Groove KB

Explore music and build a connected knowledge base in Obsidian.

Groove KB helps you turn artists, albums, release editions, and personal collections into a navigable set of Obsidian notes. The plugin is built for people who want more than a list of imported albums: every generated note is connected by clear links and frontmatter, so the graph stays useful as the library grows.

The default home note is called Music Knowledge Base, but Groove KB is the tool that builds and maintains that graph. You can rename the home note and choose where every note type is stored.

Why this plugin exists

Music metadata imports can become messy very quickly. A few albums are easy to manage by hand; a growing library is not. Groove KB keeps a strict structure:

Music Knowledge Base
-> Bundle
   -> Collection
      -> Artist
         -> Album / release group
            -> Edition / release

When you import, expand, update, move, or delete items through the plugin UI, related links and registry entries are updated together. The goal is to avoid orphan notes and keep the Obsidian graph readable after weeks of real use.

Features

• Search for artists and preview them before importing.
• Import artist notes with metadata, genres, images, Wikipedia summaries, and discography views.
• Create lightweight album stubs when an artist is imported.
• Expand albums into richer notes with cover art, tracklists, Wikipedia summaries, editions, and external links.
• Preview concrete editions such as CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital releases.
• Expand specific editions into full release notes.
• Browse additional discography items such as singles, EPs, live albums, and compilations.
• Organize artists into collections and nested bundles.
• Keep an Uncollected inbox for artists that are not assigned to a collection yet.
• Use an interactive artist timeline where expanded albums are visually marked.
• Optionally cache artist photos and album covers locally in your vault.
• Run health checks, rebuild the registry, repair generated Bases files, and safely delete the generated music graph through Obsidian trash.
• Use rate-limited metadata updates that respect remote services.

How it works

The plugin creates several note types:

• music-library: the home note for the generated music graph.
• collection: collections and nested bundles.
• artist: artist metadata, biography, image, and links.
• release-group: albums and other release groups.
• release: concrete editions of a release group.
• .base: generated Obsidian Bases views for discographies and release editions.

Stubs are intentionally lightweight. Expanded notes are richer and require more remote metadata requests.

Basic workflow

1. Open the ribbon icon or run Groove KB: Open library.
2. Select Add artist.
3. Search for an artist and open the preview.
4. Import the artist.
5. Add the artist to collections or bundles.
6. Open the artist preview to browse albums and additional discography.
7. Expand albums or editions when you want full notes with tracklists and richer metadata.

Settings

Open Settings -> Community plugins -> Groove KB.

Useful settings:

• Knowledge base note name: the home note that anchors your graph.
• Knowledge base note folder: where the home note is stored.
• Artists folder: where artist notes and artist Bases files are created.
• Releases folder: where album, release-group, edition, and release Bases files are created.
• Collections folder: where collection, bundle, and Uncollected notes are created.
• Store images locally: cache artist photos and covers in your vault instead of storing remote image URLs.
• Images folder: where cached images are stored.
• Maintenance / health check: repair links, rebuild the registry, repair Bases files, or update the full graph.
• Danger zone: clear only the registry or safely move generated notes and cached images to trash.

Commands

• Open library
• Search artist
• Expand or refresh release
• Update current artist

External services and privacy

Groove KB does not collect telemetry.

Network requests happen only when you use features that need remote music metadata:

• MusicBrainz for artists, release groups, releases, labels, relationships, and genres.
• Cover Art Archive for album and edition artwork.
• Wikidata and Wikipedia for linked biographies, summaries, and images.

Groove KB is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MusicBrainz, MetaBrainz, Cover Art Archive, Wikimedia, or Wikipedia. MusicBrainz is used as a metadata source.

MusicBrainz asks API clients to identify themselves with a User-Agent and use a polite request rate. The plugin uses a queued request layer with retries and delays between MusicBrainz requests, so preview loading and bulk updates do not hammer the service.

Feedback and support

Author: pathfind1103

Repository: pathfind1103/groove-kb

Use GitHub Issues for feedback:

• Report a bug
• Request a feature

Development

npm install
npm run dev

Production build:

npm run build

Lint:

npm run lint

Release

The GitHub release tag must exactly match the version in manifest.json; do not prefix it with v.

Attach these files as individual release assets:

• manifest.json
• main.js
• styles.css

Before publishing, run:

npm run build
npm run lint

See RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md for the full checklist.