Month: April 2023

MusicBrainz Server update, 2023-04-17

Here is a tiny spring cleaning release that features small bugfixes and, behind the scenes, a larger refactoring of code in preparation for the database schema change.

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 Maxr1998 for his patch of Genie. Thanks to chaban, jesus2099, mr_maxis and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2023-04-17.

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Updates and New Features for ListenBrainz Android App (Release 1.3.0)

We are thrilled to announce the latest updates and features for the ListenBrainz Android App. Here’s a rundown of the changes in our latest release:

Remove Songs from the Queue: You now have the ability to remove songs from the queue, allowing you to better curate your listening.

Improved Login Activity: We have converted the login activity to composable and fixed all tests, improving the login experience.

Fav Screen Display Fix: Both light and dark mode users can now enjoy an improved favorites screen.

Theme Fix: We have updated the app’s theme, for a consistent and polished appearance across the entire app.

Enhanced Queue Features: We have added all queue features, giving you greater control over your music playback and listening experience.

ListenService and YIM Fixes: We have addressed issues with ListenService and YIM, which should now be stable and glitch-free.

We are committed to continually improving the ListenBrainz Android App, and your feedback is invaluable to us. Thank you for your continued support, and we hope you enjoy these new updates and features!

GitHub: https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-android

PlayStore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.listenbrainz.android

AIBrainz Playlist Generator (beta)

MetaBrainz as an organisation has never much dabbled in (artificial) intelligence, but a number of recent factors have led to the team doing some exciting behind-the-scenes work over the last few months.

Lately more and more potential contributors have come to MeB interested in working on AI projects, and with ListenBrainz we have an excellent dataset. With a current focus on playtesting and finetuning our playlist features we also have the perfect use-case.

So, without further ado, we invite you to test the beta version of our new AI-powered playlist generator:

AI Brainz Playlist Generator (beta)

(Extra bonus: the AIBrainz server is also running a beta preview version of our upcoming UI redesign! Future UI updates will be published on this beta server until we release the new design.)

Unlike most ListenBrainz tools, you do not need an LB account to test this feature. However, you must give the tool greater than usual permissions to access your listening history on your device. This trade-off allows us to get more eyes and data into the system. How we tackle this may be revisited in future.

For our more technical users, we collect user data from music streaming services, social media, and wearable devices, as long as they are linked to your device/s. This data includes user listening history, playlist data, song metadata, and user demographics. The data is then preprocessed, including data cleaning, feature extraction, and normalization. Next, the system uses a clustering algorithm (hierarchical clustering) to group similar songs and artists together. The system uses some dimensionality reduction techniques (principal component analysis), to reduce the dimensionality of the data and identify underlying music listening patterns.

AI Brainz (AIB) then uses the collected data to try and generate a playlist for you while attempting to side-step the classical cold-start problems inherent in many recommendations systems. We hope that using a quick and simple data analysis and a lot of heavy AI lifting we can generate a playlist to your tastes in just a few seconds.

And please leave feedback for us in the comments, or via your preferred method of communication (for example, but not limited to, forums, twitter, carrier pigeon…). Have fun!