aerozol – MetaBrainz Blog

Updates to Audiobooks, Audio Dramas, Broadcasts and Podcasts

If you are a fan of words going into your ears, please fasten your seatbelt. We have a number of exciting updates for podcasts, broadcasts, audiobooks and audio dramas, including new relationships and updated guidelines!

Explore Your Year in Music 2024

ListenBrainz is back with your #yearinmusic (YIM) reports for 2024!

Log in to ListenBrainz (LB) and click here to see your report, or here if you don’t have an account and want to see what the fuss is all about.

Missed out and want a YIM? Sign up for a ListenBrainz account, connect your services or your player, and get listening. We’ll have you sorted for 2025. If you are a last.fm user with existing listens you’re in luck – connect your last.fm account to ListenBrainz now, which will also import your listening history, and we will (re)generate you a 2024 YIM in a couple of weeks time.

ListenBrainz donor flairs

We’re shaking with excitement! Flipping with energy! Anaglyphing with… something. These are just some of the username effects (flair) you can now show off if you are a ListenBrainz donor:

Static effects, animations and mouseover animations, all are unlocked for a month when you donate $5. Paying more will stack further months of flair.

Check out the different effects in your settings page, and then head to the donation page to unlock them and help us pay for our server costs and keep all that lovely data flowing. If you can’t afford this cost, don’t worry! Your presence is always enough. Thank you for being part of this project and this community.

New! Syndication Feeds in ListenBrainz

Some days everything comes together, and this is one of those days. We now have a range of Syndication Feeds (aka RSS or Atom feeds) available in ListenBrainz.

Look for the feed symbol in the following places in ListenBrainz:

Fresh Releases
Fresh Releases For You
User Listens
User Stats (top artists/albums/tracks)
Stats Art Creator (album art grids!)
Created For You Playlists (daily/weekly playlists)
User Created Playlists

X-odus: Find our projects on Bluesky and Mastodon

We have now completely moved off X (the platform formerly known as Twitter). It has been a long time coming, with rampant enshittification, uncertainty around platform changes, and content that has been increasingly unpleasant to interact with. Politics aside, we’re sick of going to check notifications and getting blasted with a feed largely consisting of violence, porn, advertising, the owner, and AI grifters*.

Instead, come join MetaBrainz, MusicBrainz, ListenBrainz and BookBrainz on Bluesky and/or Mastodon!

The Strangest Releases in MusicBrainz: Weird and Wonderful

MusicBrainz is a treasure trove. Open the lid and you will find glittering piles of release metadata. Mountains of precious artist information. Gold nuggets of high resolution artwork. Everything you can imagine – provided you mainly imagine music data. And also, at the bottom, tucked into the corners, some really weird shit. And some MusicBrainz editors just having the time of their life, adding to the pile. One of those editors has agreed to have a chat with me.

A photo of a dungbeetle on top of a ball of dung. A lot of strange audio releases are sticking out of the dung ball. — One person’s treasure is another person’s…

Thank you for answering my questions, sound.and.vision! I am really regretting the poop analogy, my deepest apologies. But we are dung-beetle editing buddies, and I know that your additions to the database are a treasure to many. Shall we ‘roll’ with it?

MetaBrainz Summit 2024

*MetaBrainz nerds at the Jantar Mantar observatory.* *Left to right: jasje, reosarevok, atj, zas, KasukabeDefenceForce, monkey, yvanzo, lucifer, mayhem, ansh, theflash_, kellnerd, bitmap, akshaaatt, ApeKattQuest, outsidecontext, aerozol*

This year it was New Delhi, India, that was invaded by data nerds from across the globe!

The MetaBrainz team was treated to the glorious chaos, hospitality, sights, noise, sweets, monkeys, traffic, heat, and delicious food of India. We reflected on the last year in MetaBrainz, planned and collaborated for the future, and got a little work done – when we could fit it in between mouthfuls of Indian sweets.

Read on for a comprehensive summit recap, including the annual recap for each MetaBrainz project, as well as breakout session notes, photos, and links to the slides and video recordings.

Withdrawn and Expunged releases in MusicBrainz

In a hurry? Here’s what you need to know: We have a new release status in MusicBrainz, “Expunged”.

Expunged is to be used for “previously official releases that were expunged from an artist or record company’s discography”. If the artist or label have not given a clear indication that they want to disown the release, use the “Withdrawn” status instead. See the style guidelines for examples and a longer description.

If you’re not in a hurry, stick around and let’s dig a little deeper.

You are invited to MetaBrainz Summit 24

MetaBrainz Summit 24 is upon us! September 23-27 in New Delhi, India.

We would love for you to join us remotely. If you are reading this, you are qualified to attend. Congratulations! Read on for more information.

Announcing the Event Art Archive

In 2012 we proudly announced the Cover Art Archive (CAA), a cooperation between MusicBrainz and the Internet Archive to store and deliver high resolution release imagery in multiple formats. Today we have over 2.5 million releases with cover art, making up 60.7% of all releases in MusicBrainz! Every day another ~1,300 releases have cover art added (CAA statistics/timeline).

Now we take the next step, and are proud to announce the Event Art Archive (EAA). Again we have worked with our friends at the Internet Archive to transform MusicBrainz into, potentially, the internet’s greatest repository for event art. Once again supporting multiple formats (jpg, gif, png, htm, html, jpe, jfif, pdf) in any resolution/size, now all that is needed is for music lovers and archivists to add event art. Since the feature has been in beta we have already had 700+ b e a u t i f u l (and attractively u g l y) pieces of event art added. Browse all the event art edits (EAA statistics/timeline).