Author: ruaok

Call for testing for next server release

The MusicBrainz server devs (Lukáš, Murdos, Acid2 and myself) have been busy hacking on new features and fixing bugs for the next server release. While we’re not quite ready for the next release, we are starting to narrow down what will be in the next release and could use your help in testing these new … Continue reading “Call for testing for next server release”

The MusicBrainz server devs (Lukáš, Murdos, Acid2 and myself) have been busy hacking on new features and fixing bugs for the next server release. While we’re not quite ready for the next release, we are starting to narrow down what will be in the next release and could use your help in testing these new features.

In particular we have the new folksonomy tagging feature (tag your favorite artists, releases, label and tracks like last.fm) ready to go and would like to get your feedback on how to integrate the new feature better into our web pages.

Also, please help us test various bug fixes that we’ve made.

But, like I said, we’re not ready for the next release. I personally still have a lot of open bugs I intend to tackle, and Lukáš is working on merging another feature or two from other SVN branches. But we are far enough along that we could use your feedback. Also, since some features are still in flux, we’ve also not set a firm date for when we’re going to push this release onto the main servers — at this point we’re shooting for some time in September.

For more details on what we’ve done and where to test, please see our preliminary release notes.

Jamendo cover art now live!

I just updated the main server with the information that allows everyone to add cover art links to Jamendo. One such cover art link can be seen in JT Bruce’s release “The Dreamer’s Paradox“. You can also look at the Jamendo blog post that gives us permission to do so. Thanks Sylvain!

I just updated the main server with the information that allows everyone to add cover art links to Jamendo. One such cover art link can be seen in JT Bruce’s release “The Dreamer’s Paradox“.

You can also look at the Jamendo blog post that gives us permission to do so.

Thanks Sylvain!

New VMWare player of MusicBrainz server available

After users reported a number of problems (lack of enough disk space, data import problems) Rod Begbie created a new MB Server VMWare image of the 2007-04-01 release for us. To download and play with the new image, read our VirtualMusicBrainzServer wiki page. Thanks Rod!

After users reported a number of problems (lack of enough disk space, data import problems) Rod Begbie created a new MB Server VMWare image of the 2007-04-01 release for us. To download and play with the new image, read our VirtualMusicBrainzServer wiki page.

Thanks Rod!

Should we import all/some of the CD Baby data?

Derek from CD Baby and I have been discussing if/how we should add CD Baby data to MusicBrainz. Given that question, I’ve taken a closer look at the CD Baby data to see what the corresponding releases in MusicBrainz look like. While there are many great looking releases that match perfectly, there are lots of … Continue reading “Should we import all/some of the CD Baby data?”

Derek from CD Baby and I have been discussing if/how we should add CD Baby data to MusicBrainz. Given that question, I’ve taken a closer look at the CD Baby data to see what the corresponding releases in MusicBrainz look like. While there are many great looking releases that match perfectly, there are lots of cases where the data CD Baby has differs a bit from the data we have. Read the full blog entry to see some examples.

We have a few ideas on what to do and I would like to get feedback from the community at large on these ideas:

  1. Automatically import all of the CD Baby releases that MusicBrainz doesn’t have. Assume that CD Baby data is always correct. Channel none of these adds through the edit system.
  2. Provide a means to import CD Baby releases into MusicBrainz through some import system that could work like FreeDB import does now. Perhaps we could even make it a little smarter than the current FreeDB import.
  3. Something else. We’re open to suggestions.

What do you think? (See below for the promised examples)

Continue reading “Should we import all/some of the CD Baby data?”

Release of RBrainz, version 0.2

I’m reposting this from the MusicBrainz-devel mailing list: Version 0.2 of RBrainz, a Ruby library to access the MusicBrainz web service, has been released. With this release all of the features provided by the MusicBrainz web service are supported. The most notable changes from the previous beta releases are: * Querying of collections * User … Continue reading “Release of RBrainz, version 0.2”

I’m reposting this from the MusicBrainz-devel mailing list:

Version 0.2 of RBrainz, a Ruby library to access the MusicBrainz web service, has been released.

With this release all of the features provided by the MusicBrainz web service are supported. The most notable changes from the previous beta releases are:

* Querying of collections

* User authentication and querying of user information

* PUID submission

* Support for label aliases

* Complete support of the MusicBrainz metadata scheme 1.2 (including the upcoming tagging)

A complete list of changes can be found at

http://rubyforge.org/frs/shownotes.php?release_id=13094

I like to thank Nigel Graham who joined development and implemented important parts of the library. Without him this complete release wouldn’t have been so early possible.

For more information about RBrainz see the following resources:

Homepage:

http://rbrainz.rubyforge.org

API documentation:

http://rbrainz.rubyforge.org/api/

Download:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=3677

CD Baby integrates some MusicBrainz data

Derek Sivers, the owner of CD Baby and a general MusicBrainz fan has recently integrated a sounds-like feature into CD Baby that uses MusicBrainz data. Derek says: Cooooooooooool! http://cdbaby.com/found?soundlike= 678d88b2-87b0-403b-b63d-5da7465aecc3 http://cdbaby.com/found?soundlike= 87c5dedd-371d-4a53-9f7f-80522fb7f3cb and thanks to your wonderful aliases: http://cdbaby.com/found?allsearch=biggie … will pull up The Notorious B.I.G., etc. This feature allows CD Baby users to search … Continue reading “CD Baby integrates some MusicBrainz data”

Derek Sivers, the owner of CD Baby and a general MusicBrainz fan has recently integrated a sounds-like feature into CD Baby that uses MusicBrainz data. Derek says:

Cooooooooooool!

http://cdbaby.com/found?soundlike= 678d88b2-87b0-403b-b63d-5da7465aecc3

http://cdbaby.com/found?soundlike= 87c5dedd-371d-4a53-9f7f-80522fb7f3cb

and thanks to your wonderful aliases:

http://cdbaby.com/found?allsearch=biggie

… will pull up The Notorious B.I.G., etc.

This feature allows CD Baby users to search for CD Baby artists who sound like similar artists that might be cataloged in MusicBrainz. This feature also cross references MusicBrainz artist aliases for an even greater effect: If a CD Baby artist says they sound like “The Notorious B.I.G.” and a customer searches for “biggie”, they will find this artist.

Very nice work Derek!

The BBC partners with MusicBrainz for Music Metadata

I’m very proud to announce that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has teamed up with MusicBrainz! The BBC has taken a license to our live data feed and has augmented their music web pages with MusicBrainz data. The new and improved web pages show a complete discography for the artist and a collection of AR … Continue reading “The BBC partners with MusicBrainz for Music Metadata”

I’m very proud to announce that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has teamed up with MusicBrainz!

The BBC has taken a license to our live data feed and has augmented their music web pages with MusicBrainz data. The new and improved web pages show a complete discography for the artist and a collection of AR links that give BBC listeners more context about the music that the BBC broadcasts. For example, see this improved White Stripes artist page on the BBC pages and compare the links found there to the links we have for the White Stripes.

In exchange, MusicBrainz receives a monthly license fee that will allow MetaBrainz to hire some engineering help in the coming months to work on new features and to improve the existing infrastructure. This is quite significant since MusicBrainz has been resource constrained for many months now — having paid people on staff will ensure a more reasonable amount of progress moving forward.

Even cooler, the BBC online music editors will soon participate in the MusicBrainz community contributing their knowledge to MusicBrainz. The goal is to have the BBC /music editorial team round out and add new information to MusicBrainz as they need to use it in their MusicBrainz enabled applications internally.

This represents a gigantic step for MusicBrainz! First, it gives MusicBrainz a significant vote of confidence from a large and respected organization. Second, it brings in a team of music experts that will participate in MusicBrainz. For the most part, MusicBrainz has been maintained by music enthusiasts and not by music experts. It will be an interesting journey for us to welcome the BBC team and see how they can participate in our community.

If you’d like to learn about about the /music team participating in MusicBrainz, take a look at theBBCTeamsEditingMusicBrainz wiki page — we’ll endeavor to keep this page up to date with information regarding out partnership. Also, you may be interested to take a look at the press release that we’ve issued today.

The number of people who worked hard to make this happen inside the BBC is very long, so I won’t go and thank every person (I’ve not even met them all!). But I must thank Micheal Smethurst, Stephen Butler, Matthew Wood, Amy Taylor and Tom Scott for their diligence, persistence and vision for getting this deal done. Its been a long three years since I first made contact with the BBC, but good things come to those who wait, right?

FreeDB -> MusicBrainz gateway now available!

After an extensive testing period and a long road to finding a place to host the FreeDB -> MusicBrainz gateway, I’m pleased to announce that we finally have the gateway open for business for the general public! This gateway allows anyone on the internet to point their FreeDB enabled CD player/ripper/whatever to a mirror of … Continue reading “FreeDB -> MusicBrainz gateway now available!”

After an extensive testing period and a long road to finding a place to host the FreeDB -> MusicBrainz gateway, I’m pleased to announce that we finally have the gateway open for business for the general public!

This gateway allows anyone on the internet to point their FreeDB enabled CD player/ripper/whatever to a mirror of the MusicBrainz data. Over the last couple of years the data quality inside of MusicBrainz has exceeded the data quality commonly found in the FreeDB project. Thus, people have been asking for a way for their old FreeDB enabled player to connect to MusicBrainz to retrieve higher quality metadata.

If you’ve been wanting to get better metadata out of your FreeDB enabled player, please take a look at our instructions for how to point your player at our new gateway. This gateway is generously sponsored by Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab. Thank you for your support!

Also big thanks for Lukáš for writing the gateway and for Inhouseuk for adopting, debugging and deploying it!

MusicBrainz/MetaBrainz Talk at Queen Mary University

I recently gave a presentation about MusicBrainz/MetaBrainz to the Queen Mary University in London. The talk was billed as: “MusicBrainz: Tearing Down Walled Gardens in the Music Industry” If you’re curious about the beginnings of MusicBrainz, my sugar mama or how MusicBrainz and its IDs hopes to change the world, you may want to watch … Continue reading “MusicBrainz/MetaBrainz Talk at Queen Mary University”

I recently gave a presentation about MusicBrainz/MetaBrainz to the Queen Mary University in London. The talk was billed as:

“MusicBrainz: Tearing Down Walled Gardens in the Music Industry”

If you’re curious about the beginnings of MusicBrainz, my sugar mama or how MusicBrainz and its IDs hopes to change the world, you may want to watch the video stream of my presentation.

Thanks to Steve Welburn for inviting me!

MusicBrainz and Last.fm agree to license terms

After it seemed likely that hell would be serving slushies before Last.fm and MusicBrainz ever came to an agreement, I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of slushies in the netherworld! Last.fm and MusicBrainz have finally settled on terms for the MusicBrainz data license and shook hands on the deal. Now the lawyers need to … Continue reading “MusicBrainz and Last.fm agree to license terms”

After it seemed likely that hell would be serving slushies before Last.fm and MusicBrainz ever came to an agreement, I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of slushies in the netherworld!

Last.fm and MusicBrainz have finally settled on terms for the MusicBrainz data license and shook hands on the deal. Now the lawyers need to nail down all the details and then the contract will be signed.

I’m immensely pleased that we’ve finally agreed to terms and are moving forward. I’m hopeful and excited that this new partnership will prove to be beneficial for both MusicBrainz and Last.fm!