Development – Page 5 – MetaBrainz Blog

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-01-13

Welcome to the first release of 2025! This includes a lot of small improvements and fixes, and one larger change: using primary aliases for more entities and in more places.

Primary aliases for all entities except instruments (which can be translated directly) will be displayed after the entity name when they exist, just like a disambiguation comment. This extends the existing feature for artists written by derat a few months ago (thanks derat!). If you find some places where the aliases should be displayed, but aren’t, please let us know with a ticket!.

Keep in mind aliases will only be shown if they are marked as primary for the language you are browsing MusicBrainz in (you won’t see English aliases if browsing in French, for example). If you see an entity is missing an alias in your language that would help people more easily understand what it is, add it!

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 derat and dvirtz for having contributed to the code. Thanks to Aszazin, chaban, derat, dvirtz, Freso, HibiscusKazeneko, Lotheric, Raman Sinclair, sammyrayy, ThunderMite42, Vac31. and vaibhav for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Besnik, chaban, Crowbardoctor, dirt3009, guardiansock, imgradeone, liilliil, Peter69, poromies00, salo.rock and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2025-01-13.0.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-12-09

This release includes only small changes and features, including a fix for a regression in the new email system (thanks Jade for the continued work on this).

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 Jade Ellis and Suvid Singhal for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, Lotheric, outsidecontext and practik for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to KenParker_CN, Peter69, salo.rock, Vaclovas Intas, wileyfoxyx and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-12-09.0.

Pissed off by Spotify Enshittifying more API endpoints? We can help!

Today Spotify announced that a number of APIs will no longer be available for new users.

While Spotify won’t immediately take away these endpoints for existing users, it certainly does not inspire confidence for their longevity. Spotify cites “security reasons” as an explanation of why they are closing off these APIs, but we are unclear as to how that will improve security, so we need to assume that Spotify has some other motivations behind this move. More likely than not, they are hatching a strategy to protect their algorithmic assets from data crawlers used by third-party AI companies.

Needless to say, the Spotify services continue to get enshittified, taking away very useful features that developers have come to rely on. ListenBrainz has very different goals, being entirely open-source and part of a non-profit foundation, and we won’t pull the rug out from under our users for monetary or “security” reasons.

On the contrary, our very small team works in direct collaboration with users and developers interested in developing new discovery tools in the music space, and we embrace the variety of ways passionate music lovers want to interact with music collections and recommendations.

Our own frustrations with Spotify’s ever-worsening recommendations was the spark that lit up our interest in recommendations, but again our approach is one of fairness (we don’t tip the scales) focused on the user’s experience rather than the deep pockets of multinational labels.

For developers frustrated that their app stopped working, the good news is that the ListenBrainz team has been working on building some new datasets and API endpoints that offer replacements for what Spotify is taking away. While not everything that Spotify is enshittifying has a direct replacement with ListenBrainz, we can at least offer a path forward for developers.

These features/datasets include:

Artist similarity*: You can use our ListenBrainz Labs API to explore similar artists.The similarity datasets are still somewhat limited, since we’ve not been able to run all available data through that algorithm, but we plan to do that in the very near future.
Recommendations for a user: Recommendations are available for ListenBrainz users who send us listen information.
Custom playlist generation: https://listenbrainz.org/explore/lb-radio/ allows you to customize generated playlists as in-depth as you want (see the documentation for more details)
Popularity data: Find out the popularity of artists on ListenBrainz, as well as popular tracks for an artist
Fresh releases: Keep up with new albums coming out, generally or specifically for your taste (as seen on https://listenbrainz.org/explore/fresh-releases/)

Future new datasets include:

Track similarity
Album similarity
Your dream feature here

All of this data is Creative Commons CC0 licensed (read Public Domain) and available on our API endpoints, for free, forever. MetaBrainz is a California 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to creating, maintaining and ensuring that these datasets are available for public use.

And on top of that, the person who coined the term “Enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, has been on our board of directors for 20 years, further ensuring that we’re enshittification proof.

Come play with our data – we’d love your feedback! We’re working hard to make this data better and if it doesn’t yet meet your needs, we hope to meet them soon!

* for the similar artist search, use this value for “algorithm”: session_based_days_7500_session_300_contribution_5_threshold_10_limit_100_filter_True_skip_30

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-11-18

Image editing has been re-enabled after being down for the past month, so it’s now time to upload your backlog of scanned artwork if you haven’t already done so on the beta site! The rest of the changelog is short, but we’ll give a special mention to JadedBlueEyes, whose GSoC project is now being used for sending emails between editors. You’ll notice that a newer, fancier email template is now used for such messages. We hope to convert the rest of the emails we send out to use the new service soon, in future server releases.

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 derat and JadedBlueEyes for having contributed to the code. Thanks to Xythium, jlks82, and roman412 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to ApeKattQuest/MonkeyPython, KenParker_CN, and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-11-18.0.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-10-21

As mentioned in the banner of MusicBrainz website for a week already, images for events and releases are currently unavailable due to the Internet Archive (IA) recovering from a DDoS attack. See the IA’s Mastodon page for follow-up. Both the Cover Art Archive and the Event Art Archive were available from the Internet Archive which is doing its best to restore services safely, that will take as many days as necessary. Meanwhile, today’s server update temporarily disables editing images, until our access to the Internet Archive is fully restored. It also brings some updates behind the scenes. Last but not least, it also features a few improvements and bugfixes, mainly contributed by volunteers without whom this would not have the same significance!

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 derat, Divyansh Gupta, and Serial-ATA for having contributed to the code. Thanks to Dan and HibiscusKazeneko for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Arainuki, Aris_8585, blit, Echelon666, salo.rock, Vaclovas Intas, and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-10-21.0.

Major upgrade for mirrors: November 25, 2024

MusicBrainz is announcing a major mirror upgrade for November 25, 2024. The minimum required version of Docker Compose will change from v1.21.1 to v2. Search will be upgraded from Solr 7 to Solr 9. Mirrors will likely require a reinstall from scratch, we will provide instructions by release day.

This upgrade is not going to break replication for existing mirrors, even mirrors that have enabled live search. However, Solr 7 dumps will no longer be available.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-09-17

This week we offer you a bunch of bug fixes and improvements before the team flies to India for the 2024 MetaBrainz summit. Especially noteworthy is another derat contribution, fulfilling a very popular improvement request to try and help editors reuse existing release groups instead of adding duplicates. Thanks derat. Therat.

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 derat for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, Cyberskull, DenizC, ernstlx, Vac31., Victini and wileyfoxyx for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Dibou, Echelon666, n26, salo.rock, Vaclovas Intas and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-09-17.0.

Picard 2.12.3 released

Picard 2.12.3 has been released, fixing an issue with some tooltips and disallowing using a directory separator as replacement character.

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.11 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 2.12.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-09-02

While the team has been taking it slow in August, the volunteer derat has not! This is a small update with only four improvements, of which the biggest three are his work, including a way to reorder artists inside an artist credit.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks again to derat for having contributed to the code. Thanks to yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to 4irefall, Early6431, Echelon666, KenParker_CN, Libra, MØĐĪ, Nom d’utilisateur, salo.rock, tanio, thephy, tkusano and Vaclovas Intas for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-09-02.0.

Picard 2.12.2 released

Picard 2.12.2 has been released, fixing an issue with sorting numbers in list views.

Picard 2.12.1 contained a fix for crashes on macOS which were related to language aware sorting. Unfortunately the solution we chose for this caused sorting of numbers to be broken on Windows. With this release this gets solved by using the previous sorting technique on Windows again (which was not affected by the crashes experienced on macOS).

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.11 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 2.12.