See also

This guide explains the core concepts behind plistsync from a high level perspective. For detailed architecture, see the Architecture guide.

Core Concepts

This guide explains the vocabulary used throughout plistsync: Services, Libraries, Playlists, Tracks, and Matching.

Services

A service is a music platform that plistsync can sync with — Spotify, Tidal, Plex, a local folder, or Traktor’s database.

Plistsync connects to that platform using the appropriate authentication and API. From there, you can access your library and playlists.

from plistsync.services.spotify import SpotifyLibraryCollection
from plistsync.services.tidal import TidalLibraryCollection

spotify = SpotifyLibraryCollection()
tidal = TidalLibraryCollection()

Libraries

A library represents everything you have in a single service. This encapsulates your complete music catalog.

Libraries are typically large and long-lived. They also contain your playlists.

for playlist in spotify.playlists:
    print(playlist.name)

Playlists

A playlist is a curated selection of tracks from a library. Playlists are usually smaller and user-defined, with a specific purpose or mood in mind.

road_trip = spotify.get_playlist(name="Road Trip")
print(f"{len(road_trip.tracks)} tracks")

Tracks

A track is a single song or recording. It has the basic info you’d expect, title, artist(s), album, plus any identifiers from the source service.

When you sync between services, plistsync uses these identifiers to match tracks across platforms.

Matching

Matching is how plistsync finds the same song across different services.

When syncing Spotify → Tidal, plistsync first tries exact ID matches, then falls back to fuzzy title/artist matching for tracks without direct links. This lets you sync playlists even when services don’t share the same ID systems.