changelog – MetaBrainz Blog

Picard 3 beta 9 released

Today, we have released MusicBrainz Picard 3 beta 9. This new versions brings several fixes over the last beta 7 (yes, we have skipped a beta number again), but also improvements and some new features.

Since we are near a final release, we tried to focus on quality of life and UI/UX improvements, some changes in the UI are quite important (release preferences UI is a complete overhaul, and the new About dialog also got a nice refresh). Among the highlights are:

MetaBrainz OAuth2 support and various OAuth improvements and bug fixes
ISRC reading (from files or CD) and optional submission
Word diff for tags in the Metadata Box
UI/UX improvements: Redesign of some option pages, along re-organization and performance improvements
Plugin API improvements

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 7 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

While we have all the major features implemented and with the latest bug fixes we are confident in the current code, this is still a pre-release and there might be bugs. If you use this, do so with care, backup your files and please report any issues you encounter.

Some of the changes are also backward incompatible, hence we recommend you make a backup of your Picard.ini config file before trying the beta version. You can do so in Picard’s Options under Advanced > Maintenance.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2026-07-30

We’re happy to release our first MusicBrainz Server update since the schema change, following our migration of user accounts to the MetaBrainz website, which we’ve been spending most of our development time on until now. (This blog post also lags a bit behind the date we tagged the release, as you can tell from the title.)

In case you’re running a local MusicBrainz Server for development purposes, know that you can preserve the ability to log in without OAuth by adding sub LOCAL_ACCOUNTS_ENABLED { 1 } to lib/DBDefs.pm. (It’s already enabled by default if DEVELOPMENT_SERVER is.)

We’ve also made changes to digest authentication in the web service, detailed in the blog post linked above. If you don’t use digest authentication or any apps that do, it’s recommended you disable it from the Applications page.

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 and rinsuki for having contributed to the code. Thanks to affronttonature, Anesidora, arsinclair, chirlu, DarkAdonis, jesus2099, julian45, Lotheric, practik, rinsuki, and wileyfoxyx for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to 7Stars, ApeKattQuest/MonkeyPython, Denatura, Early6431, EmO686, Flavia Telcean, GABG, Jeluang, JerryBest, KevinOpperman, LAY.JOSHI97, Lummerkurt, MFreedom89, Philipp Wolfer, ROManceJP, RalfZhang, The
ParaziT, afterthemagic, blueday, coffeeicus, cuhsy, jerry155756294, julian45, karpuzikov, meze, mfmeulenbelt, mr_monkey, salo.rock, sashimi3433, scientists360, silentbird, soonaf, sq, welikeheon, wileyfoxyx, and
zatto13 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2026-07-30.1.

Picard 3 beta 7 released

Today, we have released MusicBrainz Picard 3 beta 7. This new versions brings several fixes over the last beta 5 (yes, we have skipped a beta number again), but also improvements and some new features. Among the highlights are:

Option profiles can now be exported and imported as TOML files. This makes sharing options much easier. We are excited to see how this will be used by you all.
Artist name standardization can now be set to one of three values: no standardization, standardizing only variations of the artist name (“Beatles” vs. “The Beatles”) or standardizing also actual artist name changes (“Diddy”, who previously performed under the names “P. Diddy” and “Puff Daddy”). Standardizing name variations is the new default setting. See also the documentation.
Plugins can now implement custom CD ripper log file support, and there is built-in support for Cyanrip log files.
Picard can now much better handles wrongly or differently encoded filenames when loading files.
The setup wizard got some improvements, allowing users to configure their update notification settings for the app and plugins. Also the setup wizard can now be started again from the help menu. This is not yet the final version of the wizard, but it’s getting closer.
The User Guide was updated to document the latest changes.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 5 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

libdiscid 0.7.0

Version 0.7.0 of libdiscid has been released. libdiscid is a C library that allows applications to easily calculate MusicBrainz and freedb disc IDs from audio CDs or CD TOC details. It also can extract MCN and ISRC information.

This release fixes several issues with the build system and addresses compiler warnings. As a compile time option it is now possible to have methods returning URLs to use HTTPs instead of HTTP, see then changelog for details. Thanks to Riku Viitanen for this contribution. Also the binary packages now include a build for the Windows ARM64 platform.

Version 0.7.0 of libdiscid provides the following changes:

Picard 3 beta 5 released

Today, we’re making available the fifth beta version for the upcoming MusicBrainz Picard 3. This new versions brings some important changes:

The Options menu was reworked with generalized quick settings and easier access to scripts and options.
Handling of the Options dialog and the File Naming Script Editor was streamlined. Editing file naming scripts is now available in the menu in Options > File naming scripts > Edit scripts… or via Ctrl+Shift+S.
Option profiles can now be used with plugin settings, the “Attached option profiles” dialog allows changing selected options.
Plugins can be installed from a local directory without git, which simplifies local development and plugins created just for personal use.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 4 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

Picard 3 beta 4 fixes startup issues on macOS

We have released Picard 3 beta 4. The recently released beta 3 did crash on macOS and when running the picard-plugins command line tool, both has been fixed in this. In addition beta 4 fixes display issues in the new log view.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 3 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

Picard 3 beta 3 released

Today, we’re making available another pre-release version for the upcoming MusicBrainz Picard 3. This beta release offers various bugfixes and improvements over the last beta. Most notably the release lookup and matching was improved, several cover art related issues were fixed, the UI got more responsive during file load and the log view became faster and allows better filtering.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 1 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

MusicBrainz database schema change release, 2026-05-11 (with upgrade instructions)

We’re happy to announce the release of our May 2026 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 improves things behind the scenes. Of the schema change tickets, the only one that affects users directly is you are most likely to notice while you browse and edit in MusicBrainz is MBS-14092 (which allows adding series of series, for example for award series for podcasts).

Thanks to chaban, UltimateRiff and yyb987 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements, and thanks to jmrr83, salo.rock and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations.

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

MusicBrainz Server update, 2026-04-27

This release mostly consists of a very substantial rewrite of the external links editor code, to make that section of our editors more efficient. While doing that we also fixed a few long-standing links editor bugs. While we kept this code in beta for quite a while so the community could help us catch most new bugs, do not hesitate to report any issues you might find.

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 rinsuki for having contributed to the code. Thanks to fabe56, HibiscusKazeneko and Lioncat6 for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Besnik, DenilsonSama, Khaled Salama, Marc Riera, ShimiDoki, Vaclovas Intas, cerberuzzz, coldified_, dddrnzv, dulijuong_artist, imgradeone, karpuzikov, mfmeulenbelt, salo.rock, smreo1590, syntariavoxmortem, wileyfoxyx and yyb987 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2026-04-27.0.

Picard 3 beta 1 released

Today, we’re making available another pre-release version for the upcoming MusicBrainz Picard 3. Beta 1 focuses on fixing issues that were found in the previous releases as well as some minor improvements and updated translations.

Download links and a list of changes since Picard 3 alpha 4 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.