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!

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!

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!

Search server down

The search server is terminally overloaded (load average over 100, last I looked), and it was taking down the main web site with it. Therefore for now I’ve had to change mb_server to show a simple error message instead of running the search. You may be better off using the old search page for now. … Continue reading “Search server down”

The search server is terminally overloaded (load average over 100, last I looked), and it was taking down the main web site with it. Therefore for now I’ve had to change mb_server to show a simple error message instead of running the search.

You may be better off using the old search page
for now.

Hopefully more news later.

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 😀