizoSimpson. 3501
- The `%title` template function now works correctly with apostrophes. Thanks to \GuilhermeHideki. 3033
- `lastgenre`: It\'s now possible to set the `prefer_specific` option without also setting `canonical`. 2973
- `fetchart`: The plugin now respects the `ignore` and `ignore_hidden` settings. 1632
- `hook`: Fix byte string interpolation in hook commands. 2967 3167
- `the`: Log a message when something has changed, not when it hasn\'t. Thanks to \arcresu. 3195
- `lastgenre`: The `force` config option now actually works. 2704 3054
- Resizing image files with ImageMagick now avoids problems on systems where there is a `convert` command that is *not* ImageMagick\'s by using the `magick` executable when it is available. Thanks to \ababyduck. 2093 3236

There is one new thing for plugin developers to know about:

- In addition to prefix-based field queries, plugins can now define *named queries* that are not associated with any specific field. For example, the new `playlist` supports queries like `playlist:name` although there is no field named `playlist`. See `extend-query` for details.

And some messages for packagers:

- Note the changes to the dependencies on `jellyfish` and `munkres`.
- The optional `python-itunes` dependency has been removed.
- Python versions 3.7 and 3.8 are now supported.

This new release includes lots of new features in the importer and the metadata source backends that it uses. We\'ve changed how the beets importer handles non-audio tracks listed in metadata sources like MusicBrainz:

- The importer now ignores non-audio tracks (namely, data and video tracks) listed in MusicBrainz. Also, a new option, ignore\_video\_tracks, lets you return to the old behavior and include these video tracks. 1210
- A new importer option, ignored\_media, can let you skip certain media formats. 2688

There are other subtle improvements to metadata handling in the importer:

- In the MusicBrainz backend, beets now imports the `musicbrainz_releasetrackid` field. This is a first step toward 406. Thanks to \Rawrmonkeys.
- A new importer configuration option, artist\_credit, will tell beets to prefer the artist credit over the artist when autotagging. 1249

And there are even more new features:

- `replaygain`: The `beet replaygain` command now has `--force`, `--write` and `--nowrite` options. 2778
- A new importer configuration option, incremental\_skip\_later, lets you avoid recording skipped directories to the list of \"processed\" directories in incremental mode. This way, you can revisit them later with another import. Thanks to \sekjun9878. 2773
- `fetchart`: The configuration options now support finer-grained control via the `sources` option. You can now specify the search order for different *matching strategies* within different backends.
- `web`: A new `cors_supports_credentials` configuration option lets in-browser clients communicate with the server even when it is protected by an authorization mechanism (a proxy with HTTP authentication enabled, for example).
- A new `sonosupdate` plugin automatically notifies Sonos controllers to update the music library when the beets library changes. Thanks to \cgtobi.
- `discogs`: The plugin now stores master release IDs into `mb_releasegroupid`. It also \"simulates\" track IDs using the release ID and the track list position. Thanks to \dbogdanov. 2336
- `discogs`: Fetch the original year from master releases. 1122

There are lots and lots of fixes:

- `replaygain`: Fix a corner-case with the `bs1770gain` backend where ReplayGain values were assigned to the wrong files. The plugin now requires version 0.4.6 or later of the `bs1770gain` tool. 2777
- `lyrics`: The plugin no longer crashes in the Genius source when BeautifulSoup is not found. Instead, it just logs a message and disables the source. 2911
- `lyrics`: Handle network and API errors when communicating with Genius. 2771
- `lyrics`: The `lyrics` command previously wrote ReST files by default, even when you didn\'t ask for them. This default has been fixed.
- `lyrics`: When writing ReST files, the `lyrics` command now groups lyrics by the `albumartist` field, rather than `artist`. 2924
- Plugins can now see updated import task state, such as when rejecting the initial candidates and finding new ones via a manual search. Notably, this means that the importer prompt options that the `edit` provides show up more reliably after doing a secondary import search. 2441 2731
- `importadded`: Fix a crash on non-autotagged imports. Thanks to \m42i. 2601 1918
- `plexupdate`: The Plex token is now redacted in configuration output. Thanks to \Kovrinic. 2804
- Avoid a crash when importing a non-ASCII filename when using an ASCII locale on Unix under Python 3. 2793 2803
- Fix a problem caused by time zone misalignment that could make date queries fail to match certain dates that are near the edges of a range. For example, querying for dates within a certain month would fail to match dates within hours of the end of that month. 2652
- `convert`: The plugin now runs before other plugin-provided import stages, which addresses an issue with generating ReplayGain data incompatible between the source and target file formats. Thanks to \autrimpo. 2814
- `ftintitle`: The `drop` config option had no effect; it now does what it says it should do. 2817
- Importing a release with multiple release events now selects the event based on the order of your preferred countries rather than the order of release events in MusicBrainz. 2816
- `web`: The time display in the web interface would incorrectly jump at the 30-second mark of every minute. Now, it correctly changes over at zero seconds. 2822
- `web`: Fetching album art now works (instead of throwing an exception) under Python 3. Additionally, the server will now return a 404 response when the album ID is unknown (instead of throwing an exception and producing a 500 response). 2823
- `web`: Fix an exception on Python 3 for filenames with non-Latin1 characters. (These characters are now converted to their ASCII equivalents.) 2815
- Partially fix bash completion for subcommand names that contain hyphens. Thanks to \jhermann. 2836 2837
- `replaygain`: Really fix album gain calculation using the GStreamer backend. 2846
- Avoid an error when doing a \"no-op\" move on non-existent files (i.e., moving a file onto itself). 2863
- `discogs`: Fix the `medium` and `medium_index` values, which were occasionally incorrect for releases with two-sided mediums such as vinyl. Also fix the `medium_total` value, which now contains total number of tracks on the medium to which a track belongs, not the total number of different mediums present on the release. Thanks to \dbogdanov. 2887
- The importer now supports audio files contained in data tracks when they are listed in MusicBrainz: the corresponding audio tracks are now merged into the main track list. Thanks to \jdetrey. 1638
- `keyfinder`: Avoid a crash when trying to process unmatched tracks. 2537
- `mbsync`: Support MusicBrainz recording ID changes, relying on release track IDs instead. Thanks to \jdetrey. 1234
- `mbsync`: We can now successfully update albums even when the first track has a missing MusicBrainz recording ID. 2920

There are a couple of changes for developers:

- Plugins can now run their import stages *early*, before other plugins. Use the `early_import_stages` list instead of plain `import_stages` to request this behavior. 2814
- We again properly send `albuminfo_received` and `trackinfo_received` in all cases, most notably when using the `mbsync` plugin. This was a regression since version 1.4.1. 2921

The highlight of this release is \"album merging,\" an oft-requested option in the importer to add new tracks to an existing album you already have in your library. This way, you no longer need to resort to removing the partial album from your library, combining the files manually, and importing again.

Here are the larger new features in this release:

- When the importer finds duplicate albums, you can now merge all the tracks—old and new—together and try importing them as a single, combined album. Thanks to udiboy1209. 112 2725
- `lyrics`: The plugin can now produce reStructuredText files for beautiful, readable books of lyrics. Thanks to anarcat. 2628
- A new `from_scratch` configuration option makes the importer remove old metadata before applying new metadata. This new feature complements the `zero` and `scrub` plugins but is slightly different: beets clears out all the old tags it knows about and only keeps the new data it gets from the remote metadata source. Thanks to tummychow. 934 2755

There are also somewhat littler, but still great, new features:

- `convert`: A new `no_convert` option lets you skip transcoding items matching a query. Instead, the files are just copied as-is. Thanks to Stunner. 2732 2751
- `fetchart`: A new quiet switch that only prints out messages when album art is missing. Thanks to euri10. 2683
- `mbcollection`: You can configure a custom MusicBrainz collection via the new `collection` configuration option. 2685
- `mbcollection`: The collection update command can now remove albums from collections that are longer in the beets library.
- `fetchart`: The `clearart` command now asks for confirmation before touching your files. Thanks to konman2. 2708 2427
- `mpdstats`: The plugin now correctly updates song statistics when MPD switches from a song to a stream and when it plays the same song multiple times consecutively. 2707
- `acousticbrainz`: The plugin can now be configured to write only a specific list of tags. Thanks to woparry.

There are lots and lots of bug fixes:

- `hook`: Fixed a problem where accessing non-string properties of `item` or `album` (e.g., `item.track`) would cause a crash. Thanks to broddo. 2740
- `play`: When `relative_to` is set, the plugin correctly emits relative paths even when querying for albums rather than tracks. Thanks to j000. 2702
- We suppress a spurious Python warning about a `BrokenPipeError` being ignored. This was an issue when using beets in simple shell scripts. Thanks to Azphreal. 2622 2631
- `replaygain`: Fix a regression in the previous release related to the new R128 tags. 2615 2623
- `lyrics`: The MusixMatch backend now detects and warns when the server has blocked the client. Thanks to anarcat. 2634 2632
- `importfeeds`: Fix an error on Python 3 in certain configurations. Thanks to djl. 2467 2658
- `edit`: Fix a bug when editing items during a re-import with the `-L` flag. Previously, diffs against against unrelated items could be shown or beets could crash. 2659
- `kodiupdate`: Fix the server URL and add better error reporting. 2662
- Fixed a problem where "no-op" modifications would reset files' mtimes, resulting in unnecessary writes. This most prominently affected the `edit` plugin when saving the text file without making changes to some music. 2667
- `chroma`: Fix a crash when running the `submit` command on Python 3 on Windows with non-ASCII filenames. 2671
- `absubmit`: Fix an occasional crash on Python 3 when the AB analysis tool produced non-ASCII metadata. 2673
- `duplicates`: Use the default tiebreak for items or albums when the configuration only specifies a tiebreak for the other kind of entity. Thanks to cgevans. 2758
- `duplicates`: Fix the `--key` command line option, which was ignored.
- `replaygain`: Fix album ReplayGain calculation with the GStreamer backend. 2636
- `scrub`: Handle errors when manipulating files using newer versions of Mutagen. 2716
- `fetchart`: The plugin no longer gets skipped during import when the "Edit Candidates" option is used from the `edit` plugin. 2734
- Fix a crash when numeric metadata fields contain just a minus or plus sign with no following numbers. Thanks to eigengrau. 2741
- `fromfilename`: Recognize file names that contain *only* a track number, such as `01.mp3`. Also, the plugin now allows underscores as a separator between fields. Thanks to Vrihub. 2738 2759
- Fixed an issue where images would be resized according to their longest edge, instead of their width, when using the `maxwidth` config option in the `fetchart` and `embedart` plugins.

There are some changes for developers:

- "Fixed fields" in Album and Item objects are now more strict about translating missing values into type-specific null-like values. This should help in cases where a string field is unexpectedly `None` sometimes instead of just showing up as an empty string. 2605
- Refactored the move functions the `beets.library` module and the `manipulate_files` function in `beets.importer` to use a single parameter describing the file operation instead of multiple Boolean flags. There is a new numerated type describing how to move, copy, or link files. 2682

Version 1.4.5 adds some oft-requested features. When you're importing files, you can now manually set fields on the new music. Date queries have gotten much more powerful: you can write precise queries down to the second, and we now have *relative* queries like `-1w`, which means *one week ago*.

Here are the new features:

- You can now set fields to certain values during import, using either a `--set field=value` command-line flag or a new `set_fields` configuration option under the `importer` section. Thanks to bartkl. 1881 2581
- Date queries can now include times, so you can filter your music down to the second. Thanks to discopatrick. 2506 2528
- Date queries can also be *relative*. You can say `added:-1w..` to match music added in the last week, for example. Thanks to euri10. 2598
- A new `gmusic` lets you interact with your Google Play Music library. Thanks to tigranl. 2553 2586
- `replaygain`: We now keep R128 data in separate tags from classic ReplayGain data for formats that need it (namely, Ogg Opus). A new `r128` configuration option enables this behavior for specific formats. Thanks to autrimpo. 2557 2560
- The `move` command gained a new `--export` flag, which copies files to an external location without changing their paths in the library database. Thanks to SpirosChadoulos. 435 2510

There are also some bug fixes:

- `lastgenre`: Fix a crash when using the `prefer_specific` and `canonical` options together. Thanks to yacoob. 2459 2583
- `web`: Fix a crash on Windows under Python 2 when serving non-ASCII filenames. Thanks to robot3498712. 2592 2593
- `metasync`: Fix a crash in the Amarok backend when filenames contain quotes. Thanks to aranc23. 2595 2596
- More informative error messages are displayed when the file format is not recognized. 2599

This release built up a longer-than-normal list of nifty new features. We now support DSF audio files and the importer can hard-link your files, for example.

Here's a full list of new features:

- Added support for DSF files, once a future version of Mutagen is released that supports them. Thanks to docbobo. 459 2379
- A new hardlink config option instructs the importer to create hard links on filesystems that support them. Thanks to jacobwgillespie. 2445
- A new `kodiupdate` lets you keep your Kodi library in sync with beets. Thanks to Pauligrinder. 2411
- A new bell configuration option under the `import` section enables a terminal bell when input is required. Thanks to SpirosChadoulos. 2366 2495
- A new field, `composer_sort`, is now supported and fetched from MusicBrainz. Thanks to dosoe. 2519 2529
- The MusicBrainz backend and `discogs` now both provide a new attribute called `track_alt` that stores more nuanced, possibly non-numeric track index data. For example, some vinyl or tape media will report the side of the record using a letter instead of a number in that field. 1831 2363
- `web`: Added a new endpoint, `/item/path/foo`, which will return the item info for the file at the given path, or 404.
- `web`: Added a new config option, `include_paths`, which will cause paths to be included in item API responses if set to true.
- The `%aunique` template function for aunique now takes a third argument that specifies which brackets to use around the disambiguator value. The argument can be any two characters that represent the left and right brackets. It defaults to `[]` and can also be blank to turn off bracketing. 2397 2399
- Added a `--move` or `-m` option to the importer so that the files can be moved to the library instead of being copied or added "in place." 2252 2429
- `badfiles`: Added a `--verbose` or `-v` option. Results are now displayed only for corrupted files by default and for all the files when the verbose option is set. 1654 2434
- `embedart`: The explicit `embedart` command now asks for confirmation before embedding art into music files. Thanks to
Stunner\. 1999
- You can now run beets by typing `python -m beets`. 2453
- `smartplaylist`: Different playlist specifications that generate identically-named playlist files no longer conflict; instead, the resulting lists of tracks are concatenated. 2468
- `missing`: A new mode lets you see missing albums from artists you have in your library. Thanks to qlyoung. 2481
- `web` : Add new `reverse_proxy` config option to allow serving the web plugins under a reverse proxy.
- Importing a release with multiple release events now selects the event based on your preferred countries. 2501
- `play`: A new `-y` or `--yes` parameter lets you skip the warning message if you enqueue more items than the warning threshold usually allows.
- Fix a bug where commands which forked subprocesses would sometimes prevent further inputs. This bug mainly affected `convert`. Thanks to jansol. 2488 2524

There are also quite a few fixes:

- In the replace configuration option, we now replace a leading hyphen (-) with an underscore. 549 2509
- `absubmit`: We no longer filter audio files for specific formats---we will attempt the submission process for all formats. 2471
- `mpdupdate`: Fix Python 3 compatibility. 2381
- `replaygain`: Fix Python 3 compatibility in the `bs1770gain` backend. 2382
- `bpd`: Report playback times as integers. 2394
- `mpdstats`: Fix Python 3 compatibility. The plugin also now requires version 0.4.2 or later of the `python-mpd2` library. 2405
- `mpdstats`: Improve handling of MPD status queries.
- `badfiles`: Fix Python 3 compatibility.
- Fix some cases where album-level ReplayGain/SoundCheck metadata would be written to files incorrectly. 2426
- `badfiles`: The command no longer bails out if the validator command is not found or exits with an error. 2430 2433
- `lyrics`: The Google search backend no longer crashes when the server responds with an error. 2437
- `discogs`: You can now authenticate with Discogs using a personal access token. 2447
- Fix Python 3 compatibility when extracting rar archives in the importer. Thanks to Lompik. 2443 2448
- `duplicates`: Fix Python 3 compatibility when using the `copy` and `move` options. 2444
- `mbsubmit`: The tracks are now sorted properly. Thanks to
awesomer. 2457
- `thumbnails`: Fix a string-related crash on Python 3. 2466
- `beatport`: More than just 10 songs are now fetched per album. 2469
- On Python 3, the terminal\_encoding setting is respected again for output and printing will no longer crash on systems configured with a limited encoding.
- `convert`: The default configuration uses FFmpeg's built-in AAC codec instead of faac. Thanks to jansol. 2484
- Fix the importer's detection of multi-disc albums when other subdirectories are present. 2493
- Invalid date queries now print an error message instead of being silently ignored. Thanks to discopatrick. 2513 2517
- When the SQLite database stops being accessible, we now print a friendly error message. Thanks to Mary011196. 1676 2508
- `web`: Avoid a crash when sending binary data, such as Chromaprint fingerprints, in music attributes. 2542 2532
- Fix a hang when parsing templates that end in newlines. 2562
- Fix a crash when reading non-ASCII characters in configuration files on Windows under Python 3. 2456 2565 2566

We removed backends from two metadata plugins because of bitrot:

- `lyrics`: The Lyrics.com backend has been removed. (It stopped working because of changes to the site's URL structure.) 2548 2549
- `fetchart`: The documentation no longer recommends iTunes Store artwork lookup because the unmaintained [python-itunes](https://github.com/ocelma/python-itunes) is broken. Want to adopt it? #2371 1610

Happy new year! This new version includes a cornucopia of new features from contributors, including new tags related to classical music and a new AcousticBrainz Submit plugin for performing acoustic analysis on your music. The Random plugin has a new mode that lets you generate time-limited music---for example, you might generate a random playlist that lasts the perfect length for your walk to work. We also access as many Web services as possible over secure connections now---HTTPS everywhere!

The most visible new features are:
- We now support the composer, lyricist, and arranger tags. The MusicBrainz data source will fetch data for these fields when the next version of python-musicbrainzngs_ is released. Thanks to ibmibmibm. 506 507 1547 2333
- A new `absubmit` lets you run acoustic analysis software and upload the results for others to use. Thanks to inytar. 2253 2342
- `play`: The plugin now provides an importer prompt choice to play the music you're about to import. Thanks to diomekes. 2008 2360
- We now use SSL to access Web services whenever possible. That includes MusicBrainz itself, several album art sources, some lyrics sources, and other servers. Thanks to tigranl. 2307
- `random`: A new `--time` option lets you generate a random playlist that takes a given amount of time. Thanks to diomekes. 2305 2322

Some smaller new features:
- `zero`: A new `zero` command manually triggers the zero plugin. Thanks to SJoshBrown. 2274 2329
- `acousticbrainz`: The plugin will avoid re-downloading data for files that already have it by default. You can override this behavior using a new `force` option. Thanks to SusannaMaria. 2347 2349
- `bpm`: The `import.write` configuration option now decides whether or not to write tracks after updating their BPM. 1992

And the fixes:
- `bpd`: Fix a crash on non-ASCII MPD commands. 2332
- `scrub`: Avoid a crash when files cannot be read or written. 2351
- `scrub`: The image type values on scrubbed files are preserved instead of being reset to "other." 2339
- `web`: Fix a crash on Python 3 when serving files from the filesystem. 2353
- `discogs`: Improve the handling of releases that contain subtracks. 2318
- `discogs`: Fix a crash when a release does not contain format information, and increase robustness when other fields are missing. 2302
- `lyrics`: The plugin now reports a beets-specific User-Agent header when requesting lyrics. 2357
- `embyupdate`: The plugin now checks whether an API key or a password is provided in the configuration.
- `play`: The misspelled configuration option `warning_treshold` is no longer supported.

For plugin developers: when providing new importer prompt choices (see append_prompt_choices), you can now provide new candidates for the user to consider. For example, you might provide an alternative strategy for picking between the available alternatives or for looking up a release on MusicBrainz.