Hack:play

From Music Player Daemon Community Wiki

• Description: Just make sure you have agrep installed, then adapt the filepaths if necessary. This script works fine in a mpd configuration where your mpd music directory contains directories which represent an album each.
• Homepage: http://rochel.dyndns.info/play
• Maintainer(s): Jan Rochel < jan PERIOD rochel POLLIWOG stud POINT uka FULLSTOP de >

#!/bin/sh

# Needed tools: mpc, mktemp, and agrep. Set them below

MKTEMP="mktemp -t play"
MPC=mpc
AGREP=tre-agrep

# Create a temporary file
tmp=`$MKTEMP`
# Fill the temporary file with all available albums
$MPC ls | tr _ ' ' > $tmp
# Clear the current playlist
$MPC clear > /dev/null
# Extract the album(s) from the temporary file that match our query best,
# and add them to the (empty) playlist.
$AGREP -BS 9 -D 9 "`echo $@`" $tmp | $MPC add > /dev/null
# Delete the temporary file
rm $tmp
# Start playback
$MPC play > /dev/null
# Print a nice summary of the current album to the terminal
$MPC playlist | column

• Description: I've made some changes to this script. My version works with collections stored in every possible way.
• Author: Przemyslaw Gierski pgierski[re2mo4ve^th2i3s]AT o2 DOT pl

#!/bin/sh

# Works well when you have music collection with album name somewhere in filename

# Needed tools: mpc, mktemp, grep, and agrep. Set them below:

MKTEMP="mktemp -t albumXXXXXXXXXXXX"
MPC=mpc
AGREP=agrep
GREP=grep

# Creates some temporary files
albums_list=`$MKTEMP`
files_list=`$MKTEMP`

# Lists all albums to a temporary file
$MPC list album > $albums_list

# Takes arguments and do some search, in every loop it filters previous match with next argument. It temporary uses files_list, but it's done only to prevent writing new data to used file
for opt in $@; do
 $AGREP -i -BS 9 -D 9 "`echo $opt`" $albums_list > $files_list
 cat $files_list > $albums_list
done

# Fill the temporary file with all available albums
$MPC listall > $files_list

# Clear the current playlist
$MPC clear > /dev/null

# Changes new line delimiter from " " to new line character
IFS="
"

# Find using grep file names for found album name. Grep is much faster then agrep.
for opt in `cat $albums_list`; do
$GREP -i "`echo $opt`" $files_list | $MPC add > /dev/null
done

# If playlist is empty tries agrep.
# Sometimes (when album name has some odd characters grep cannot find file name) agrep comes handy.
if [ -z "`mpc playlist`" ]; then
 echo Falling into agrep, grep failed to find file names. This will take a while.
 for opt in `cat $albums_list`; do
  $AGREP -i -BS 9 -D 9 "`echo $opt`" $files_list | $MPC add > /dev/null
 done
fi

# Start playback
$MPC play > /dev/null

# Print a nice summary of the current album to the terminal
$MPC playlist | column

# Delete temporary files
rm $albums_list
rm $files_list

You can also change it to find an artist just by changing:

$MPC list album > $albums_list

to

$MPC list artist > $albums_list

I also suggest Picard (free soft from MusicBrainz) for file tagging, it works great.