Music Record - Foobar2000 Usage

This is an article to introduce how I configure my foobar2000. As for now (Oct 2022), foobar2000 is experiencing a major update, as foobar2000 v2.0 beta is available for testing. Currently, I’m using foobox-cn, an CUI integration on Chinese-translated version of foobar2000. An English version is also available here foobox-en.

The main reason for me to use foobar2000 is that I’m used to download and store music locally, and I have almost no requirement of listening music online. As far as I know, foobar2000 provides the best user experience in local music management. It supports plenty of features for playlist and media library. As a result, I choose foobar2000 as my music player and have made many configuration on it.

Still Under Work!

Installation

As mentioned in the introduction part, I’ve been using foobox-cn v6.1.6.11, which is based on the Chinese-translated version of foobar2000 v1.6.11. Most of the features mentioned in this article should also be supported for foobar2000 v1.6.12 final, which could be the final version of foobar2000 verion 1.x.

TODO…

Plugins / User-components

This section mainly introduces the plugins, or user-components, I used to manage my playlist conveniently.

User Components: foo_cuefixer

foo_fixer is a very simple component that removes duplicates when adding directories with .cue with .wav, .flac, etc. files. Notice this wont work in media library, however it provides enough convenience for each separate playlist. There’s no configuration for this component.

User Components: Database Search

Database search provides interactive search functionality on media library and playlists. I mainly use this component to search for playlists containing a specific music. As I’m maintaining a number of playlists with overlaps, it is very inconvenient to manually check which music is in which playlist. This component provides enough functionality to search and list out all playlists that a specific music is in.

The configuration for this component is in Settings - Media Library - Database Search. Currently, I’m using the following Title Formatting, which displayes the music info (this includes album release date and album artist in order to be consistent with my file structure to store these music).

Title Formatting

$rgb(0,0,0)
['['%date%']']
['['%album artist%']' ]
[%album%[ #$num(%tracknumber%,2)] - ]
$rgb(64,0,128)
%title%
$rgb(0,0,0)
[ '//' %artist%]
$rgb(0,0,160)
[, %playlist_name% #%playlist_number%]

Then, switch to Format Preset, choose Search for same - Search in All Playlists using the Find exact text mode. Finally, go to Settings - Shortcuts, add a shortcut (personally Ctrl+Alt+F, corresponding to normal search function using Ctrl+F), choose [Context Menu] - Search for same - Title.

Now, by choosing any music and click Ctrl+Alt+F (or right click on music and choose Search for same - ...), you can clearly see all music with the same title in all playlists, which makes the music management much more convenient.

User Components: Text Tools

Text tools is a tool which adds new commands for copying customizable music info about selected tracks. The configuration is in Setting - Tools - Text Tools. I’ve only added one line, named All Info, with pattern as following:

Text Tools Pattern

"%album artist%", "%date%", "%album%", "%tracknumber%", "%title%", "%artist%", "%play_count%", "%rating%", "%first_played%", "%last_played%"

This is used to keep track of statistics like playcounts and ratings of each music, as the original export function of playback statistics component only stores music info with hash of the music album, title, artist, etc., which makes it extremely difficult when migrating to another player or when changing the name of album, artist, etc. in batch during archieving.

To use this component, just select all music that is to be exported, right click on any of them, go to Tools - Text Tools - Copy: All Info, and then you’ll have all info to your copy board. I use a separated .csv file to manually backup these information to prevent accidents.

If it is necessary to restore these info, refer to here. This is especially useful when you sadly lose all playback statistics especially thousands of ratings on music. Don’t ask me why I know this.

User Components: Playlist Revive

Playlist revive, TODO, and also gonna work out if there’s method to export all playlists as m3u8 format…

Management

TODO

Restoring Music Info using Backups

TODO

Music Archive Custom

TODO