beetbox / beetbox/beets

Primary aliases being ignored in MusicBrainz?

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#6,358 8 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
musicbrainz
Dominant language
Python
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Description

### Problem

Last week I ran an `mbsync` over my library and noticed a ton of artists no longer use their locale-specific aliases.

Two example artists and their aliases:

- [東京酒吐座](https://musicbrainz.org/artist/a26f7ca4-d14c-408b-9f9c-c8d847286bd0/aliases) which should be "Tokyo Shoegazer"
- [دمار](https://musicbrainz.org/artist/f64892d3-b4cf-4fae-9141-e39c5d968ff0/aliases) which should be "Damaar"

No config changes made on my side. I suspect this might be a side-effect of dropping the old `musicbrainzngs` library for fetching data but I've not had a chance to fully debug this yet, so pure speculation on my part.

### Setup

* OS: Linux
* Python version: 3.14.2
* beets version: latest git
* Turning off plugins made problem go away (yes/no): no

Relevant part of my configuration:

```yaml
import:
copy: no
move: yes
timid: yes
write: yes
from_scratch: yes
languages:
- en
ignored_alias_types:
- 'legal name'
```

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reproducing the alias behavior with mbsync using the reported import.languages and ignored_alias_types configuration, then compare the results for the two linked MusicBrainz artists. Inspect the MusicBrainz fetching path, including the suspected replacement for musicbrainzngs and plugin interaction. Done means locale-specific primary aliases such as “Tokyo Shoegazer” and “Damaar” are restored without breaking ignored alias types.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
52/100

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