changelog – MetaBrainz Blog

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-06-23

We’re back with another small release which mostly fixes a few bugs and adds support for more types of URLs (including some for streaming podcasts).

Additionally, starting from this release, an alias cannot be both marked as ended and as primary for its locale. Since the primary flag is supposed to represent the most appropriate alias to use, it should only be used for current aliases anyway, so setting an alias as ended will unset the primary flag. A one-off script was run to unset the currently set primary flags on ended aliases.

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

For mirror owners, after last month’s search upgrade, the transition period to switch to Solr 9 will come to an end by the end of the week. That is, the latest Solr 7 search index dumps will be made available on Saturday, 28 June 2025. After that, only the Solr 9 collection backups will be updated.

Thanks to dvirtz for having contributed to the code. Thanks to beckanhaf, chaban, diskotechjam, dvirtz, M18hellcat, UltimateRiff, yindesu and yyb987 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Echelon, KiszolgalMotozas0n, mfmeulenbelt, MoeCaa, NorwayFun, roinujnosde, salo.rock, senhordaluz, silentbird, Solarenta, Vaclovas Intas, wileyfoxyx and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2025-06-23.0.

MusicBrainz search upgrades, 2025-05-29

After last year’s migration of the Solr back-end powering the search features of musicbrainz.org to a new cluster running major version 9, and last week’s database schema change, here is a pack of search upgrades affecting both musicbrainz.org and the MusicBrainz mirror.

For users, a new search field mediumid is available for the advanced release search, the MBID of artist credits and mediums is added to the output of the search API, and the barcode search field is now ignoring spaces. These improvements are fairly minor compared to the rest of the upgrades which unlock further development of the search components.

For mirror owners, SolrCloud 9 is now available, along with an improved indexer and scripts to load backups from musicbrainz.org and an improved indexer. Also Docker Compose 2 is now required. Actually, those are the changes from last autumn’s announcement. Solr 7 will remain available for one more month starting from now, buying some transition time. A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is available that matches these search component changes. See the v-2025-05-29.0-solr9 release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to Krikooo, JoshDi, mglubb, nelgin, and PeterCodar for their feedback.

libdiscid 0.6.5 released

A new version 0.6.5 of libdiscid is now available. libdiscid is a C library that allows applications to easily calculate MusicBrainz and freedb disc IDs from audio CDs. It also can extract MCN and ISRC information.

This is a maintenance release. There are no changes to the library itself. Version 0.6.5 of libdiscid provides the following changes:

CMake: Restore includedir and libdir
Code sign Windows and macOS binaries

More details on libdiscid, information on available language bindings, and downloads of the source code and pre-compiled binaries for macOS and Windows can be found on the libdiscid page. See also the API documentation for details on how to use the library.

MusicBrainz database schema change release, 2025-05-19 (with upgrade instructions)

We’re happy to announce the release of our May 2025 database schema change now! Thanks to all who were patient during Monday’s downtime as we released everything to our production servers.

This is a fairly small database schema change release which mostly makes minor improvements and fixes small bugs. Of the schema change tickets, the one you are most likely to notice while you browse and edit in MusicBrainz is MBS-9253 (which makes it possible to change the order in which we display release groups, and mean EPs now sort before singles). MBS-13832 means releases which have PDF front images now also show the cover art on the sidebar, and MBS-13768 provides permanent links to mediums.

Thanks to Brownd, salo.rock and silentbird for having reported bugs and suggested improvements, and thanks to BenjaBarcos1, Echelon, Joax, Marc Riera, Michal77, onemanue, ozodbekmirzayev and salo.rock for updating the translations.

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

P.S. Search upgrades occurred separately ten days later.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-05-05

One last release before the schema change, mostly made up of small fixes and improvements. Among them, we have hopefully finally managed to find and eliminate the issue that caused the “External links” section of editors to sometimes fail to load entirely.

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 dvirtz for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, derat, dvirtz, HibiscusKazeneko, jesus2099, kellnerd and silentbird for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Besnik, macaumetal, Marc Riera, mfmeulenbelt, PS, Quartyn, salo.rock and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2025-05-05.0.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-04-14

This release brings a relatively short list of changes, but several of them were requested quite often and will hopefully lead to better editing.

Derat has been doing a lot of work in the release editor to help beginners understand the different fields and point them towards the basic guidelines. For example, we can now detect some of the most common English prepositions and point the user towards the English guidelines if they are uppercased.

We are bringing back the option we had many, many years ago to also merge the containing release groups while entering a release merge. This should hopefully help more editors do the right thing and also merge release groups (saving their MusicBrainz IDs) rather than leaving them empty to be autoremoved.

Finally, the API now shows artist countries everywhere (when the artist has an area assigned). This has been requested fairly often for a multitude of purposes, so hopefully it will make a bunch of you quite happy!

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 dvirtz for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, Cyberskull, derat, HibiscusKazeneko, Lotheric, salo.rock, yindesu and yomo12 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Besnik, BestSteve, Kori Syusetu, Libra, Marc Riera, ninjum, nzure, salo.rock and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2025-04-14.0.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-03-24

This is a fairly small release, mostly consisting of minor improvements, but it includes a couple of bug fixes for very annoying bugs. This includes a long-standing issue which prevented editing release events for releases that were part of large series such as Apple Digital Masters.

Additionally, we are adding a new option to the API that allows doing a lookup by resource (the URL itself) for up to 100 URLs at once. See the updated documentation and the expanded examples.

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 to the code. Thanks to finalsummer, kellnerd, mr_maxis, Nicolas ANCEAU, salo.rock and yomo12 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to BenjaBarcos1, Besnik, delamons, eigenric, ferocity12, joaodtx, KenParker_CN, koukei07, Michal77, nzure, 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-2025-03-24.0.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-02-24

This release includes several mid-sized improvements requested by multiple editors, in addition to the usual URL cleanup changes, bug fixes, and smaller improvements.

We have extended the filtering tools already available on artist pages so that they will also work on label pages, allowing users to filter the releases from that label according to several different conditions.

We have separated artist-work relationships not related with authorship so that they will no longer appear under the “writers” section of works lists (now renamed to “authors”). This allows to distinguish a lot more easily whether a an artist is related to a work as an author or in another, generally more minor way.

Finally, a newly added set of last-year editor stats aim to give editors who are motivated by leaderboards but have not already been active for an eternity (and as such would be hard-pressed to ever get into the “top editors/voters of all time” leaderboards) an achievable goal which rewards consistency more than the current weekly stats do.

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, ernst-roux-dice and Maxr1998 for having contributed to the code. Thanks to Gary Young, KenParker_CN, Maxr1998, mr_maxis, salo.rock, UltimateRiff, yindesu and yomo12 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to delamons, EmO686, KenParker_CN, percylee, PS123 and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2025-02-24.0.

Picard 2.13.3 released

Picard 2.13.3 is a maintenance release for the recently released Picard 2.13. This primarily fixes a regression with the Windows package, where a system wide installed libssl would cause SSL failures in Picard’s network requests. This release also includes a workaround for libopus not loading embedded cover art files.

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.12 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 2.13.1.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2025-02-10

This is a small release that mostly includes URL display improvements. Additionally, it further improves RTL display and adds a new report for lonely pseudo-releases (poor them, please go help them).

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 dvirtz and Maxr1998 for having contributed to the code. Thanks to dvirtz, HibiscusKazeneko, Maxr1998, raelthelamb, UltimateRiff and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to KenParker_CN, Peter69, Ral Hole and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2025-02-10.0.