Picard 1.4 released

Official MusicBrainz cross-platform music tagger Picard 1.4 is now out, containing many fixes and new features!
The last time we put out a stable release was more than 2 years ago, so a lot of changes have made it into this new release. If you’re in a hurry and just want to try it out, the downloads are available from the Picard website.

Picard 1.4

picard-1-4-screenshot
A brand new Picard 1.4 install, fresh from the oven. Get it while it’s hot!

2 years is a long time for software, and Picard has been the subject of a couple of Google Summer of Code projects and plenty of developments required by changes in dependencies and the MusicBrainz project itself. Overall, the changes would be too numerous to list. If you’re curious to read it all, a complete list of changes can be seen on the website. Here are at least a few of the highlights: Continue reading “Picard 1.4 released”

Server update, 2017-02-13

New features include a map of places contained in an area, thanks to work by loujine, and a report of instruments without an image, thanks to yvanz.

More URL cleanup fixes were submitted by yvanz, and a display bug with the locale drop-down was fixed by chirlu. Thanks again to all who contributed this release.

The git tag is v-2017-02-13.

Sub-task

  • [MBS-9062] – Correct play.spotify.com → open.spotify.com

Bug

  • [MBS-8168] – Statistics for label types are missing from the stats pages
  • [MBS-8236] – Recognise classicalarchives.com/artist/… URLs
  • [MBS-9168] – Specific locales aren’t indented
  • [MBS-9224] – The gulpfile sometimes produces a corrupt rev-manifest bundle
  • [MBS-9229] – Regression: No longer able to add www.bandsintown.com URLs
  • [MBS-9232] – Pinterest URL cleanup adds a second /

New Feature

  • [MBS-7795] – Display a map in Areas that shows all the places contained in the area.
  • [MBS-9193] – Report instruments with neither image nor Wikidata item

Improvement

  • [MBS-8249] – Standardise and validate Spotify URLs

Wrapping up Google Code‐in 2016

As Google has now announced the finalists of this round of Google Code-in, it feels only right that we also take a look back at what’s been taking up a large chunk of our time the last couple of months.

Divya Prakash Mittal (India – returning from last year!), Daniel Theis (Germany), and Tigran Kostandyan (Russia) all made it to the finalists, with Anshuman Agarwal (India) and Daniel Hsing (Hong Kong) additionally taking home the Grand Prize Winner positions! Congratulations to all of you and thank you so much for your contributions this year. 🙂 Continue reading “Wrapping up Google Code‐in 2016”

Server update, 2017-01-30

We have many more URL display, cleanup, and auto-selection fixes thanks to yvanz, and one from GCI student anshuman73. A bug with browse requests for instruments and series in our web service has been fixed by Zastai. Thanks to jonathonwiebe, too, for correcting an outdated link in our INSTALL file.

The git tag for today’s release is v-2017-01-30.

Sub-task

  • [MBS-9195] – Convert data.bnf.fr URLs into catalogue.bnf.fr ones

Bug

  • [MBS-9128] – Unwanted “list” argument is not removed from YouTube URLs
  • [MBS-9173] – JSON browse requests for instruments and series fail

Task

  • [MBS-8998] – Display CPDL score links on the sidebar
  • [MBS-9194] – Add a bunch of sites to the “other database” whitelist

Improvement

  • [MBS-7734] – Improve Facebook URL clean up
  • [MBS-8365] – Add autoselect, clean-up, and validation for Pinterest URLs
  • [MBS-8390] – Add autoselect, clean-up, and validation + sidebar display for Bandsintown URLs
  • [MBS-9002] – Disable and tick the “ended” checkbox when the end date field is filled
  • [MBS-9159] – Enable URL cleanup for Instagram URLs
  • [MBS-9181] – Improve ReverbNation URL cleanup

Libdiscid 0.6.2 and python-discid 1.1.1 released

Libdiscid 0.6.2 includes these changes:

  • ISRC and MCN support on BSD (Zastai)
  • LIB-60: fix make check for default device on generic/unknown platform
  • make Doxygen output reproducible (no timestamps; Sebastinas)
  • remove newline for Linux device “1” from proc (Zastai)

The download can be found at http://musicbrainz.org/doc/libdiscid.

Python-discid 1.1.1 includes these changes:

The download can be found at https://python-discid.readthedocs.org/.

Server update, 2017-01-16

Thanks to chirlu, yvanz, and GCI students anshuman73, tigranl, and dpmittal for their contributions to today’s release. The git tag is v-2017-01-16 and the changelog is below.

Bug

  • [MBS-9175] – Attach TOC: Certain mediums with matching track count not shown when searching by artist
  • [MBS-9180] – Near-identical duplicates of common-xxx.js
  • [MBS-9186] – Gulpfile fails to build scripts in website containers
  • [MBS-9196] – Wikidocs redirects are broken
  • [MBS-9198] – Drop-down arrow in the top search missing in Firefox

Task

  • [MBS-7307] – Add LinkedIn URLs to sidebar
  • [MBS-8828] – Add Songkick URLs to the sidebar
  • [MBS-8851] – Add link to the blog on the footer
  • [MBS-8995] – Add ReverbNation links to the sidebar
  • [MBS-9143] – Remove the FreeDB search option

Improvement

  • [MBS-1319] – Special capitalization of dotted/dotless i/ı in Turkish
  • [MBS-8868] – Display label logo for Wikimedia Commons url-relationship

Welcome to the team Elizabeth!

I’m very happy to announce that we have a brand new Supporter Catalyst on our team. Elizabeth Bigger, AKA Quesito, joined our team at the beginning of the year and is now coming up to speed.

Her duties include making contact with any supporters who sign up on the MetaBrainz site and to sort out any questions they may have working with such a quirky organization like MetaBrainz. She’ll also be reaching out to established customers to make sure that they are on the right support level and that things are working smoothly for our supporters.

I anticipate her also helping out with other tasks such as putting on our annual summit and other events we may hold in our office in Barcelona.

Welcome on board, Elizabeth!

New MusicBrainz Virtual Machine released

We’ve finally released a new MusicBrainz virtual machine! This new version has become a lot more automated and is much easier to create and deploy. Hopefully we will be doing monthly releases of the VM from here on out.

A lot of things have changed for this new release. If you have used the VM before, you MUST read the instructions again. Before filing a bug or asking us a question, please re-read the documentation first!

Ready to jump in? Read the instructions.

Server update, 2016-12-19

This release features code from GCI student dpmittal, who fixed four of the tickets below under our mentorship. One of those tickets was for displaying the excellent artist icons that former GCI student (and current mentor) gcilou created. Those icons are displayed to the left of the name at the top of artist pages (examples: person, group, choir, orchestra, character, other). Nice work, gcilou and dpmittal! We also have various fixes and improvements thanks to chirlu and Zastai, listed below.

The git tag is v-2016-12-19.

Sub-task

  • [MBS-4159] – Vimeo relationship under the External links section

Bug

  • [MBS-7009] – Exception if replication type is slave but no data in replication_control
  • [MBS-8268] – Ratings (stars) display does not update on its own
  • [MBS-9117] – CD Stub track count not serialized correctly

New Feature

  • [MBS-8359] – Add “Guess Case” function for Event names

Task

  • [MBS-8870] – Add Setlist.fm links to the sidebar

Improvement

  • [MBS-1352] – Different icon for Unknown/Person/Group on Artist pages
  • [MBS-8542] – Blacklist Jaikoz from making barcode edits

Making ticket votes public

The MetaBrainz ticket tracker (which, incidentally, received a long-needed upgrade recently – thanks, Gentlecat!) is an important tool for all of our projects. It collects all kinds of bug reports, feature requests and other tasks to be done and makes sure none are forgotten.

One of its auxiliary features is the possibility for users to vote for a ticket, to indicate which tickets they consider particularly important. (There are only upvotes; you can’t vote against a ticket.) This may factor in when MetaBrainz employees decide on which tickets to tackle next, although there are other factors as well such as the complexity and the impact of a particular issue.

In the past, who voted for which tickets has been private, mostly because that is the default setting in JIRA, the ticket tracker software used. Only administrators can see the list of voters for a ticket; regular users just see the number of votes.

Now, we have decided to change that: In the future, all logged-in users will be able to see who voted for a ticket. This should not be sensitive information; whoever expressed their support for a ticket by commenting on it instead of (or in addition to) voting already was in the public eye. Still, it is a policy change. We’ve therefore decided to wait two weeks before implementing the new privileges, in order to give everybody the chance to remove any votes that they don’t want to be known with. The ticket tracker provides a list of all tickets that you have voted for.