MetaBrainz Foundation Community Blog
Some days everything comes together, and this is one of those days. We now have a range of Syndication Feeds (aka RSS or Atom feeds) available in ListenBrainz.
Look for the feed symbol in the following places in ListenBrainz:
Today Spotify announced that a number of APIs will no longer be available for new users.
While Spotify won’t immediately take away these endpoints for existing users, it certainly does not inspire confidence for their longevity. Spotify cites “security reasons” as an explanation of why they are closing off these APIs, but we are unclear as to how that will improve security, so we need to assume that Spotify has some other motivations behind this move. More likely than not, they are hatching a strategy to protect their algorithmic assets from data crawlers used by third-party AI companies.
Needless to say, the Spotify services continue to get enshittified, taking away very useful features that developers have come to rely on. ListenBrainz has very different goals, being entirely open-source and part of a non-profit foundation, and we won’t pull the rug out from under our users for monetary or “security” reasons.
On the contrary, our very small team works in direct collaboration with users and developers interested in developing new discovery tools in the music space, and we embrace the variety of ways passionate music lovers want to interact with music collections and recommendations.
Our own frustrations with Spotify’s ever-worsening recommendations was the spark that lit up our interest in recommendations, but again our approach is one of fairness (we don’t tip the scales) focused on the user’s experience rather than the deep pockets of multinational labels.
For developers frustrated that their app stopped working, the good news is that the ListenBrainz team has been working on building some new datasets and API endpoints that offer replacements for what Spotify is taking away. While not everything that Spotify is enshittifying has a direct replacement with ListenBrainz, we can at least offer a path forward for developers.
These features/datasets include:
Future new datasets include:
All of this data is Creative Commons CC0 licensed (read Public Domain) and available on our API endpoints, for free, forever. MetaBrainz is a California 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to creating, maintaining and ensuring that these datasets are available for public use.
And on top of that, the person who coined the term “Enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, has been on our board of directors for 20 years, further ensuring that we’re enshittification proof.
Come play with our data – we’d love your feedback! We’re working hard to make this data better and if it doesn’t yet meet your needs, we hope to meet them soon!
* for the similar artist search, use this value for “algorithm”: session_based_days_7500_session_300_contribution_5_threshold_10_limit_100_filter_True_skip_30
We have now completely moved off X (the platform formerly known as Twitter). It has been a long time coming, with rampant enshittification, uncertainty around platform changes, and content that has been increasingly unpleasant to interact with. Politics aside, we’re sick of going to check notifications and getting blasted with a feed largely consisting of violence, porn, advertising, the owner, and AI grifters*.
Instead, come join MetaBrainz, MusicBrainz, ListenBrainz and BookBrainz on Bluesky and/or Mastodon!
Continue reading “X-odus: Find our projects on Bluesky and Mastodon”Image editing has been re-enabled after being down for the past month, so it’s now time to upload your backlog of scanned artwork if you haven’t already done so on the beta site! The rest of the changelog is short, but we’ll give a special mention to JadedBlueEyes, whose GSoC project is now being used for sending emails between editors. You’ll notice that a newer, fancier email template is now used for such messages. We hope to convert the rest of the emails we send out to use the new service soon, in future server releases.
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 and JadedBlueEyes for having contributed to the code. Thanks to Xythium, jlks82, and roman412 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to ApeKattQuest/MonkeyPython, KenParker_CN, and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!
The git tag is v-2024-11-18.0.
Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-11-18”I’m pleased to announce that Julian Anderson (julian45) and Adam James (atj) have joined our team as volunteer System Administrators. Julian has just now joined the team, where as Adam has been part of it for nearly 2 years and I failed to post the requisite blog post welcoming him. Mea culpa, Adam! Welcome to both of you!
We welcome volunteers to help us with our infrastructure, which continues to grow and become more complicated. The ListenBrainz project in particular has many moving parts in order to process the user’s data (stats, recommendations, fresh releases, etc.). On top of that, we’re working hard to make sure that our infrastructure is as automated as possible, so we welcome any help from people who know Ansible, like Julian and Adam.
Continue reading “Welcome Julian45 (and atj)!”MusicBrainz is a treasure trove. Open the lid and you will find glittering piles of release metadata. Mountains of precious artist information. Gold nuggets of high resolution artwork. Everything you can imagine – provided you mainly imagine music data. And also, at the bottom, tucked into the corners, some really weird shit. And some MusicBrainz editors just having the time of their life, adding to the pile. One of those editors has agreed to have a chat with me.
Thank you for answering my questions, sound.and.vision! I am really regretting the poop analogy, my deepest apologies. But we are dung-beetle editing buddies, and I know that your additions to the database are a treasure to many. Shall we ‘roll’ with it?
Continue reading “The Strangest Releases in MusicBrainz: Weird and Wonderful”It really bugged me that it proved impossible to finish the huge BookBrainz importer project last year. Fortunately MetaBrainz (and Google) gave me the chance to continue working on my 2023 project during this Summer of Code, thank you! Our goal is still to import huge external datasets into the BookBrainz database schema.
Last year I worked on the backend services to transform and insert simple entities into the database. This year’s goal was to support importing multiple related entities and exposing the imported data on the website. We can now import entities (on the backend), which can be reviewed and approved by our users with ease.
If you want to know the full story, I recommend you to start with my previous blog post to learn more details about the existing importer infrastructure and last year’s problems. Or just read on if you are only interested in the advanced stuff which I did this year.
This year it was New Delhi, India, that was invaded by data nerds from across the globe!
The MetaBrainz team was treated to the glorious chaos, hospitality, sights, noise, sweets, monkeys, traffic, heat, and delicious food of India. We reflected on the last year in MetaBrainz, planned and collaborated for the future, and got a little work done – when we could fit it in between mouthfuls of Indian sweets.
Read on for a comprehensive summit recap, including the annual recap for each MetaBrainz project, as well as breakout session notes, photos, and links to the slides and video recordings.
Continue reading “MetaBrainz Summit 2024”In a hurry? Here’s what you need to know: We have a new release status in MusicBrainz, “Expunged”.
Expunged is to be used for “previously official releases that were expunged from an artist or record company’s discography”. If the artist or label have not given a clear indication that they want to disown the release, use the “Withdrawn” status instead. See the style guidelines for examples and a longer description.
If you’re not in a hurry, stick around and let’s dig a little deeper.
Continue reading “Withdrawn and Expunged releases in MusicBrainz”As mentioned in the banner of MusicBrainz website for a week already, images for events and releases are currently unavailable due to the Internet Archive (IA) recovering from a DDoS attack. See the IA’s Mastodon page for follow-up. Both the Cover Art Archive and the Event Art Archive were available from the Internet Archive which is doing its best to restore services safely, that will take as many days as necessary. Meanwhile, today’s server update temporarily disables editing images, until our access to the Internet Archive is fully restored. It also brings some updates behind the scenes. Last but not least, it also features a few improvements and bugfixes, mainly contributed by volunteers without whom this would not have the same significance!
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, Divyansh Gupta, and Serial-ATA for having contributed to the code. Thanks to Dan and HibiscusKazeneko for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Arainuki, Aris_8585, blit, Echelon666, salo.rock, Vaclovas Intas, and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!
The git tag is v-2024-10-21.0.
Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-10-21”
