MusicBrainz Server update, 2020-06-29

The React conversion is back with this release. We’ve also fixed a regression that listed unrelated “recording of” relationship edits in history of artists, recordings, and releases, and made a lot of people quite frustrated during the last two weeks (sorry about that!). New edits won’t be wrongly listed anymore, and the existing wrongly-listed edits will be progressively unlisted during the following days. Finally, two new data reports have been created, and small display improvements have been made.

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 loujin for contributing code. Thanks to DjSlash, hibiscuskazeneko, insolite, jesus2099, and mavit for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Atsushi Nakamura, kellnerd and salorock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2020-06-29.

Bug

  • [MBS-10825] – Normalization of some Muziekweb links make them invalid
  • [MBS-10908] – Unrelated “recording of” relationship edits for works show up in history of artists, recordings, and releases

New Feature

  • [MBS-10770] – Report on relations with dates in the future
  • [MBS-10895] – Report for mediums with conflicting discID

Improvement

  • [MBS-10736] – Add autoselect + sidebar for Napster URLs
  • [MBS-10802] – Right-align columns of Reorder Relationship table
  • [MBS-10894] – Show label code after selecting label in the release editor
  • [MBS-10903] – Update Operabase cleanup and validation
  • [MBS-10907] – Define background color for header and footer too

React Conversion Task

  • [MBS-10777] – Convert Add/Remove Relationship edits to React
  • [MBS-10801] – Convert Reorder Relationships edit to React

Introducing the BookBrainz merging tool

Today we come with a big BookBrainz website update that allows you to merge duplicate entities!

Being able to clean up the database is an essential step towards importing public bibliographic records and catalogs from partner websites. As with MusicBrainz, you can visit an entity page on BookBrainz and click on a button to add an entity to a merge queue. You can merge multiple entities in one go easily.

BookBrainz merge queue

After clicking the merge button you will be presented with a page that lets you review and select the correct information in case of conflicting data. The revision history of merged entities is preserved, and in the near future you’ll be able undo merges.

BookBrainz merge page

Your feedback is very welcome! We also have a short tutorial on how to use the new merge tool for the curious.

This latest website update also adds annotations for any information that does not fit into the existing format, some small design improvements and bug fixes.

We’ve also added the ability to search for users on the search page. This last feature will come in handy soon as we introduce collaborative User Collections; stay tuned!

MusicBrainz Server update, 2020-06-15

Today’s release focuses on stability with almost half of changes being bugfixes. It also provides a fair number of small improvements and new features. On a side note, the third party affiliated Magic Tagger is now known as AudioRanger.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server and to fix a few issues in both standard setup and development setup. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to Cyna, Freso, loujin for contributing code. Thanks to chaban, chiark, jesus2099, kellnerd, nikki, otringal, navap, wmorg, and yeeeargh for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to kellnerd and salorock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2020-06-15.

Bug

  • [MBS-6532] – Work edits not in release edit history
  • [MBS-10186] – “Set track lengths” edit is stuck
  • [MBS-10381] – Duplicate work entity lyrics languages during edit
  • [MBS-10821] – Edit changing medium tracklist and format is stuck
  • [MBS-10836] – My Collections edit link doesn’t show edit page
  • [MBS-10856] – Relationship credit with whitespace causes error
  • [MBS-10867] – uncaught exception: entity not in the entities array
  • [MBS-10873] – Artist not always shown for annotation edits
  • [MBS-10882] – ISE when filtering RGs
  • [MBS-10885] – BadAmazonURLs: TypeError: Cannot read property ‘href_url’ of null
  • [MBS-10887] – CSS misalignment of country/date text with other columns
  • [MBS-10890] – Work language displayed multiple times in edit listings
  • [MBS-10892] – Collaborators can’t add releases to private collection

New Feature

  • [MBS-1736] – Block setting format on too early releases
  • [MBS-10862] – Report for releases with catalog numbers that look like label codes

Improvement

  • [MBS-4644] – Indicate which releases have CAA art in listings
  • [MBS-9340] – Don’t allow more languages if [No lyrics] is selected
  • [MBS-9931] – Fail gracefully when trying to remove a relationship which is in use as an example
  • [MBS-10469] – Show releases more likely to have a processed cover art on front page
  • [MBS-10893] – Add help text to select the appropriate artist from CD lookup
  • [MBS-10897] – Block always more smart links

React Conversion Task

  • [MBS-10393] – Convert Add Standalone Recording edit to React

Other Task

  • [MBS-6864] – Remove PUID edits
  • [MBS-10771] – Block tagging for unverified users
  • [MBS-10891] – Replace Magic Tagger link with AudioRanger

MusicBrainz Server update, 2020-06-02

Now that PostgreSQL has been upgraded to version 12 (see earlier instructions), regular improvements, bugfixes, and React/JSX template refactoring are back on the menu. The most noticeable improvement is probably that we are now able to display more specific error messages in the URL relationship editor when a link is not allowed, instead of always giving a generic “not good”-style message. There are even new features, for admins only, that will allow them to spot and delete sock-puppets and to temporarily disable edit notes from editors who continue to be disrespectful to others without having to delete their accounts outright.

In news not directly connected to the MusicBrainz website, the public search endpoint has been moved from the old search server to the Solr-based search server. This can be used by slave servers if they do not need, or can not afford, to host their own search indexes.

And while talking about slave servers, a new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available. It follows this update of MusicBrainz Server and fixes a regression that affects servers with live indexing. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to Cyna for converting more edits’ display to React, to KamranMackey and navap for updating external links’ icons. Thanks to alastairp, BestSteve, chaban, chirlu, cyberskull, Freso, hibiscuskazeneko, jesus2099, and Kid Devine for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to eduardomariohs, kellnerd, mfmeulenbelt, salorock, and stich94 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2020-06-02.

Bug

  • [MBS-9010] – Alerts about new edit notes are separate for production and beta
  • [MBS-10613] – Version info footer is shown on some pages in production
  • [MBS-10732] – Internal Server Error: Adding a collaborator to a collection without selecting from autocomplete dropdown
  • [MBS-10839] – “Add selected recordings for merging” missing in standalone-only overview
  • [MBS-10849] – Add release group preview on RE shows “This entity has been removed”
  • [MBS-10850] – Bad Amazon URLs report doesn’t ignore “streaming page” relationship
  • [MBS-10855] – Historic track edit involving since-removed entity doesn’t show recording
  • [MBS-10863] – “Edit barcode” edit doesn’t show barcode

New Feature

  • [MBS-10834] – New account flag for disabling ability to write edit notes
  • [MBS-10845] – Tool to allow account admins to look up accounts by e-mail

Improvement

  • [MBS #1516] – Update Facebook, Google Play, and Spotify icons
  • [MBS-7822] – Update OverClocked ReMix favicon
  • [MBS-8412] – Align number of edits per page
  • [MBS-9516] – Display specific error messages depending on URL validation rules
  • [MBS-9963] – Update Genius link format and logo
  • [MBS-10412] – Update URL cleanup for Niconico URLs, specifically channel links for artists
  • [MBS-10727] – Deny kasi-time.com URLs for lyrics
  • [MBS-10789] – Add validation for Genius links
  • [MBS-10813] – Update the Bandcamp logo used in the sidebar
  • [MBS-10831] – Allow niconico channel links for other entities than artist
  • [MBS-10840] – Capitalise “in key” info correctly in English guess case
  • [MBS-10841] – Add “Guess case” per-medium
  • [MBS-10842] – Remove report user link from deleted editor profiles
  • [MBS-10853] – Link to overview page for edits by subscribed editors in subscription email

React Conversion Task

  • [MBS-10397] – Convert Edit Event edit to React
  • [MBS-10399] – Convert Edit Recording edit to React
  • [MBS-10793] – Convert historic Move Release edit to React
  • [MBS-10799] – Convert historic Move Release to RG edit to React
  • [MBS-10817] – Convert Edit Label edit to React

Other Task

  • [MBS-7781] – Merge duplicate artist credits
  • [MBS-10785] – Remove link to FreeDB Gateway documentation
  • [MBS-10822] – Change tableColumns tables to use named parameters
  • [MBS-10860] – Merge the production and beta Redis stores
  • [MBS-10878] – Convey search queries from slave servers to Solr

PostgreSQL 12 Upgrade Instructions for MusicBrainz Server

Thanks to everyone for your patience during our downtime today. As promised, here are steps to follow to upgrade your own PG instance to v12. (Confused? See the previous blog post on this subject.)

If you’re already running v12, there are still some instructions you must follow!

For MusicBrainz Docker

If you’re running the new MusicBrainz Docker setup, an upgrade script exists for you to use. See the release notes for specific – hopefully brief – instructions.

For a Manual Setup (INSTALL.md Based)

If you aren’t using Docker but rather set up musicbrainz-server by hand following INSTALL.md, see the steps below.

Know that as an alternative, you can always import new data dumps from scratch (again following the steps in INSTALL.md) into a new PG 12 cluster. Just make sure you’re on the v-2020-05-18-postgres12 tag of musicbrainz-server while doing so.

If on the other hand you don’t mind getting your hands a bit dirty, you can use the quicker method below. Like INSTALL.md, this assumes you’re using Ubuntu/Debian and their postgresql-common cluster management tools.

If you’re already running v12, you should still follow these steps; however, you can skip the ones involving apt-get, pg_dropcluster, and pg_upgradecluster. The main steps you need to follow in this case are running the 20200518-pg12-before-upgrade.sql and 20200518-pg12-after-upgrade.sql scripts in that order.

On distros other than Debian/Ubuntu where the postgresql-common tools aren’t available, you’ll have to manage with initdb and pg_upgrade on your own.

  1. First take down the web server running MusicBrainz (stop plackup) to prevent database access.
  2. Turn off any cron jobs updating or accessing the database (e.g. for the live data feed/replication packets).
  3. Switch to the latest musicbrainz-server code with:
    git fetch origin && \
        git checkout v-2020-05-18-postgres12
  4. With PG 9.5 (or whatever version you’re using) still running, run the following “pre-upgrade” script:
    psql -U postgres -d musicbrainz_db \
         -f admin/sql/updates/20200518-pg12-before-upgrade.sql

    This assumes that “postgres” is the name of your PG superuser, and “musicbrainz_db” is the name of your database. If you see a few messages about things not existing, that’s normal.

  5. Install packages for PostgreSQL 12. On Ubuntu/Debian you can obtain them from the PGDG apt repo.
    apt-get update && \
        apt-get install postgresql-12 postgresql-server-dev-12

    If you’re installing postgresql-12 for the first time, this will automatically create a new cluster at /var/lib/postgresql/12/main. Remove that empty cluster. Don’t run this if you already had v12 installed and have data there!

    pg_dropcluster --stop 12 main
    If you did already have v12 installed with musicbrainz_db running there, leave the cluster alone and skip the next step involving pg_upgradecluster.

    In the unlikely event that you already have a v12 cluster, but also have musicbrainz_db running in a separate, older cluster, these instructions won’t work for you. We recommend importing fresh data dumps into the v12 cluster and dropping the old one.

  6. Upgrade the old cluster. This assumes it’s version 9.5; if you’re using version 10 or 11, make sure to replace 9.5 below with 10 or 11. If you have other databases in your old cluster besides musicbrainz_db, be aware that this will upgrade all of them to PG 12.
     pg_upgradecluster -v 12 9.5 main
  7. If all goes well, the new cluster should be up and running. (You can drop the old one if you like; the output of the pg_upgradecluster command will tell you how.) Now run the following “post-upgrade” script on the database:
    psql -U postgres -d musicbrainz_db -f \
         admin/sql/updates/20200518-pg12-after-upgrade.sql
    This may take a bit, as it has to recreate some indexes.
  8. The upgrade is complete. You can turn cron jobs back on, if applicable.
  9. Restart the MusicBrainz web server / plackup, if applicable. If you’re accessing the server in a web browser, the usual release upgrade steps apply, like running ./script/compile_resources.sh again.

If you run into any trouble following the above, please let us know and we’ll try to help resolve your issue as soon as possible!

MusicBrainz Docker composes with Solr 7

The MusicBrainz virtual machine is dead, long live the MusicBrainz Docker Compose project. In fact, the virtual machine has been running it for years. Mostly because the data loaded with the virtual machine was too soon obsolete, it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Plus, new search indexes are much larger than before, and using Docker Compose directly is much more versatile.

The MusicBrainz Docker Compose project has been deeply revamped since two years ago and now ships the new search server based on Solr 7. It can be used for mirroring the MusicBrainz website and database, testing your own app with a local MusicBrainz web service, or developing the MusicBrainz Server itself. Check out the release notes!

Thanks to everyone who reported issues and contributed patches for two years!

MusicBrainz Server update, 2020-05-11

This is the last update before upgrading to Postgres 12. It is mainly focused on React conversion but also carries ten small bugfixes and improvements.

Thanks to navap for hacking the user interface. Thanks to admiy, chaban, fabe56, Freso, jesus2099, zas for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to kellnerd, mfmeulenbelt, and salorock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2020-05-11.

Bug

  • [MBS-10138] – Guess case crashes if track name ends with word “F”
  • [MBS-10564] – YouTube channel links that contain non-Latin characters won’t display the name in the sidebar
  • [MBS-10641] – Edit subscriptions email links to all edits for subscribed entities rather than open edits
  • [MBS-10768] – ISE on “Donation Check” tab for users with / in their names
  • [MBS-10772] – Sidebar doesn’t display genres if other tags have more upvotes
  • [MBS-10803] – Cannot link to https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/<artist>/<number>

Improvement

  • [MBS-10737] – Allow thesession.org URLs for Places
  • [MBS-10761] – Disallow YouTube links at wrong levels
  • [MBS-10804] – Remove redundant user header from edit page
  • [MBS-10805] – Support for Amazon.AE/NL/SG/TR ASINs

React Conversion Task

  • [MBS-9910] – Convert wikidocs transclusion admin templates to React/JSX
  • [MBS-10748] – Convert the relationship doc page to React
  • [MBS-10760] – Convert Remove Track edit to React
  • [MBS-10762] – Convert historic Remove Release/Releases edits to React
  • [MBS-10764] – Convert historic Remove Label Alias edits to React
  • [MBS-10765] – Convert historic Add, Move and Remove DiscID edits to React
  • [MBS-10773] – Convert historic Change Release Quality edit to React
  • [MBS-10775] – Convert historic Add/Remove Relationship edits to React
  • [MBS-10790] – Convert historic MAC/SAC edits to React
  • [MBS-10791] – Convert historic Change RG edit to React
  • [MBS-10792] – Convert historic Change Artist Quality edit to React
  • [MBS-10811] – Convert historic Edit Relationship edit to React

Picard 2.3.2 released

Picard 2.3.2 has been released and is available for download. This is mainly a bug-fix release with few minor improvements, see below for a full list of changes.

This release contains code changes by zas, rdswift, outsidecontext, RaysDev and new contributors Undearius and Gabrielcarvfer, who also is working on some interesting changes regarding UI responsiveness.
Thanks a lot to everybody who contributed to this release with code, translations, bug reports and general feedback.

Download

Picard 2.3.2 is available for download from the download page.

Changes

Below is a list of all changes since Picard 2.3.1. If you are upgrading from an older version you might want to read previous release post.

Breaking change:

$find script function now returns “” rather than -1 on not found, for the sake of consistency. You may want to review your scripts.

Notable improvements:

Picard was trying to guess the file format based on file content. This was very IO expensive and in many cases not needed. So we decided to change the logic to:

  • Try guessing the format by file extension first
  • If no extension or no matching file extension is available, guess by file content
  • If format was guessed by extension and loading the file with mutagen fails with an exception, retry with guessing by file content. Retry loading if the newly guessed format is different from the format guessed by extension.

Also notable, On Windows 10, support for fractional scaling was implemented.

The complete list of changes is the following:

Bug

  • [PICARD-1775] – $firstwords function doesn’t catch IndexError
  • [PICARD-1776] – $datetime crashes when invalid format specified
  • [PICARD-1781] – Have $find return “” rather than “-1” on not found
  • [PICARD-1783] – Deleting performer, comment or lyrics tag fails for some cases in ID3, Vorbis, MP4 and Apev2 tags
  • [PICARD-1784] – Host not found error when downloading PDF artwork
  • [PICARD-1785] – $delete(_id3:TXXX:foo) does not delete the ID3 frames
  • [PICARD-1786] – Deleting tag stored in ID3 TIPL frame only removes first occurrence
  • [PICARD-1787] – Deleting case-insensitive TXXX frames does not delete anything
  • [PICARD-1788] – Saving ID3 tags marked as case-insensitive causes duplicated TXXX frames
  • [PICARD-1790] – Crash when selecting plugin that can be updated
  • [PICARD-1791] – Network access is disabled error under VPN service
  • [PICARD-1795] – iTunes tags not removable (reappear after being deleted)
  • [PICARD-1801] – List index out of range when saving Vorbis file
  • [PICARD-1803] – Instrument EWI is rewritten “e w i”

Improvement

  • [PICARD-1777] – Support fractional scaling on Windows 10
  • [PICARD-1800] – Simplify Unicode ‘Bullet’ to ASCII ‘Hyphen-minus’
  • [PICARD-1809] – Optimize format detection logic

Reminder: Upgrading to PostgreSQL 12 on May 18, 2020

As we announced in February, in two weeks time (May 18, 2020) we’ll be upgrading our production database server to PostgreSQL v12 (from v9.5). At the same time, v12 will become the minimum supported version for MusicBrainz Server, so we ask that you upgrade afterwards as soon as possible! If you’re still unsure, a Q&A is below.

When do I need to upgrade my postgres by?

As soon as possible after May 18 if you’d like to keep your musicbrainz-server code up to date.

How do I perform the upgrade?

We’ll provide instructions closer to May 18. It’s recommended that you don’t upgrade until then, since we’ll be providing scripts to resolve some issues.

Will the live data feed (replication packets) stop working right away if I don’t upgrade?

No, as long as you keep your musicbrainz-server code checkout on the v-2020-05-11 tag (which will be the final release before May 18) or earlier. Future releases may work for a while too.

This is not a schema change release, so replication will continue to work smoothly until you upgrade. No tables or views will change.

However, to make the upgrade process smoother we’ll be dropping the musicbrainz-collate and musicbrainz-unaccent extensions, instead using PG’s builtin collation support for the former and replacing the latter with the unaccent extension from postgresql-contrib. A few SQL functions are being added to enable this, and some indexes need to be rebuilt. This will all happen as part of upgrade scripts we provide (or you can import from scratch). Some features of musicbrainz-server that use these old extensions may cease to work if you don’t apply them.

The extension changes above don’t actually make use of any new PG 12 features. We’ll avoid using such features for at least 1 month.

If I’m already running PostgreSQL 12, do I need to do anything?

Yes, but things will be easier for you. As mentioned in the previous answer, we’ll be dropping the musicbrainz-collate and musicbrainz-unaccent extensions to make the upgrade process smoother for pre-v12 instances. So you’ll only have to run some upgrade scripts we provide to replace those extensions and rebuild some indexes.

My host/distribution doesn’t have PostgreSQL 12 yet!

If you’re running Debian or Ubuntu, the PGDG maintains an APT repository with the latest versions. These are the same packages MetaBrainz uses in production.

Amazon RDS supports PostgreSQL 12 since March 31.

I absolutely cannot upgrade yet! What should I do?

You can stay on the v-2020-05-11 release of musicbrainz-server or earlier until then. Replication packets (i.e. the live data feed) will continue to work until the next schema change on that tag, but you’ll have upgraded to v12 by then, right?

Instead of performing a pg_upgrade and running these upgrade scripts you mentioned, can I just import fresh data dumps into a new v12 cluster?

Of course. Just make sure your musicbrainz-server git checkout is on the v-2020-05-18 tag (once that’s released) or later before performing the import. And keep in mind it may be slower than a direct upgrade.

The ODI publishes two reports on Sustainable Data Institutions

The Open Data Institute has just published two reports: Designing Sustainable Data Institutions and Designing Trustworthy Data Institutions which include insights provided by us regarding our MusicBrainz project.

When I was starting out MusicBrainz and was trying to work out how to make the project sustainable, I would’ve given just about anything to have access to these reports. I am proud that, nearly 20 years later, I was able to contribute to these reports so that others may benefit from our hard work.

I find the section Suggestions for those scoping, designing and running data institutions on page 40 of the PDF version of Designing Sustainable Data Institutions quite enlightening:

  1. Ensure your revenue model aligns with your organisational goals
  2. Understand how your revenue sources will change during your institution’s lifecycle
  3. Consider both financial and non-financial aspects of sustainability
  4. Identify and mitigate future risks
  5. Learn from others

Each of these points represent a whole collections of small lessons that I’ve learned by (often painful) experience of the past years. Also, I feel that these points are not strictly limited Data Institutions, but many also apply to making open source projects sustainable. If you’re in the business of running a data or open source organzation, I would strongly encourage you to read this paper!

Also very interesting is the second report about Designing Trustworthy Data Institutions:

For example, the representative from MusicBrainz said, “[A culture of honesty] builds trust, and this trust builds sustainability”

Compared to sustainability, the concepts of trust were much more clear to me from the beginning. However, that doesn’t make this report any less relevant — especially in current times, I welcome an emphasis on trust!

Thank you to the ODI for including MusicBrainz and doing all of the hard work on these reports!