MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-04-18

We’re back with another smallish release, mostly fixing minor bugs. This is our last release before the schema change on May 16; we are taking a one release break to have more time to concentrate on that. Of course you should still let us know if you find we have introduced any new bugs (er… totally intentional easter eggs that is!), but unless they are very serious, we will probably only fix them during the second half of May.

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 arcresu, chaban and Cyberskull, for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to mfmeulenbelt and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2022-04-18.

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Get ready for MetaBrainz NFTs!

As you all know, making our projects better every time takes a ton of work. For years, we’ve done an amazing job of combining individual users’ donations and commercial data users’ financial support to be a sustainable non-profit which finishes almost every year in the black (see our financial reports), which is quite the achievement when even tons of commercially successful companies lose money every year and only survive through new investment. That said, IT is a very competitive field and we can’t pay the most competitive wages, since we’re still a relatively small non-profit. That means we keep losing some of our talented engineers to large companies who can afford to treat them a lot better. After years of this, we’ve decided we need to find additional sources of income.

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MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-03-28

This release makes a bunch of small changes, mostly to URLs. One change that might be particularly worth noting: while earlier the series creation form defaulted to “Release group series” as type, now there’s no default and the user needs to actively pick the kind of series they want. We expect this to help with a relatively common issue where editors would try to add a new series for releases and accidentally create a release group series, leading to confusion about why they couldn’t add their release to 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 CatQuest, chaban, Cyberskull, jesus2099, mfmeulenbelt and mr_maxis for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to mfmeulenbelt and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2022-03-28.

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Schema change release: May 16, 2022

Today we’re announcing a MusicBrainz database schema change release planned for May 16, 2022. The majority of these changes follow the theme of improving data integrity and consistency, performance, or just cleaning up old cruft. Others relate to new features for genres and artist credits. We’re also introducing a new entity based on tags, like genres that came before it: Mood. See below for more details, including information on how these changes affect the schema or existing data. We expect people will encounter zero breaking changes, but it doesn’t hurt to double check, especially if you have a specific or non-standard use of the database!

Here’s our list of tickets for the Spring 2022 schema change:

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MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-03-14

This release, aside from fixing a few more small bugs, adds a lot of new features to the filtering options available on artist pages. You can now filter works (including by whether the artist was a writer or a performer), filter release groups by secondary type, specify you want only cases with no types set at all. Additionally, pages with lists of edits have just been converted to React, so do let us know if you see any strange behaviour there.

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 rinsuki for updating the cleanup for niconico external links. Thanks to chaban and jesus2099 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Besnik, mfmeulenbelt and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2022-03-14.

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Planned downtime for Wednesday, March 2, 16:00 UTC

We’ll be performing some critical maintenance on our database server starting at 16:00 UTC on March 2. Some brief downtime (hopefully less than 15 minutes) will be required to transfer services from our primary database server to our standby, which will allow us to upgrade the primary’s system and perform hardware checks. Thanks for your patience during this time.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-02-28

This release includes a fair amount of small improvements and bugfixes, including many changes to the edit list headers. It also allows editors to set their gender to the recently-added “non-binary” option.

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 atj, CatQuest, chaban, HibiscusKazeneko, jesus2099, Lotheric, ocharles, PierPiero for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Besnik, grafi_tt, mfmeulenbelt, outsidecontext and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2022-02-28.

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Stepping up on our UX: Welcoming Simon Hartman to the team

Hello!

I am pleased to announce that long time contributor and complainer about our UI/UX, Simon Hartman, AKA aerozol has joined our team as a part time designer!

While we are starting with a very modest 3 hours of his time per week, we feel that this marks a rather important step forward for our team. While we now have two team members who have UX/design skills (Monkey and Akshat), they also carry a significant load of engineering tasks working on their respective projects.

Having Simon as part of our team will allow us to carve out concrete design tasks for him to focus on. Simon and Akshat will also revive our long dormant design system, which lets us create UI components that are intuitive and consistent. Our engineering team will be able to re-use these components across our sites, simplifying the future development of new pages. We hope that this shared design system will improve the user interface across all of our sites, with a strong focus on bringing the MusicBrainz UI into the modern age.

Having concrete help on the design front has been needed badly for a long time, which makes me very excited to welcome Simon to our team. Welcome!