Foobar 2000: optimally manage music collection
Foobar 2000 is a music player with which you can optimally manage your music collection. The software itself is simply structured, but with the right additional components it is the ultimate music player.
The main Foobar components
Foobar itself is kept very slim. Only the many plug-ins make the software an all-rounder. You can find an overview of additional components together with detailed documentation here. Three components are necessary to optimally manage your music collection:
- With Columns UI you can customize the graphical user interface of Foobar 2000 so that the playlist organizer can be loaded. To do this, select the "NG Playlist + Playlist Switcher + Artwork" under "File", "Preferences", "Display", "Columns UI" under the "Main" tab and the "Quick Setup" button.
- The Playlist Organizer brings a file and folder structure for your playlists.
- Playback Statistics collects data that is needed to ideally manage your music collection - for example, an evaluation of the piece, when a song was played first and last and how often.
The playlist organizer in Foorbar 2000
With the playlist organizer you can create and manage static playlists according to your wishes:
- With a right click in the playlist organizer field you can create playlists with "Create Playlist".
- If you select "Create Folder" after a right click, a folder is created in which you can sort playlists or other folders.
- Highlight a folder or playlist and press the F2 key to name the folder or playlist.
- You can also simply drag and drop folders or files into the playlist organizer. A separate playlist is created for the files that have been dragged over.
- You can also drag and drop single or multiple files from each playlist into another playlist by holding down the [Ctrl] key.
Automatic playlists
In contrast to static playlists, which can only be changed manually, autoplaylists update themselves. If you create your autoplaylists wisely, each new file in your music collection will be added to all the playlists you want. This requires correct tags in the music files.
- Click on "Library", "Search" in Foobar.
- Enter search criteria, click on "..." and on "Create Autoplaylist".
- If you only enter a period, the resulting playlist contains every file in your music collection and independently adds in real time every new file that is moved to one of your monitored folders.
- Simple search criteria usually look like this:% field% CRITERION "content". "Fields" are tag fields such as% artist%, % album%, % genre%, % rating%, % date%, % lyrics% and any other field that you have defined. It determines what you are looking for. Criteria are written in block letters and are for example IS (ist), HAS (hat), GREATER (larger) or LESS (smaller). "Content" is what you are looking for. Several search criteria can be combined with AND (and) and NOT (not).
- For example, "% genre% HAS rock AND% rating% GREATER 3 AND% lyrics% PRESENT" creates an automatic playlist in the plug-ins that contains any rock music rated above 3 and that has a field called "lyrics" how "Lyrics Grabber 2" write the lyrics.
- Further filter commands can be found, for example, in this Foobar manual and in this overview.
- Playback Statistics adds other field commands - for example% added%, % rating% (rating), % PLAY_COUNT% (counter), % first_played% (played for the first time) and% last_played% (last) ) played. For example, you can use "% last_played% DURING LAST 4 WEEKS" to create a playlist that contains all the tracks you have listened to in the past 4 weeks.
Tip: With a little programming experience and the Foobar Software Development Kit, you can create plug-ins for Foobar yourself.