Banshee – How to Backup Listening History

What Monton0815 did worked for me:

1. Log on as the Guest user
2. Start Banshee
3. Log out
4. Log in to the user account where Banshee isn't working
5. Start Banshee
6. Happy Days

Based on the MD5 lookup in Oli's script (thanks!), I've written a Python script that uses the eyeD3 module to find MP3s, look up the album artwork from Banshee's cache, and embed the artwork inside the MP3s. It skips any files that already have artwork embedded.

It's not perfect, but it worked on about 90% of my MP3s, and you can manually handle any exceptions using EasyTag. As it stands the script expects the MP3s to be two directory levels deep from the target directory (music root/artist/album). The script prints a report once it's done highlighting any files it couldn't process or for which it couldn't find artwork.

Obviously you need to install Python and the eyeD3 module to use it:

#! /usr/bin/env python

import os, sys, glob, eyeD3, hashlib

CACHE_FILE_PREFIX = os.getenv("HOME") + "/.cache/media-art/album-"

def embedAlbumArt(dir = "."):
    artworkNotFoundFiles = []
    errorEmbeddingFiles = []
    noMetadataFiles = []
    mp3s = findMP3Files(dir)

    for mp3 in mp3s:
        print "Processing %s" % mp3

        tag = eyeD3.Tag()
        hasMetadata = tag.link(mp3)

        if not hasMetadata:
            print "No Metadata - skipping."
            noMetadataFiles.append(mp3)
            continue

        if hasEmbeddedArtwork(tag):
            print "Artwork already embedded - skipping."
            continue

        artworkFilename = findAlbumArtworkFile(tag)

        if not artworkFilename:
            print "Couldn't find artwork file - skipping."
            artworkNotFoundFiles.append(mp3)
            continue

        print "Found artwork file: %s" % (artworkFilename)

        wasEmbedded = embedArtwork(tag, artworkFilename)

        if wasEmbedded:
            print "Done.\n"
        else:
            print "Failed to embed.\n"
            errorEmbeddingFiles.append(mp3)

    if artworkNotFoundFiles:
        print "\nArtwork not found for:\n"
        print "\n".join(artworkNotFoundFiles)

    if errorEmbeddingFiles:
        print "\nError embedding artwork in:\n"
        print "\n".join(errorEmbeddingFiles)

    if noMetadataFiles:
        print "\nNo Metadata found for files:\n"
        print "\n".join(noMetadataFiles)

def findMP3Files(dir = "."):    
    pattern = "/".join([dir, "*/*", "*.mp3"])   
    mp3s = glob.glob(pattern)
    mp3s.sort()
    return mp3s

def hasEmbeddedArtwork(tag):
    return len(tag.getImages())

def findAlbumArtworkFile(tag):
    key = "%s\t%s" % (tag.getArtist(), tag.getAlbum())
    md5 = getMD5Hash(key)
    filename = CACHE_FILE_PREFIX + md5 + ".jpg"
    if os.path.exists(filename):
        return filename
    else:
        return 0

def getMD5Hash(string):
    string = string.encode("utf-8")
    md5 = hashlib.md5()
    md5.update(string)
    return md5.hexdigest()

def embedArtwork(tag, artworkFilename):
    tag.addImage(eyeD3.ImageFrame.FRONT_COVER, artworkFilename)
    success = 0
    try:
        success = tag.update()
    except:
        success = 0
    return success

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) == 1:
        print "Usage: %s path" % (sys.argv[0])
    else:
        embedAlbumArt(sys.argv[1])