MusicBrainz Server update, 2023-05-02

In our last version before the May 15 schema change release, we are mostly releasing a fair amount of React conversion work for smaller pages. We’ve also tried to make some error messages more clear and helpful and made a few improvements to ETI guess case, alongside other small bits and pieces.

The most significant change for editors is the standardization of all auto-deletion waiting periods to 48 hours. Until now, most entities would be removed when empty for 24 hours, while unused artist credits would take a full week to go away. This meant removing the last artist credit usage for an otherwise empty artist would lead to an eight days wait for that artist to be automatically deleted; now it will be four. As a reminder, 48 hours is also the minimum time needed for a merge edit to pass. As such, it’s not always faster anymore to let an entity be removed automatically rather than merging – hopefully this will encourage more autoeditors to merge rather than delete!

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 CatQuest, chaban, jesus2099, Lotheric, and rdswift for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to okaits#7534 and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2023-05-02.

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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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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)

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MusicBrainz Server update, 2023-03-20

We’re hopefully back to a normal schedule after the crazy relationship editor testing period! That means we have the usual small amount of bug fixes and improvements this time, including a couple further fixes for small issues of said relationship editor which were not found during beta testing. We also have a text version of the list of historical MusicBrainz events that could only be seen before as bars on our timeline – which hopefully will help remind us to actually update that with new events on a regular basis.

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 CatQuest, chaban, mr_maxis, satanisch_opium, sound.and.vision and yyoung for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to salo.rock and an anonymous Albanian translator for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2023-03-21-hotfix.

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Style Guideline Updates

If you’ve been lurking on our forums, you will know that our style guidelines have been receiving lots of attention lately! Both MusicBrainz docs and BookBrainz docs have been getting new additions and updates, and there’s still plenty being discussed. As I type these very words, there are greased-up editors in what’s known to us only as “the pit” – pitting their words, experience, and muscular bodies against each other in a bid for dominance over typographical punctuation.

Okay, okay, so there’s not really a pit, but here’s a rundown of some of the style discussions that are taking place, or have taken place, this year:

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Schema change release: May 15, 2023

MusicBrainz is announcing a new schema change release for May 15, 2023. The actual schema (database) changes we’ve detailed below shouldn’t have much perceivable impact on mirror servers, especially if you only use the web service; most are to remove unused tables/columns or tweak how certain tables are materialized.

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MusicBrainz Server update, 2023-02-28

After about three years of development and almost six months of beta testing, here is the new implementation in React of all the relationship editors, including the release relationship editor. During the beta period, a hundred more smaller changes have accumulated; mostly bugfixes, but also some URL handling improvements and a fair number of other pages converted to React.

This is a major step forward in development as it makes the project more open to JavaScript contributors and allows for implementing more refinements.

From an editor point of view, the relationship editing dialog slightly changed visually, but overall the page offers the same features, fixes a large amount of bugs, and has some additional improvements:

  • Better handling of very big releases by not loading all tracks at once
  • Added ability to edit batch-created works before they’re submitted
  • “+” icons to quickly add additional relationships of the same type are now also available on the release relationship editor
  • Now remembering which entity type was selected last in the relationship dialog
  • New type-to-search functionality for the relationship type selector
  • Better internationalization as the layout ordering of fields is based on their dependencies rather than on the English grammar of link phrases.
  • Better seeding of data: easier to script, more reliable, and more available fields
  • Recording-work relationships can now be reordered straight from the release relationship editor
  • Reordering relationships can now also be done by entering the order number rather than using up and down arrows
  • A preview of the relationship (and any changes) is now shown in the add/edit relationship popup

During the beta period, another hundred tickets or so relating to the new editors were reported and addressed. There still are a few tickets reported during the beta that have not yet been resolved, but their drawbacks are outweighed by the benefits of this server update. They are still tracked and will be addressed later on.

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 jesus2099, julian45, and Maxr1998 for having contributed some code. Thanks to kellnerd for working with us to make sure his data seeding scripts worked in the new editors and through that helping us improve script and seeding support. Special thanks to chaban for his thorough dedication at identifying/reporting/detailing issues during these months. Thanks to Admiy, CatQuest, cherryblossom000, chiark, Cyberskull, drsaunde, Eincrou, Griomo, HibiscusKazeneko, johnnyjd, mcboing, mfmeulenbelt, Midness, MXS, otringal, outsidecontext, sound.and.vision, timmart.in, UltimateRiff, vzell, withered.silence, yindesu and zos18 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to 3Johnny, Blu777, dongrimaldo42, homersimpsons, perea and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all the many others who tested the beta version!

Edit: The changes for MBS-10614 accidentally allowed editors without a confirmed email to vote for a while – this has now been hotfixed.

The git tag is v-2023-03-03-hotfixes.

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libdiscid 0.6.3 and bindings for D, Rust, Go and Hare

A new version 0.6.3 of libdiscid has been released. libdiscid is a C library that allows applications to easily calculate MusicBrainz and freedb disc IDs from audio CDs. It also can extract MCN and ISRC information.

The main focus for this release has been to provide updated source and binary packages compatible with current systems. But there is also new platform support for the Haiku operating system.

Version 0.6.3 of libdiscid provides the following changes:

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