Category: General

Sergey and Wendell at MusicIP have been working on two new reports:

1. Tracks attached to the wrong artist: This list contains tracks with similar names, which have been connected to artists which may be ambiguous – often this indicates an error in either the track assocation, or the artists themselves. To resolve the conflict, tracks assigned to the incorrect artists should be moved to correct artists, or the artists should be merged if they represent the same musical source.
2. PUIDs attached to the wrong artist: This list contains tracks which have the same PUID, but have been connected to conflicting artists. To resolve the conflict, PUIDs assigned incorrectly should be removed, tracks assigned to the incorrect artists should be moved to correct artists, or the artists should be merged if they represent the same musical source.

Thanks to Sergey and Wendell for creating these reports!

Just a quick update on the contract with Last.fm: Last.fm has signed the contract with MusicBrainz and will now be able to integrate MusicBrainz data into their service once again.

Three cheers!

Thank you much to Spencer at Last.fm for pushing this through!

Powernet in Milton Keynes is currently graciously hosting our UK mirror, but unfortunately that free ride will soon come to an end. Thus, we’re looking to find a new home for a 1U server in some colo in the UK. The mirror does not take too much bandwidth at the moment — if the bandwidth goes above a 500kbit/s I would be greatly surprised.

If you have some spare space in a colo in the UK and would like to help out by hosting a mirror server, please leave a comment!

Thanks!

UPDATE: The UK mirror will go away tomorrow, Nov 8 at about Noon, local time.

Now that Picard QT has entered Beta testing, the TRM server is officially on a 90+/- days notice!

The TRM acoustic fingerprints have been less than effective for quite some time and about 18 months ago we implemented MusicDNS’s PUID fingerprints in Picard. Now that we have a user friendly tagger that can replace the Classic Tagger we’re going to pull the plug on the TRM server in about 90 days. More specifically, we’re going to turn off the TRM server after the next schema change release, which is currently scheduled for early 2008. During this release we’re going to remove the TRM tables from the database and shortly thereafter we’re going to flip the switch on the TRM server — this may happen as early as February 1st, 2008.

What does that mean for you? If you use an application that uses TRMs, such as Amarok, Classic Tagger or iEatBrainz, please migrate to an application that uses PUIDs instead. Amarok can be compiled to use PUIDs and Classic Tagger and iEatBrainz will be replaced by Picard QT.

You have been warned!

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!

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?”

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!

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!

Recently our search server hit a magical 2GB limit on search index sizes and consequently we’ve got a corrupted track search index. We’re in the process of building a new one, but the process takes about 7.5 hours. So, we will not have track searches or taglookup functionality (for tracks) for the next 7-8 hours. I anticipate having this fixed around 22:00 PDT (6:00UTC).

I apologize for the inconvenience.

(And, sorry no, the mirror server won’t help since that relies on the main search server server too)