Metadata matching
ListenUp builds each book from your own files. When you want richer or cleaner details, you can match against Audible or edit anything by hand, right in the app.
Out of the box, ListenUp derives a book’s details from your files: embedded tags, sidecars, and folder names (see Folder structure ). Metadata matching adds the sources you reach for when you want more: Audible for full details, and hand-editing for everything else.
Matching against Audible#
Matching is something you start. ListenUp never reaches out to Audible on its own during a scan. When you want to enrich a book, open it and start a metadata match:
- Search. ListenUp queries Audible with the book’s title and author (or its ASIN). Edit the search however you like, and pick the Audible region if your edition is region-specific.
- Pick the right edition from the results.
- Choose what to apply. A preview lets you toggle each field on or off (title, subtitle, description, publisher, release date, language, cover, authors, narrators, series, genres, moods, and tags), so a match never clobbers details you’d rather keep.
- Apply. Your choices are saved and sync to every device.
iTunes is also checked for high-resolution cover art, so you’ll often get a sharper cover option than Audible alone.
Searching is open to anyone signed in, but applying a match (or editing) needs edit permission. That’s admins, or members you’ve granted it to.
Editing by hand#
Prefer to type it yourself? Every book has an edit form where you can set:
- Text: title, sort title, subtitle, description, publisher, year, language, ISBN, ASIN, and the abridged flag.
- People: contributors by role: author, narrator, editor, translator, and more.
- Series: the series and the book’s number within it.
- Genres, tags, and moods: pick genres from your existing list; create tags and moods on the fly.
- Chapters and the cover (below).
Covers#
You can set a cover three ways: choose one offered during an Audible/iTunes match, run a dedicated cover search, or upload your own from the edit form.
An uploaded cover always wins and survives rescans. It’s the way to pin a specific image.
Authors and narrators#
Contributors can be matched too: search Audible for an author or narrator to pull in their name, biography, and photo. (Series don’t have online artwork.)
Will my changes stick?#
Two things are always protected from rescans: an uploaded cover and hand-edited chapters.
Most other fields are derived from your files, so if you later change a book’s audio or its tags, the next scan re-reads that book and can replace your text edits with what the files say. (Books you don’t touch are left alone.)
To make a text change permanent, surviving any future file change, put it in the book’s metadata.json sidecar. ListenUp reads metadata.json at the top of its precedence order
and never writes to your files, so a sidecar value always sticks. Editing in the app is great for quick fixes; the sidecar is for changes you want to keep no matter what.
Not supported yet#
- Bulk matching: it’s one book at a time.
- Automatic enrichment: a match is always something you start.
- ISBN lookup and series artwork: there’s no online source for these.