MetaBrainz Blog – Page 8 – MetaBrainz Foundation Community Blog

Schema change release: May 13, 2024

MusicBrainz is announcing a new database schema change release for May 13, 2024. The main change will be to upgrade from PostgreSQL 12 to 16. Even though it isn’t database-related, Perl will also be upgraded from 5.30 to 5.38. Those will become the minimum required versions. Other changes are mostly clean-up and refactoring, with the exception of support for genre collections and (addendum) 6-digit label codes.

A few weeks after, the search engine will also be upgraded from Solr 7 to 9. Search indexes will have to be rebuilt on mirrors, which takes some time. Gladsomely, it will allow us to implement search improvements again.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-03-11

This release mostly includes small improvements and bugfixes, plus a new report for wrong bootleg releases and a few new locales available for aliases.

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 derat for having contributed with code to better display documentation pages on small screens. Thanks to chaban, Cyberskull, derat, jesus2099, RandomMushroom128, sammyrayy and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to abbedabb, brtc, cijic, Dimlbur, Gateway31, hedw1gP, salo.rock, Vac31 and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-03-11.

Welcoming Hazel Savage to our Board of Directors!

I am pleased to announce that Hazel Savage of SoundCloud and Musiio has joined our Board of Directors! Hazel is practically the perfect person for our Board of Directors right now: Knowledgeable in music recommendations and music AI, she brings deep experience in two fields that are quite important to the Foundation at this time. We’ve already been dealing with some tough questions on AI in the past year and her experience will lend us another voice in determining our AI policies going forward.

Hazel replaces outgoing Director Paula LeDieu whose life has recently gotten much more busy, not leaving enough time for her role at MetaBrainz. We’re sad to have Paula leave the team, but are pleased to have Hazel as her replacement.

Thank you to Paula for your time on our Board of Directors — we very much appreciate your time and efforts!

Welcome Hazel Savage!

Supporting upstream open source projects

For many years the MetaBrainz Foundation has wanted to directly support some of the upstream open source projects we use for development. These upstream projects are used behind the scenes by one or more MetaBrainz projects. They often don’t have individual users, and many lack the visibility for getting other funding.

We are starting with a small donation of $1,001, annually. These will be one-time donations to 13 projects, $77 each. The total amount and the list of projects (see below) will be revised every year.

The Top 8 Mistakes of GSoC Applicants

Ah, the lead up to Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Weeks of excitement, and the promise of a bright future. And lots of time to absolutely torpedo your chances of working with MetaBrainz or your open-source organisation of choice. Here’s how.

A screenshot from the film ‘Dr Strangelove’, with a man riding a missile flying towards the ground. There is text next to the man that reads ‘you’, and text next to the missile that says ‘your gsoc proposal’

ListenBrainz: 2023 Recap

Strap in, because we’re going to recap all the ListenBrainz changes in the whirlwind year that was 2023! For the full ListenBrainz changelog you can visit: https://github.com/metabrainz/listenbrainz-server/releases

For those who peeped at the changelog, yes, the ListenBrainz team managed over 60 releases in 2023… let’s check out some of the highlights.

Google Summer of Code 2024: MetaBrainz has been accepted!

We’re are excited to announce that the MetaBrainz Foundation has been accepted into Google’s Summer of Code program for 2024! Summer of Code has been instrumental (pun intended) in the development of our projects and growth of our team over the years, so we’re pleased to be part of it for another round.

Ready to rock this summer coding with us? Start with carefully reading the terms for contributors. If you are eligible, go ahead and take a look at our Summer of Code landing page where you can find project ideas that we have listed for this year. Our landing page will also tell you what we require of our participants and how to pick up a project.

A very important note: We will not be considering any proposals from contributors who have not reached out to us before March 18.

Good luck to all who are interested in participating!

PS: If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, check out this entirely optional link for some extra motivation.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-02-16

This Friday’s server update mainly features performance improvements related to how data is cached internally. It is conveyed with a fair number of other improvements and bugfixes.

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 julian45 for having contributed with code to better handle OTOTOY links. Thanks to chaban, Cyberskull, fabe56, Freso, HibiscusKazeneko, kellnerd, ms0010, yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to akaN@NAME, Fjuro, GABG, hashflu, Hossein.income, kellnerd, mfmeulenbelt, Philipp Wolfer, salo.rock, and Vac31 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-02-16.

ListenBrainz Music Neighborhood

The ListenBrainz Music Neighbourhood feature is now live!

Use this arcane technology to find your favourite artist and explore their related artists. Watch the pretty colours. Listen to the music. Race your friends from Napalm Death to Britney Spears. Increase the web size and gasp as the artists jiggle into each other. Or simplify your life by exploring a web size of 0.

Don’t wait! No ListenBrainz account required, try it now: https://listenbrainz.org/explore/music-neighborhood/

A cropped screenshot showing colourful detail from the ListenBrainz Music Neighbourhood feature. In the middle is Red Hot Chilli Peppers, connected with lines to a variety of other artists. — Does this say more about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or their listeners? (hint: the listeners)

Picard 2.11 released

The Picard team is happy to announce that the final version 2.11 of MusicBrainz Picard is now available for download. MusicBrainz Picard is the official tag editor for the MusicBrainz database and helps you get your music collection sorted and cleaned up with the latest data from MusicBrainz.

This release brings multiple improvements for the AcoustID fingerprint scan and general improvements to matching files to search results for some specific cases. This final release reverts a change from the recent release candidate which broke loading recording relationships only without release relationships.