MusicBrainz Summit 11: October 15/16/17, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Hi!

I had originally planned to have a post-NGS celebration and hack day with the MusiXmatch teams in Bologna this month, but timing and costs proved to be an issue. Instead, we’re going to hold a traditional MusicBrainz summit in Warp’s town of Rotterdam, Netherlands. The general idea for this summit is very rough, but I would like to focus on community discussions on the weekend (Oct 15/16) and then focus on customer discussions on Monday the 17 Oct. Everyone would be welcome to attend all portions of the summit, but we’ll have a different focus for different parts of the summit.

I expect the core MusicBrainz team and representatives from Zvooq, Last.fm and MusiXmatch to be at the summit. We’re going to be soliciting for sponsorships in order to help cover the costs of the summit. If you’re interested in attending and/or sponsoring the summit, please comment on this post. Depending on the level of sponsorships we can drum up, we might be able to pay for lodging/food for community members who wish to attend. We’ve made that possible in the past and I would very much like to be able to do that again.

I’m quite looking forward to meeting some of you in Rotterdam!

NGS bug fixes, 2011-07-05

The wheels of change are slowly starting back up again, now that we have all our employees back 🙂 Here’s what we’ve got done since the last release:

Bug

  • [MBS-1849] – Alias locales not included in the XML
  • [MBS-2223] – Length not shown in edit when adding a standalone recording
  • [MBS-2586] – Search results do not show standalone recordings
  • [MBS-2807] – Stack trace requesting /ws/2/collection when user has no collections
  • [MBS-2846] – Internal Server Error on lot of editing histories
  • [MBS-2880] – Error viewing release group/URL
  • [MBS-2882] – Merge recording edit display incorrectly once applied
  • [MBS-2898] – Search indices aren’t updating, haven’t updated in over 20 hours

Improvement

  • [MBS-777] – Make cancelling take effect sooner
  • [MBS-1508] – Should release browse request allow inc=recordings
  • [MBS-2767] – Release-group XML result should include first release date

Beta release of libmusicbrainz4 with NGS support

Andy Hawkins and Lukáš Lalinský have been doing some work on libmusicbrainz, and a beta release of version 4 is now available. Here’s what Andy has to say:

Hi all,

In conjunction with Lukas I’ve been working on a complete rewrite of libmusicbrainz to support the new Web Service v2 released alongside NGS. I’m happy to announce the first Beta release of this new library (libmusicbrainz4).

The library is written as a relatively simple parser for the results from the Web Service, with as little logic as possible. This should mean it is easy to maintain to keep in step with any changes in the schema for the XML Web Service.

The main interface is a C++ class ‘CQuery’, that returns a Metadata object containing a parsed version of the response. There is also a C interface that loosely wraps the C++ classes.

Using the library requires a good understanding of the queries and responses to and from the Web Service.

The library is available to download here:

ftp://ftp.musicbrainz.org/pub/musicbrainz/libmusicbrainz-4.0.0beta1.tar.gz

Documentation is generated from the source (make docs), an online copy is available here:

http://users.musicbrainz.org/~luks/docs/libmusicbrainz4/

If you find any issues, please report them using JIRA (under the project ‘libmusicbrainz’) here:

http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/

I will attempt to be available via this mailing list and the #musicbrainz-devel IRC channel on freenode in order to answer questions if at all possible.

The EchoNest releases Echoprints: The open source fingerprint era has begun

Amplifind, the company that operates the MusicDNS/PUID service, recently sold its intellectual property and the PUID service will be going away eventually. It is exactly this reason why we’ve been uncomfortable relying on closed source fingerprinting software to make MusicBrainz tick.

Fortunately, I’m pleased to announce that the open source fingerprint era has begun!

Lukáš Lalinský has been working on acoustid for months now and today the EchoNest, in conjunction with 7Digital and MusicBrainz, has issued a press release that announces Echoprint, their fully open source fingerprinting solution.

The source code has already been released on github: echoprint-server and echoprint-codegen.

We’re pleased to announce preliminary support for Echoprint in MusicBrainz on our echoprint test server. The Echoprint system works similarly to how PUIDs work in MusicBrainz right now. You can use echoprints anywhere you can use PUIDs on the Echoprint test server. The version 2 of our XML web service (on the echoprint test server) now supports submitting and fetching Echoprints. To submit an Echoprint, refer to our web service documentation and example page and use echoprint wherever you’d use puid. For instance, to submit an Echoprint to the test server, POST an XML document like the one below to the /ws/2/recording resource:

<metadata xmlns="http://musicbrainz.org/ns/mmd-2.0#">
    <recording-list>
        <recording id="e97f805a-ab48-4c52-855e-07049142113d">
            <echoprint-list>
                 <echoprint id="TRN5NGX1187AB4F786"/>
            <echoprint-list>
        <recording>
    <recording-list>
<metadata>

Although it remains to be seen when the Echoprint system will be mature enough for inclusion on the live MusicBrainz servers, going forward MusicBrainz will only support fully open source fingerprint solutions, starting with Echoprint and acoustid. We are saying no to more closed source solutions, which have never worked out well for us. MusicDNS/PUID is now officially end of life and should not be used anymore in new development.

We look forward to working with the EchoNest closely to finish up the development of the Echoprint system and to fully integrate it into MusicBrainz when it matures.

NGS bug fixes for 2011-06-20

We ended up delaying this release by a day to make sure we could cram lots of work in before Oliver goes on holiday, so we’ve got quite a lot of things fixed last week!

Bugs

  • [MBS-1463] – Show artist(s) on doing recording-recording edits
  • [MBS-1507] – Search redirects to entity on partial matches
  • [MBS-1637] – When looking up existing tracklist, use current release name/artist
  • [MBS-2009] – Ticking the Vote box of the first edit causes "Vote on all edits" to match
  • [MBS-2010] – Release editor: Add existing tracklist to release search shows duplicates
  • [MBS-2028] – Entities highlighted with no open edits
  • [MBS-2041] – Change track artists still not working as expected
  • [MBS-2111] – Recording not found in add release "Recordings" phase
  • [MBS-2143] – Adding disc by searching for existing tracklist fails to find some tracklists
  • [MBS-2168] – Summary: (no changelog) when adding Catalog #
  • [MBS-2265] – In VA releases, once the auto-track duration is triggered, unchecking ‘detect track durations’ doesn’t work.
  • [MBS-2313] – Unnecessary edit annotation edit in the release editor
  • [MBS-2360] – Release editor: found recordings list doesn’t close
  • [MBS-2424] – Dropdown Box not updating Artist Name & Depressing Enter submits request
  • [MBS-2511] – Release edit interprets numbers in track titles as times
  • [MBS-2515] – Web service doesn’t return track artist credits in release query
  • [MBS-2574] – No radio buttons for attaching CD TOC
  • [MBS-2575] – Basic editor requires a space after track numbers
  • [MBS-2576] – Some edits have links on Deleted Artist
  • [MBS-2579] – Web service doesn’t return track lengths
  • [MBS-2580] – Web service returns <length/> for recordings with no duration
  • [MBS-2628] – "guess case" works incorrectly with work titles
  • [MBS-2630] – XML web service v1 reports duplicate ISRC and PUID
  • [MBS-2649] – Not receiving subscriptions emails
  • [MBS-2728] – CDlookup proposes and allows you to attach a DiscID to a Vinyl
  • [MBS-2738] – Internal Server Error trying to view release group editing history
  • [MBS-2753] – Annotation causing an internal server error in the search results
  • [MBS-2761] – Inline search always return artist results whatever type you chose
  • [MBS-2763] – Cannot accept edit relationship edits if an end point no longer exists
  • [MBS-2771] – Crash when relating recordings where relationships already exist
  • [MBS-2784] – Fuzzy CD lookup doesn’t work
  • [MBS-2804] – "Add release label" edit not showing again
  • [MBS-2818] – No tracklist editor textbox displayed on test.musicbrainz.org

Improvement

  • [MBS-390] – Edit search is incomplete
  • [MBS-777] – Make cancelling take effect sooner
  • [MBS-1717] – Allow selecting the release group of a release in the release editor
  • [MBS-2137] – Make subscriptions emails ignore your own edits
  • [MBS-2293] – Edit display improvement: Display ISRCs and lengths on recordings merge edits
  • [MBS-2378] – Changing artists in the release editor (release and track) doesn’t _appear_ to do what users expect
  • [MBS-2460] – Timeline graph should include MusicBrainz events
  • [MBS-2621] – Guess case editor doesn’t remember options
  • [MBS-2625] – Display "Artist in MusicBrainz" as well as the artist credit in edits
  • [MBS-2643] – Merge legend and checkbox-selector in timeline graph
  • [MBS-2752] – Copyable URLs for timeline graph need to account for geometry (i.e. zoom)
  • [MBS-2757] – Fix Artist gender statistics
  • [MBS-2769] – Release Country Statistics
  • [MBS-2822] – ‘Add disc ID’ doesn’t link to CDTOC

Task

  • [MBS-951] – MusicBrainz::Server::Data::Search::external_search is taking $c. It shouldn’t.
  • [MBS-2762] – Clear artist credits from memcached

Sub-task

  • [MBS-2451] – Display artist in release group search
  • [MBS-2665] – Edits with at least one No vote
  • [MBS-2671] – Filter by edit ID / time range
  • [MBS-2675] – Filter by label

This version has a new parameter in DBDefs, so you will need to make sure your lib/DBDefs.pm has all the options in lib/DBDefs.pm.default. There are also 2 more dependencies – DateTime::Format::Natural and Data::Dumper::Concise. The tag for this release is currently v-2011-06-20-ngs-bug-fixes

NGS bug fixes for 2011-06-14

Another week, another set of bug fixes! Here’s what we’ve addressed since the last release:

Bug

  • [MBS-1231] – Age information for a person looks weird
  • [MBS-1924] – Allowed merge direction for "Merge mediums and recordings" strategy seems non-intuitive
  • [MBS-1995] – Time from TOC is calculated incorrectly
  • [MBS-2000] – CC URL relationship does not allow selection of license
  • [MBS-2049] – Docs not in the transclusion table seem to be perma-cached
  • [MBS-2062] – Menu link ‘About->Auto-editor elections’ is invalid.
  • [MBS-2169] – Label entered regardless of clearing text
  • [MBS-2261] – Release group is listed twice on an artist page
  • [MBS-2347] – Seed particular release after clicking on the recording tabs it comes back with Frequent 502 Bad Gateway
  • [MBS-2376] – Inline search results disappear when clicking on the little arrows two times
  • [MBS-2391] – You should not be able to add the same CDTOC multiple times on the same medium
  • [MBS-2399] – Problems with mediums having duplicate CD TOCs
  • [MBS-2408] – Guess Case deletes volume and part numbers
  • [MBS-2447] – "Charter Member" thing no longer shown
  • [MBS-2483] – Edit URL edit for a removed URL displays wrong
  • [MBS-2485] – no way to merge a various artist clone into the default "Various Artists" artist
  • [MBS-2529] – Orphaned release group and recordings after rejecting or cancelling a release/medium
  • [MBS-2550] – Re-add the "Subscribe to artists I add" option
  • [MBS-2552] – Allow removing a RG that has relationships
  • [MBS-2560] – Internal Server Error when removing medium from a release
  • [MBS-2644] – Internal server error while trying to add a disc ID
  • [MBS-2645] – Error in the message when trying to relate works to recordings
  • [MBS-2651] – Edit shows up in unrelated artists’ edit history
  • [MBS-2658] – Edit URL edits cannot close if the URL being edited has since been merged
  • [MBS-2659] – Edit relationship fails if the relationship has since been edited into the same relationship
  • [MBS-2705] – Adding a note to an edit which has an existing note w/o timestamp gets presented out of order
  • [MBS-2724] – IPIs don’t appear when added in Add artist edits
  • [MBS-2744] – Track removals not shown in tracklist diff

Improvement

  • [MBS-1395] – Put relationship attributes descriptions inside of an HTML "label" tag
  • [MBS-1449] – Inline Search: relate to recordings and/or works on releases
  • [MBS-1982] – Add twitter link to home page
  • [MBS-2007] – Lack of spacing between the top nav search and the dropdown to accompany it
  • [MBS-2269] – Release editor > When new disc is added, check if the last disc is empty and replace it
  • [MBS-2299] – Display one-line TOC on discId page
  • [MBS-2430] – Tagger button for standalone recordings
  • [MBS-2459] – Timeline graph needs copyable URLs
  • [MBS-2697] – Could use a link to add a VA release group
  • [MBS-2721] – Sort recordings by comment

New Feature

  • [MBS-2567] – Statistics about artist countries

Sub-task

  • [MBS-1916] – Edit release label edit doesn’t display properly