# beets v2.13.0 — Release v2.13.0

- Product: beets (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/beets)
- Vendor: Adrian Sampson
- Date: 2026-07-27
- Version: v2.13.0
- Original notes: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/releases/tag/v2.13.0
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/beets/releases/v2.13.0
- Labels: Platforms: Desktop

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — Convert Plugin: Add new configuration option convert.refresh and command-line option --refresh to force operation when original file is newer than existing converted file
- **added** — Edit Plugin: Interactive import editor now shows album-level fields as configured by albumfields as a YAML header section when editing an album import
- **added** — FetchArt Plugin: Add fetch_for_asis setting that enables fetching album art from online sources even when imported files are not modified by the auto-tagger
- **added** — Lyrics Plugin: Add lrcmux backend which aggregates lyrics from various other sources
- **added** — Lyrics Plugin: Add --no-keep-synced command option to override keep_synced: yes for a single manual lyrics fetch
- **added** — Lyrics Plugin: Add rest_directory configuration option for specifying a reStructuredText output directory
- **added** — modify command: Support += and -= operators to add or remove individual values from multi-valued fields without replacing the whole field
- **added** — ReplayGain Plugin: Add a metaflac backend that computes ReplayGain for FLAC files using the metaflac command-line tool
- **added** — Spotify Plugin: Recognize native Spotify URIs such as spotify:album:<id> and spotify:track:<id> when extracting release and track IDs
- **added** — Tidal Plugin: Add cover art support with cover_art_url from Tidal's coverArt relationship
- **added** — Automatically create a database backup before running schema migrations, controlled by the create_backup_before_migrations option
- **changed** — Edit Plugin: Fields that appear in both itemfields and albumfields are shown only in the header, not per-track
- **changed** — Tidal Plugin: Normalize Tidal album types to lowercase
- **fixed** — Convert Plugin: convert -a with copy_album_art enabled no longer crashes when the stored album art path points to a missing file
- **fixed** — Edit Plugin: Preserve missing album art paths when editing album metadata instead of turning artpath: null into a path ending in None
- **fixed** — FtInTitle Plugin: Apply featured-artist rewriting to fetched metadata before commands such as MBSync Plugin use it
- **fixed** — ImportFeeds Plugin: import command no longer aborts the whole run when a symlink cannot be created but logs the failure and continues
- **fixed** — LastGenre Plugin: Add support for normalizing genre spellings and naming variants with new configuration option aliases, with built-in list of regex patterns and audited whitelist and genre tree
- **fixed** — Lyrics Plugin: Leave lyrics empty when a source reports an instrumental track and store that state in lyrics_instrumental flexible attribute
- **fixed** — Missing Plugin: Honor the -f/--format option and the format_album configuration when listing missing albums in album mode

#### New features

- [Convert Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/convert.html): Add new configuration option `convert.refresh` and command-line option `--refresh`, allowing to force [Convert Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/convert.html) operation when original file is newer than existing converted file.
- [Edit Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/edit.html): The interactive import editor now shows album-level fields (as configured by `albumfields`) as a YAML header section when editing an album import. Fields that appear in both `itemfields` and `albumfields` are shown only in the header, not per-track.
- [FetchArt Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/fetchart.html): Add `fetch_for_asis` setting that enables fetching album art from online sources even when imported files are not modified by the auto-tagger. Default is `no` which means [FetchArt Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/fetchart.html) looks for art only in the local filesystem when the user (or `quiet_fallback`) chooses `asis`.
- [FtInTitle Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/ftintitle.html): Apply featured-artist rewriting to fetched metadata before commands such as [MBSync Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/mbsync.html) use it. :bug: (#1153)
- [LastGenre Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/lastgenre.html): Add support for normalizing genre spellings and naming variants with a new configuration option `aliases`. The feature is enabled by default and ships with a built-in list of regex patterns. These patterns can be replaced via the user's configuration. The default whitelist and genre tree were audited against the top 1,000 Last.fm tags: canonical names are now consistent across both files, long-standing mismatches between them have been resolved, and entries align with the built-in alias patterns. :bug: (#6466)
- [Lyrics Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/lyrics.html): Add `lrcmux` backend, which aggregates lyrics from various other sources.
- [Lyrics Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/lyrics.html): Added a `--no-keep-synced` command option to override `keep_synced: yes` for a single manual lyrics fetch.
- [Lyrics Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/lyrics.html): Added a `rest_directory` configuration option for specifying a reStructuredText output directory, semantically equivalent to `-r, --write-rest`. :bug: (#2806)
- [modify command](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/cli.html#modify-cmd): Support `+=` and `-=` operators to add or remove individual values from multi-valued fields without replacing the whole field. :bug: (#6587)
- [ReplayGain Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/replaygain.html): Add a `metaflac` backend that computes ReplayGain for FLAC files using the `metaflac` command-line tool. :bug: (#1203)
- [Spotify Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/spotify.html): Recognize native Spotify URIs (e.g. `spotify:album:<id>` and `spotify:track:<id>`) when extracting release/track IDs, in addition to full `open.spotify.com` URLs and bare IDs
- [Tidal Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/tidal.html): Add cover art support. Album metadata now includes `cover_art_url` from Tidal's `coverArt` relationship, which the [FetchArt Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/fetchart.html) plugin can retrieve.
- A database backup is now automatically created before running schema migrations. Control with the `create_backup_before_migrations` option (default: yes).

#### Bug fixes

- [Convert Plugin](https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/convert.html): `convert -a` with `copy_album_art` enabled no longer crashes when the stored album art path points to a missing file (for example a multi-disc album whose cover lives in the album root rather than a per-disc directory);

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/releases/tag/v2.13.0]_