MetaBrainz Blog – MetaBrainz Foundation Community Blog

Schema change release: May 11, 2026

MusicBrainz is announcing a new schema change release set for May 11, 2026. Schema-wise, this release will be very light. At the same time, we’ll be requiring some major dependency upgrades to Perl, PostgreSQL, and Node.js. We’ll also be switching from Redis to Valkey in production. See below for more information.

The only breaking schema change is MBS-14252. It drops columns which are unused even in MusicBrainz Server, so should have little impact.

Here is the complete list of scheduled tickets:

Database schema

The following tickets change the database schema in some way.

MBS-6551: Database does not prevent a release from having duplicate label/catno pairs. This ticket involves replacing an index on the release_label table for additional data sanity. We’ll introduce a unique index on (release, label, catalog_number) (with NULL values treated as equal). This should have no impact on downstream users.
MBS-14092: Add support for series of series. This will allow connecting series that are related to each other in some way; for example, a series of series that have been honored with the same award, like the Golden Globe Award for Best Podcast. This involves adding a new series_series view, and replacing the allowed_series_entity_type constraint on the series_type table. It doesn’t modify or remove any other parts of the schema.
MBS-14252: Drop “source” column from iswc and isrc tables. As the title says, this drops the unused isrc.source and iswc.source columns from the database. Unless you’ve specifically referenced these columns in a query, this change should have no impact on you.

Server dependencies

MBS-14243: Upgrade the required version of Perl to 5.42. This is required as Perl 5.38 will no longer receive critical security fixes past July 2026.
MBS-14246: Upgrade the required version of PostgreSQL to 18. We last upgraded to PostgreSQL v16 two years ago, and would like to take advantage of the many performance advancements in PostgreSQL since then.

Note that the PGDG maintains an official APT repository for Debian and Ubuntu. PostgreSQL 18.3 is also available on Amazon RDS.

An upgrade script will be available for MusicBrainz Docker users with instructions provided at release time.
MBS-14244: Upgrade the required version of Node.js to 24. This is a straightforward upgrade to the latest LTS release, as Node.js v20 will soon be end-of-life.
MBS-14245: Switch from Redis to Valkey. Valkey is compatible with Redis OSS 7.2, and should be a drop-in replacement. There’s no reason to expect that Redis would stop working either. (The commands that MusicBrainz Server uses are very basic, and work even in Redis v3.)

Search server

SEARCH-756: Trigger reindex from dbmirror2 replication data. This drops the dependency on RabbitMQ and pg_amqp for live updating the Solr search indexes, and triggers the reindex process directly from PostgreSQL instead, by relying on the change data we already generate there for replication packets. If you run a local search indexer, this will simplify the setup/dependencies needed. Database-wise, it will require replacing triggers and creating a new “sir” schema.

We’ll post upgrade instructions for standalone/mirror servers on the day of the release. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or on the relevant above-linked tickets.

He’s the man who made music metadata “free”

Thank you to Giampiero Di Carlo, the editor of Rockol, who gave us permission to repost this article. Originally posted in Italian at: https://musicbiz.rockol.it/news-757360/robert-kaye-1970-2026-scomparso-il-fondatore-di-musicbrainz

The following English translation is courtesy of Google Translate with some manual edits.

On February 21, 2026, Robert Kaye, founder and Executive Director of the
MetaBrainz Foundation, the non-profit organization that supports projects like MusicBrainz and ListenBrainz, passed away. The news was announced a few days later by the MetaBrainz Board, described as an unexpected passing. Reposting this remembrance on Rockol MusicBiz late was intentional: we were friends and he deserves the visibility that the particular nature of the past week would have obscured.

What we lose

For those who work with music—from archives to platforms, from collectors to DJ software—Kaye is one of those figures who rarely make the front cover, yet change everything: he built the “silent” infrastructure that allows music to be found, sorted, recognized, and correctly linked over time, without this data remaining imprisoned in proprietary databases. Robert Kaye was a visionary of the free/open source community and the driving force behind the “Brainz” ecosystem. His loss is felt not only by those who compile metadata, but by anyone who uses tools based on that information.

The reaction of the MetaBrainz community, in the official thread, speaks volumes about the human impact beyond the technical one: for many, he wasn’t “just” a founder, but a daily presence within a project that thrives on volunteers, discussions and patience.

Kaye was an engineer by training (Computer Engineering at Cal Poly) and had worked in companies and projects related to MP3 and music software during the dot-com era. At MetaBrainz, they tell it this way: his work on MP3 and his move to eMusic/FreeAmp was the spark that led him to build MusicBrainz and “fall in love” with open source.

In 2004, he founded the MetaBrainz Foundation in California as a 501(c)(3), with a clear model: free non-commercial use and seeking financial support from commercial entities that benefit from the data and services.

MusicBrainz and Beyond

MusicBrainz is often described as an open music encyclopedia: a community database of artists, releases, and relationships that is the backbone for tagging, cataloging, and software integrations. The MetaBrainz ecosystem has since expanded (into ListenBrainz and other projects) but maintained the core idea: making metadata reusable, interoperable, and verifiable by a community. In practice, Robert Kaye’s work is visible everywhere without his name appearing: when software correctly recognizes an artist despite homonyms, when an archive links releases and reissues, when a DJ tags a library consistently, when an app displays credits and discographies with fewer errors.

MetaBrainz has already clarified that the project continues under the guidance of the Board and the existing structure and that updates on the transition will be shared. This is a very delicate transition: when a founder of an infrastructure passes away, the challenge is not just “keeping the servers running,” but maintaining the trust of communities and commercial partners who depend on the collective effort.

A “visible” founder: style, character, community

Many tributes in recent days have emphasized a detail that is often crucial in open source projects: the founder’s personality as the glue. In a personal recollection, Denny Vrandečić describes him as a “principled”, “determined”, loud and generous figure, capable of both energy and care—a rare combination in someone who must balance vision, inevitable conflicts within a community and sustainability. This isn’t folklore: in community projects “governance” also involves tone, presence and the ability to make things happen without shutting down those who contribute. And we’re not talking about a niche project here, but a piece of the music internet that many industries take for granted.

To honor Robert Kaye today, it’s crucial to emphasize that his legacy isn’t a product but an operationalized idea: that music data can remain a common good, defensible and improvable, rather than becoming merely a closed commodity. And it’s an idea that, in 2026, retains a certain weight.

Remembering mayhem

Rob Kaye (also known to the community and his peers as ruaok and mayhem) was many things. Friend, partner, colleague, ‘that guy with the crazy hair’, hacker, burner, visionary and much more. And always a source of creative mayhem!

Millions more have used, contributed to, or benefited from his open-source vision and projects. There’s no doubt that Rob was one of the spearheads of open-source. He championed open music data and showed the world that a non-profit open-source organisation could be financially viable, competing with (and far outliving most) similar corporate projects.

Below we will share some of Rob’s history with MetaBrainz and staff. Thank you to everyone who left memories on the announcement post and elsewhere on the world wide web. His spirit lives on in our hearts and in 1’s and 0’s.

Picard 3 alpha 3 released

While our hearts are heavy following Rob’s passing, we remain committed to our mission and carry on, as Rob would have expected from us.

Today, we’re making available another pre-release version for the upcoming MusicBrainz Picard 3. Alpha 3 focuses on fixing issues that were found in the previous releases as well as some minor improvements and updated translations.

Download links and a list of changes since Picard 3 alpha 2 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

As before this is still an early pre-release. While we have all the major features implemented and we are rather confident in the current code, it is still a development release and it is expected there will be bugs. If you use this, do so with care, backup your files and please report any issues you encounter.

Some of the changes are also backward incompatible, hence we recommend you make a backup of your Picard.ini config file before trying the alpha version. You can do so in Picard’s Options under Advanced > Maintenance.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback, reported issues and provided translations.

Robert Kaye

It is with profound sadness that the MetaBrainz Board of Directors announces the unexpected passing of our Founder and Executive Director, Robert Kaye.

Robert’s vision and leadership shaped MetaBrainz and left a lasting mark on the music industry and open source movement. His contributions were significant and his loss is deeply felt across our global community.

The Board is actively overseeing a smooth leadership transition and has measures in place to ensure that MetaBrainz continues to operate without interruption. Further updates will be shared in due course.

C4GT 2025: Integrate Internet Archive Into BrainzPlayer

Hey Everyone 👋!

I am Rayyan Seliya (AKA rayyan_seliya123 on IRC and RayyanSeliya on GitHub), a prefinal year student at Indian Institute of Information Technology Agartala, India, studying Computer Science. I was thrilled to be selected as a contributor in the C4GT (Code For Govt Tech) 2025 program under the MetaBrainz Foundation. My project focused on integrating music streaming from Internet Archive into BrainzPlayer. It was mentored by Kartik Ohri (lucifer on IRC) and Nicolas Pelletier (monkey on IRC).

Project Overview

ListenBrainz has a number of music discovery features that use BrainzPlayer to facilitate track playback. BrainzPlayer (BP) is a custom React component in ListenBrainz that uses multiple data sources to search and play a track. As of now, it supports Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Funkwhale as music services. It would be useful for BrainzPlayer to support the Internet Archive, which hosts a vast collection of digitized recordings from physical releases of the early 20th century, including 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings. Each recording comes with audio streaming and metadata web services that can be used to retrieve metadata automatically and embed a player in ListenBrainz using BrainzPlayer.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2026-02-12

We have a small release coming mid-week for once since we wanted to deploy some behind-the-scenes updates to remove potential vulnerabilities. Other than that, this release includes a few small URL and interface improvements, and converts a few more pages to use React.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to SuperSaltyGamer for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, Griomo, iamdrowning, Raman Sinclair, salo.rock and SuperSaltyGamer for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to BestSteve, EmO686, Lise Andersen, djtusa, karpuzikov, m67186636, mfmeulenbelt, wileyfoxyx and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2026-02-12.0.

Picard 3 alpha 2 released

A second alpha version for the upcoming MusicBrainz Picard 3 is now available. This focuses on fixing issues that were found in the previous alpha 1 as well as some minor improvements and updated translations.

Download links and a list of changes since Picard 3 alpha 1 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback, reported issues and provided translations.

Picard 3 Alpha Release

Today the Picard team is releasing an early alpha version of the long awaited major update to MusicBrainz Picard. Picard 3 has a lot of changes over the previous versions, and this is the first time we make it available for a larger audience to test.

Please be clear that this is an early alpha release. While we have all the major features implemented and we are rather confident in the current code, it is still a development release and it is expected there will be bugs. If you use this, do so with care, backup your files and please report any issues you encounter.

Below is an overview about the most significant changes and new features.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2026-01-19

Another year starts, and another MusicBrainz update that brings with it small improvements and fixes a bunch of bugs! In addition to a good amount of URL handling improvements, we have found the tables of contents for our documentation which had decided to play hide and seek over the holidays.

Additionally, we have blocked submitting tags that include commas via the API. Tags with commas were never supposed to be supported (commas are generally our tag separator character), and their existence broke in-site tag handling, but the API would until now accept them without complaints. From now on they will be rejected and you will be asked to try again without the commas.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to helpimnotdrowning, kellnerd, Shreeshanth Shetty and SuperSaltyGamer for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, helpimnotdrowning, HibiscusKazeneko, ivoireshi, jesus2099, kellnerd, SuperSaltyGamer, wileyfoxyx and yomo12 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to -alex., Besnik, KenParker_CN, NorwayFun, Philipp Wolfer, dumbbird, gaahmua, imgradeone, liilliil, salo.rock, wileyfoxyx and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2026-01-19.0.