aerozol – Page 2 – MetaBrainz Blog

ChatBrainz: IRC, Matrix & Discord

Have you ever joined the MetaBrainz chat? Team and community members have been getting up to mischief (and, occasionally, work) using IRC since 2003 and earlier – with the logs to prove it. Today, over twenty years later, we say ‘oh hi’ to ChatBrainz.

With the launch of ChatBrainz we have officially moved to Matrix! Matrix has ease of access and some modern conveniences that make access to chat possible for more contributors and users. Not a fan of the change? Not a problem – ChatBrainz also has IRC and Discord bridges, that allow cross-platform chat with the three main Matrix rooms/channels.

Click here to get chatting!

Picard 3.0 Q&A

MusicBrainz Picard is a core piece of MetaBrainz. According to the 2017 user survey, ‘Using a tagger which relies on MB’ was the second most common way that editors found out about the existence of MusicBrainz, with 27.1%. Only narrowly beaten by the ever-popular ‘Don’t know/don’t remember’ option, at 28.8%. If MusicBrainz provides the metadata lifeblood, then MusicBrainz Picard is the conduit that splashes that bloody metadata across the globe, onto billions of music files. Gross! But also awesome!

Now MusicBrainz Picard is entering the next stage, with development moving onto version 3.0. What does this mean? outsidecontext, long-time voluntary MusicBrainz Picard contributor, maintainer and user support-er, has agreed to answer some of our questions.

Faces of Summer of Code 2024

Look at these glorious faces. Look at them.

A screenshot of a video chat, with 16 lovely participants visible. — *Click here for full resolution image*

Last week there was a short meeting with all GSoC contributors¹ and mentors² present. We used the opportunity to put faces to names, explain how MetaBrainz works, and answer any questions. Motivation is high, and everyone is looking forward to getting started with coding this week!

The Top 8 Mistakes of GSoC Applicants

Ah, the lead up to Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Weeks of excitement, and the promise of a bright future. And lots of time to absolutely torpedo your chances of working with MetaBrainz or your open-source organisation of choice. Here’s how.

A screenshot from the film ‘Dr Strangelove’, with a man riding a missile flying towards the ground. There is text next to the man that reads ‘you’, and text next to the missile that says ‘your gsoc proposal’

ListenBrainz: 2023 Recap

Strap in, because we’re going to recap all the ListenBrainz changes in the whirlwind year that was 2023! For the full ListenBrainz changelog you can visit: https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server/releases

For those who peeped at the changelog, yes, the ListenBrainz team managed over 60 releases in 2023… let’s check out some of the highlights.

ListenBrainz Music Neighborhood

The ListenBrainz Music Neighbourhood feature is now live!

Use this arcane technology to find your favourite artist and explore their related artists. Watch the pretty colours. Listen to the music. Race your friends from Napalm Death to Britney Spears. Increase the web size and gasp as the artists jiggle into each other. Or simplify your life by exploring a web size of 0.

Don’t wait! No ListenBrainz account required, try it now: https://listenbrainz.org/explore/music-neighborhood/

A cropped screenshot showing colourful detail from the ListenBrainz Music Neighbourhood feature. In the middle is Red Hot Chilli Peppers, connected with lines to a variety of other artists. — Does this say more about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or their listeners? (hint: the listeners)

Explore Your Year in Music 2023

ListenBrainz is back with your #yearinmusic (YIM) reports for 2023! Log in to ListenBrainz (LB) and click here to see your report, or here if you don’t have an account but want to see what we are banging on about.

See your year summed up in a flash new summary collage. Revisit and share your top artists, albums, and tracks from last year. Topped off with new statistics, the new browsable cover collage, links to friends, and playlists created just for you by our hopefully-still–benign machine algorithm.

This year we will also re-run the YIM pages in a few weeks – this means that if you have listens from 2023 stored in last.fm or libre.fm, it’s not too late! Use that LB importer to get your YIM soon.

New MetaBrainz translation platform

MetaBrainz project translation has officially moved from Transifex to Weblate! This is a big step forward, with improvements like single sign-on using your MusicBrainz account, proper attribution to translators, unified handling of glossaries, custom checks for MusicBrainz variable syntax, better integration with our development workflow, and supporting a libre software organization. We also tidied up the documentation and the forums about translation and more generally about internationalization of all aspects of MetaBrainz.

Your central information page for all MetaBrainz internationalization is now: https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Internationalization

Your new translation platform is (MusicBrainz login required):
https://translations.metabrainz.org/

This is also a great opportunity to give translating a go if you’ve never done it before. In the second half of this blog post we will walk you through getting started. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert translator!

Fresher Fresh Releases

Have you ever wanted to see all the [genre] albums coming out next week?* Go do it in the new and overhauled ListenBrainz Fresh Releases! Live the dream!

A screenshot of the ListenBrainz Fresh Releases feature, with a sticker on it that says ‘always fresh’, and dew drops over everything — So fresh it hurts

As well as greatly improved UI and UX, it has a number of new filters as well as sorting and display options. Check it out.
And, if you’re logged in, visit your very own ‘For you’ section to see what’s recent from your favorite artists.

React Q&A

If you are, like me, an avid follower of MusicBrainz server release notes, you will have been reading about a certain type of update for a number of years – React conversion tasks.

But, unlike me, you may know what React is! For the rest of you – happily drifting on the currents of ignorance with me – I have good news. The MusicBrainz team has sent a Software Engineer tugboat to pull us into the waters of knowledge. A tugboat by the name of yvanzo, who has agreed to answer some questions about React.