musicbrainz – MetaBrainz Blog

Current ListenBrainz server issues/high load, Part 2

This follow-up post covers how and why our servers are still being impacted, an explanation and examples of what we consider “botting” in ListenBrainz – and an apology, because our last post had some baaad comms!

Firstly, we are still experiencing massive server load from an increase in listen submissions related to the BTS fan exodus from last.fm (not all bad! more on this below) – and we are now being hit by another influx of AI scrapers.

Our apologies to our users, new and old, as we continue to work to mitigate the extra load. Remain assured that listens are not being lost – our processing queue is lagging behind, so listens may take (up to) hours to appear.

LB radio and the popularity endpoints have been temporarily disabled, to reduce server load.

Current ListenBrainz server issues/high load

Our apologies if you are experiencing outages or slowness on ListenBrainz currently. First it was AI scrapers, now it’s K-pop fans…

In short, we are experiencing massive server load from an unexpected and massive increase in listen submissions. Please bear with us as the small (but mighty) ListenBrainz team works on possible mitigations.

None of your listens are being lost, they are all sitting safely in our (massively overloaded) processing queue:

The MetaBrainz Foundation is seeking a new Executive Director (ED)

This is a copy of the job description at:
https://join.com/companies/metabrainzorg/15986127-executive-director
Please use the above link to apply.

The MetaBrainz Foundation is seeking a new Executive Director (ED) to lead it during a time of great change for how music, data, and code are made, shared and used.

The MetaBrainz Foundation is a non-profit that provides free, open access to data. It is the steward of open source databases and software, including MusicBrainz (a community-maintained open source music metadata encyclopedia that supplies infrastructure to many of the world’s most-used music products and services), and Picard (an open source software application for identifying, tagging, and organizing digital audio recordings). MetaBrainz is supported by its community, sponsors, and by the commercial organizations who rely on what it does.

In collaboration with the Foundation’s Board of Directors, the ED is ultimately responsible for delivering the MetaBrainz mission, guaranteeing the organization’s top priority: the good health of its community. The ED is also in charge of maintaining excellent relationships with industrial partners. Ultimately, you will ensure that MetaBrainz operates with integrity, efficiency and transparency, that it remains in financial good health, and that its small in-house team of developers is supported and managed with sensitivity and professionalism.

Our new ED will be based in Europe. The role involves some travel, as well as virtual meetings in Europe, Asia and the Americas. They will be someone of integrity and good judgement, ideally someone with stature in either the open source or music communities. They will understand the ethical and regulatory requirements of NPOs. They’ll understand the history & mechanics of recorded music and be open to the possibilities and threats from a very rapidly changing technical, commercial and artistic world beyond music.

Tasks

The ED’s primary responsibility is to ensure MetaBrainz fulfils its mission with integrity, transparency, and respect for its community. They will:

Work to keep the MetaBrainz community healthy: welcoming, fair, and constructive.
Represent MetaBrainz, to its community, the public, and the industries it supports, ensuring the Foundation’s strategy and operational activities are communicated appropriately.
Work with the Board to build the Foundation’s strategy and the operational plan to realize it, including budget setting and management, ensuring the organization remains financially stable.
Oversee agreements with commercial partners and suppliers.
Make sure MetaBrainz meets its nonprofit and data-related legal obligations across jurisdictions.
Preempt emerging regulatory and industry changes that could affect the MetaBrainz mission.
Maintain strong, trust-based relationships with current commercial users and sponsors.
Grow relationships with current and prospective partners, encouraging them to support the ecosystem they rely on.
Support and manage the in-house team.

Requirements

Ideally the incoming ED will have:

An excellent understanding of the international music industry.
Experience maintaining healthy, vibrant online communities.
Open source project governance experience.
Knowledge of international copyright frameworks and the commercial framework for music.
Fluency in English (Spanish and other languages a plus).
Experience managing physical and digital events such as community meet-ups, summits, and development intensives.
Knowledge of local and international regulatory frameworks for non-profit organizations.
Experience managing complex software development projects.

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.

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.

New server image for 2009-05-24 release available

The VMWare image has been updated for the 2009-05-24 server release. The previous image was getting old and updating steps have been reported not easy.

The new image has been upgraded to Debian 5.0, includes a more recent Linux kernel and uses PosgreSQL 8.3 (the required version to work on NGS).

To download and play with the new image, read our VirtualMusicBrainzServer wiki page!

cotm – [unknown] .. uh wait, what?

yes you read right, This month’s cleanup is a little different, because it is the SpecialPurposeArtist, [unknown] [unknown] has a little bit for everyone, and its really rather simple, just randomly pic a release and have at it with google, yahoo, wikipedia, discogs or whathaveyou fix it up and move on, we will mainly be … Continue reading “cotm – [unknown] .. uh wait, what?”

yes you read right, This month’s cleanup is a little different, because it is the SpecialPurposeArtist, [unknown]

[unknown] has a little bit for everyone, and its really rather simple, just randomly pic a release and have at it with google, yahoo, wikipedia, discogs or whathaveyou

fix it up and move on, we will mainly be interested in trying to empty out the [unknown] artist as well as cleaning up any wrongly attributed stuff or dupes related to it

if you know any obscure or somewhat interesting discography sites for several artists bookmarked, here is a chance to add it to [unknown]s sub-page

Good luck and happy editing!

CotM – Phoenix Rises again!

Renamed and Renewed the CotM, now dubbed “Cleanup of the Month” has been resurrected and given a new header, this time It is Ennio Morricone, everybodies favourite Spaghetti-western composer. How can I help? * if you have any Ennio Morricone releases, please add them, and or their TOC to the database, update the label info … Continue reading “CotM – Phoenix Rises again!”

Renamed and Renewed the CotM, now dubbed “Cleanup of the Month”
has been resurrected and given a new header, this time It is Ennio Morricone, everybodies favourite Spaghetti-western composer.

How can I help?

* if you have any Ennio Morricone releases, please add them, and or their TOC to the database, update the label info
* if you got some spare time, lookup some links for us to use and add them to the Ennio Morricone CotM sub-page
* try to get anyone possibly interested in doing some editing in this area to join, we can’t do this community effort without the community!

good luck and happy editing!

Collaboration of the Month: Bob Marley and/or The Wailers

First a little about the history of CotM for those who don’t know what it is: Some time ago, a bunch of us got together and thought that it would be a good idea to have a “Collaboration of the Month”, a collaborative effort to clean up one (1) artist each month. [mdhowe] was the … Continue reading “Collaboration of the Month: Bob Marley and/or The Wailers”

First a little about the history of CotM for those who don’t know what it is:

Some time ago, a bunch of us got together and thought that it would be a good idea to have a “Collaboration of the Month”, a collaborative effort to clean up one (1) artist each month. [mdhowe] was the chef idea champion then and soon both a wikipage and a forum post where created.
The first (and very successfull one at that) CotM was “The Beatles”
It got cleaned up real good (should probably have its quality setting set to high, actually..)
Next up was the Dire Straits, got a decent overhaul, but however something went wrong with the election of a new artist for CotM, and DS sorta dragged its ass and ended up staying on the page for over two months.

The Bob Marley Collab (Cleanup?) of the Month

Basically I, (mo) took over as “leader” of this project and as such elected the next big mess, which on the list was Bob Marley and or The Wailers.

A bit late in the month I’m sure, but please head over to The Wailers, Bob Marley and The Wailers and Bob Marley himself and help clean it up. It’ll probably need more time than over this month, but that’s ok too 🙂

Don’t be afraid if you don’t find anything to do, just adding correct ASINs or even just *voting* is help, you can also help by documenting good links for others in the wikipage.
Do you own any Bob Marley etc. releases? please add TOCs and label info 🙂

* Wikipedia pages: [Bob Marley] [Wailers] [discography]
* CotM:BM page with more links.

A little about the name “Collaboration of the Month”

It has also be contested that perhaps Collaboration of the Month is BadTerminology.
Therefor, after that discussion, I set up a votable string for either “keep as is”, “change to ‘Cleanup of the Month'” or “other” on the [main CotM-page]: if you’ve got some time and an opinionated soul, head on over and vote 🙂

In closing:

Thanks for now, and sorry for the delay. I’ll be making these posts regularly whenever we’ve decided the collab(cleanup) has been sufficiently finished and a new one picked (either by consensus of vote, or by me (as we didn’t have enough people for a vote previously)
Finally please add your pet peeve or idea to the list and or vote for what month you’d like ’em in.
Freso already said June would be great for “The Dubliners” and (unless someone can come up with why not) I see no reason not to continue with that after Bob and his cats. Thank you.

~mo 😀