External libraries
External files are also served to Subsonic clients, with lyrics from the database, so a Lidarr library is browsable and playable through tapedeck too.
Music managed by something else, say Lidarr’s folder, is often better quality than a YouTube rip and should not be downloaded again. List those folders and tapedeck treats them as read-only sources of recordings:
[external]
paths = ["/mnt/flash/music/releases", "/mnt/flash/music/singles"]
scan_interval = "1h" # the daemon rescans on its own clock; "0" turns that off
prefer_external = "ask" # auto | ask | never, see below
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
paths | [] | Folders to index. Nothing under them is ever written, moved, retagged or deleted. |
scan_interval | 1h | How often the daemon rescans them, independently of sync.interval. Every sync scans too. 0 disables the periodic scan. |
prefer_external | ask | What happens when a scan finds an external copy of a track the library already has. auto: point the track at the external file and delete the own copy. ask: only report it; td external dedupe does the swap. never: leave own copies alone. |
Files are indexed by their MusicBrainz recording id (Picard and Lidarr write it) with a
fallback on artist, title and length, incrementally by size and modification time, and a file
changed in the last minute is left for the next scan so a half-copied FLAC is not indexed. A
playlist track whose recording is in the index is marked external and never downloaded; its
m3u8 line and its Plex entry use the external file’s path. When an external file moves (Lidarr
upgrading an MP3 to a FLAC under a new name) the track follows it and the affected playlists
are pushed again; when it vanishes with no other copy the track becomes wanted and the next
sync downloads it. td external scan runs the scan by hand, td external dedupe [--dry-run]
replaces own tracks that exist externally, td import treats such recordings as duplicates,
and td status shows how many files are indexed and when. Refile, retag, retry and rm never
touch an external file.