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!

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Downtime today for PostgreSQL / MusicBrainz schema change upgrade: 17:00 UTC (10am PT, 1pm ET, 7pm CEST)

Today (Monday, May 13) at 17:00 UTC (10am PT, 1pm ET, 7:00pm CEST), we’ll be:

  • Upgrading our production database server to PostgreSQL v16.
  • Performing the MusicBrainz schema change upgrade.

See the previous announcement on this topic for more information.

Expect MusicBrainz and services that depend on its database (MetaBrainz, ListenBrainz, the Cover Art Archive, CritiqueBrainz, BookBrainz) to be down for the hour, but we’ll be working to restore services as quickly as possible.

Afterward, we’ll post instructions here on how to upgrade your MusicBrainz mirror server (whether using musicbrainz-docker or otherwise).

P.S. The initially announced upgrades for MusicBrainz search engine are just about to reach our beta website, and thus are postponed for mirrors too.

Welcome Summer of Code 2024 contributors!

We are thrilled to announce the selection of 8 contributors to work with us for this year’s Google Summer of Code program! 

MetaBrainz received many great applications this year. Selecting the final contributors was tough and involved deliberating various factors – what these contributors did right is getting in early, engaging with our community, presenting specific and detailed proposals, and proving excellent communication skills and the ability to integrate our feedback back into their proposals.

Thank you to all contributors who submitted a proposal with us!

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ListenBrainz Radio: New release now live!

Hello!

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just released the latest version of LB Radio!

This release changes many things under the hood since the first release — given all the feedback you’ve given us, we were busy making improvements clear across the board. The improvements include:

  • Speed: LB Radio artist and tag elements are much faster now, since most of the work is being done by Postgres (and not AI!) and not in slower and wasteful Python code as part of our Troi recommendation engine.
  • More distinct modes: In our first version it was hard to tell the difference between the easy, medium and hard modes. This version fixes a few bugs and improves the overall algorithms used to make the artist and tag element playlists. The playlists generated for each mode should feel more distinct now.
  • Country element: We’ve added a new country element that creates a playlist of recordings from artists who are originally from the selected country. This doesn’t always ensure that the music that we serve us is actually from that country or even representative of that country. Right now, we’re making a best effort for making a playlist that is representative of the country, but we might be missing the mark — you tell us. Also, tiny countries (e.g Vatican City, Andorra) don’t usually generate enough recordings to make good playlists, since there isn’t a lot of data available. Also, good thing Antarctica is not a country. 😂
  • Streamlined syntax and improved error messages: The parsing library that LB Radio version 1 used was pretty cool, but its error messages were hated by everyone, even hard core geeks. Thus, we wrote a new parser that could give us better error messages and to make that process easier, the syntax of LB Radio has been made more consistent.

Let’s dive into a quick look of the improved syntax — all the following examples are valid LB Radio prompts:

David Bowie

#punk

artist:(Tina Turner)

tag:(trip hop, dreampop)

The most important thing to know is that any elements that accept free form text (e.g. tags and artist names), should always be enclosed in ( ). Please refer to our official documentation for all the details.

Have fun making new playlists! And as always, if you find a bug, please create a ticket in our bug tracker.

Thanks!

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.

Continue reading “ListenBrainz: 2023 Recap”

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)
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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.

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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.

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ListenBrainz App: Feed and UI Revamp (Release 2.3.0)

We are pleased to release the Feed for the ListenBrainz Android app, as well as a new settings page!

Three new feeds now allow app users to keep up with the activity of their ListenBrainz friends, as well as discover new music from listeners with similar music tastes.

My Feed shows the activity of your follows, including what they’ve reviewed, pinned, recommended, and more. Follow Listens displays the listens, chronologically, of all your follows, so you can check on what your friends are jamming right this second. Similar Listens displays, chronologically, the listens of your closest musical ’neighbours’, a great way to discover new music and perhaps even make new friends.

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