Next server release: October 7th

After completing a slew of new features and a many more bug fixes, we’re finally ready to schedule the next server release for October 7th. For more information on this upcoming release, please see our updated preliminary server release notes. We still have a handful of small bugs to attend to before the release, but … Continue reading “Next server release: October 7th”

After completing a slew of new features and a many more bug fixes, we’re finally ready to schedule the next server release for October 7th. For more information on this upcoming release, please see our updated preliminary server release notes. We still have a handful of small bugs to attend to before the release, but the major bugs have been addressed at this point in time.

We’re asking people to come and help us test this release on the staging server — if you find problems, please enter a bug report to let us know about the problem.

Thanks to Lukáš, Murdos, Acid2 and Jugdish for contributing towards this server release! (Its good to see five people hacking on one release!)

cotm – [unknown] .. uh wait, what?

yes you read right, This month’s cleanup is a little different, because it is the SpecialPurposeArtist, [unknown] [unknown] has a little bit for everyone, and its really rather simple, just randomly pic a release and have at it with google, yahoo, wikipedia, discogs or whathaveyou fix it up and move on, we will mainly be … Continue reading “cotm – [unknown] .. uh wait, what?”

yes you read right, This month’s cleanup is a little different, because it is the SpecialPurposeArtist, [unknown]

[unknown] has a little bit for everyone, and its really rather simple, just randomly pic a release and have at it with google, yahoo, wikipedia, discogs or whathaveyou

fix it up and move on, we will mainly be interested in trying to empty out the [unknown] artist as well as cleaning up any wrongly attributed stuff or dupes related to it

if you know any obscure or somewhat interesting discography sites for several artists bookmarked, here is a chance to add it to [unknown]s sub-page

Good luck and happy editing!

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!

Structured XHTML Call For Testing

The StructuredXHTML branch is a branch of the core mb_server behind MusicBrainz and intends to improve the website by making sure the html is as structurally correct as possible and making the layout driven predominantly by CSS. We’re close to merging the first version, and we need your feedback to make sure we do it right!

The StructuredXHTML branch is a branch of the core mb_server behind MusicBrainz and intends to improve the website by making sure the html is as structurally correct as possible and making the layout driven predominantly by CSS. This has numerous advantages including faster rendering, better support for screen readers, and layout flexibility for users with visual impairments.

We’ve been working quietly in the background on this, but have finally got the bulk of the work down (transforming the main layout). We’re going to be gradually rolling these changes in, and as such some pages will not be immediately updated, and it’s important to make sure that they all work and display reasonably correctly.

What we need you to do is head over to our test server, which is running the StructuredXHTML branch. Browse the website just as you would usually use the normal website: viewing artist entries, looking at releases, searching for data, entering new data, moderating data – just about anything you can think of! If one of the pages looks a bit too odd, please let Oliver know by filing a bug appropriatly in our bug tracker – http://bugs.musicbrainz.org (we now have a section just for bugs on StructuredXHTML).

Here’s a list of the changes we’ve made in this first version, that will be rolled out into the next version of mb_server:

  • Layout driven entirely by CSS: We’ve got rid of the tables we used to use and have made a very flexible layout that will accommodate custom text sizes better than before. It also introduces minor amounts of whitespace in certain places, with the intention to improve readability.
  • A new search option in the sidebar: The current set of search fields has caused some confusion to people on there first visit. Some people have tried to combine search fields, which does not work. A new compact dropdown box search has been added to hopefully elevate this confusion. We’d love to know what you think on this – should it be the new default search option? We plan to make both search options available through user preferences.
  • Search portals have been updated: The search pages (not the results yet though) have been recoded as a prototype for the way that forms are going to be handled (again, no tables).
  • Browse pages: The browse by artist/label/release pages have also been updated.

Please have a thorough look through the page when you have chance. It’s key that you raise any issues you have, because this will be being merged in the future, and we’d rather keep everyone as happy as possible 🙂

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!

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!