This page explains the model Lidarr uses to manage music, why that model depends on MusicBrainz, and when Lidarr is — and isn't — the right tool for your library. If you just want to install and start using Lidarr, read the Quick Start first and come back here when you want to understand why something behaves the way it does.
Lidarr is a music library management system, data aggregator, and automation platform for finding and downloading media. At a high level it follows the same principles as the other Arr applications (Sonarr, Radarr, and so on), but music introduces complications that film and TV do not.
Unlike movies and TV shows, music has no consistent set of standards for tagging, naming, or storage. Distribution has shifted from physical media to electronic over several decades, which has widened the variation rather than narrowed it. Opinions on how to handle music-library management are wide and varied, and Lidarr has to pick one.
The choice Lidarr makes is to lean on third-party metadata to impose order. Every album and artist in Lidarr corresponds to a record in an external data source, and Lidarr uses that record to categorize, tag, and manage files. Everything else in this page follows from that decision.
If the data does not exist in the MusicBrainz, it cannot be managed by Lidarr.
Lidarr organizes music around the Release standard from MusicBrainz. Every item Lidarr manages must correspond to a Release in its metadata source.
Examples of Releases:
If something you want to manage does not exist as a Release in the metadata source, Lidarr cannot handle it — there is no "add it locally only" escape hatch.
Releasesmust exist in the MusicBrainz to be managed in Lidarr.
An Artist in Lidarr is the Release Artist — the artist the metadata source attributes a Release to. This is a surprisingly slippery thing to pin down: naming, stylization, collaborations, and user preferences all contribute to ambiguity about what counts as "the" artist.
Consider how many ways the same person can appear:
Every Release is associated with exactly one Artist. To add a Release in Lidarr you have to find and use the canonical Artist as the metadata source defines it — not the one written on the album cover, the one written in MusicBrainz. This is the source of most "why can't I add this artist?" problems; see the FAQ for specific cases.
Release Artistsmust exist in the MusicBrainz to be managed in Lidarr.
The metadata source Lidarr relies on is MusicBrainz — a free, community-driven service that exists and survives on user contributions. Lidarr does not have its own metadata; it reads MusicBrainz's.
Two practical consequences follow.
Missing or incorrect data is a MusicBrainz problem, not a Lidarr problem. If an album isn't showing up in Lidarr, the first question to ask is whether it exists on MusicBrainz and whether the data there is correct. Lidarr cannot invent records its source does not provide, and editing data inside Lidarr will not propagate anywhere useful — the upstream source is the one that has to change.
Propagation takes time. When someone adds or corrects a record on MusicBrainz, Lidarr does not see it immediately. Updates flow from MusicBrainz through a periodic sync into a metadata service that Lidarr queries, and from there into your instance on refresh. You can refresh individual artists and albums inside Lidarr once the upstream propagation has happened, but you cannot accelerate the propagation itself. Expect a delay measured in hours to days, not minutes.
If you find that a Release or Release Artist is missing from MusicBrainz, you can help fix it: see How To Contribute. Creating and editing MusicBrainz records is beyond the scope of this wiki.
Lidarr is built around the Release model. If your library does not fit that model, Lidarr will be a frustrating tool no matter how much you tune it. Lidarr is not a good fit for the following situations.
Releases sharing a single folder. Low-to-no-curation libraries will not work with Lidarr; don't try.Release metadata on MusicBrainz is often missing or incorrect. You can use Lidarr, but expect substantial manual work.Releases in MusicBrainz. MusicBrainz returns no metadata for them, so they cannot be automated.,Releases in the metadata sources and Lidarr cannot manage them. This does not apply to albums in the Electronic genre, which are fine.If most of your library falls into one of the above categories, Lidarr may not be the right tool. If only part of your library does, you can still use Lidarr for the rest — just expect to manage the problematic portion by hand.
The tools below can be used instead of — or alongside — Lidarr.
Using these in tandem with Lidarr is beyond the scope of this page, but they are common companions for preparing a library before import, or for managing the parts of a collection that Lidarr can't.