MetaBrainz Blog – Page 9 – MetaBrainz Foundation Community Blog

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-04-09

This release includes a rewrite of the artist credit editor, which should make it more reliable and also allows undoing row removals, the bane of the too-quick-for-their-own-good editor! It also includes a lot of other small fixes and improvements.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

In case your mirror is older than Postgres 12 migration in 2020, if some update scripts didn’t work for some reason back in that time, you might have the following error in the file mirror.log or mirror.log.1 since yesterday:

ERROR:  index row requires xxxxx bytes, maximum size is 8191

Then open a PostgreSQL invite, for example as follows:

admin/psql

Finally, run the following SQL instructions:

SET search_path = musicbrainz, public;
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS track_idx_musicbrainz_collate;
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS track_idx_name;
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS track_idx_txt;

See MBS-13536 for more info.

Thanks to HibiscusKazeneko, kellnerd, lotooo, mr_maxis, sammyrayy and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to BestSteve, brtc, Leonie2, salo.rock, Vac31, wileyfoxyx and ypkim for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-04-09.

Off topic: mnslib updated for python 3.10/11 and new packages

[ Sorry for the interruption of the usual MetaBrainz tasks here, but we had a problem where a package we relied upon was not suited for pushing to our production servers. So, as a community effort we fixed this problem and this blog post is to let the general public know about our efforts. ]

The non-metric space library has some impressive fuzzy matching search features that we wanted to use for our metadata matching services. However, the library refused to install on Python 3.10/3.11. Nor were the recent binary packages working.

To address this, we enabled Python 3.10/3.11 support and built binary packages for Windows, Mac and of course, Linux. The code and automation for building new packages is in our clone of the nmslib library.

You can download the packages from PyPi and if you change your dependency from “nmslib” to “nmslib-metabrainz” you should be able to use our packages on Python 3.10/3.11.

However, we do not plan to make any further releases or feature improvements to this package, so please don’t ask us to do so. If anyone would like to adopt the improved version and continue to make releases, we’d be very grateful for someone to clone the repository and to carry on the work we’ve done.

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.