MusicBrainz Blog

Coninciding with our main server release, we’ve updated our search servers. This version fixes some bugs from the last release and adds support for countries and track ids.

Thanks for your hard work on this release, Paul!

Release Notes – MusicBrainz Search Server – Version 2013-05-15

Bug

• [SEARCH-236] – Incomplete VA artist credit included for releases in recording search
• [SEARCH-282] – REGRESSION:Johanne Sebastian Bach is not the first result when search for artist Bach
• [SEARCH-283] – REGRESSION:"-" is returned instead of an empty list when there are no ISWCs for a work
• [SEARCH-284] – REGRESSION:"-" is returned instead of an empty list when there are no ISRCs for a recording

Improvement

• [SEARCH-219] – Include alias sortnames when searching labels or artists
• [SEARCH-257] – entity search : entity name should have more weight than aliases and artist credits
• [SEARCH-268] – Add extended alias info to the ws search results
• [SEARCH-269] – WS searches don’t return aliases that match the artist name

Task

• [SEARCH-274] – Support for changes to Countries in forthcoming Schema release
• [SEARCH-285] – Support for TrackIds in forthcoming Schema Release

Things have been quiet at MusicBrainz in the past few weeks, but don’t let this fool you! We’ve been working hard on getting the schema change release put together. We’re on schedule for releasing this tomorrow at 13:00 UTC, 15 May, 2013.

We’re going to start the release process at 1300UTC, but the site may not go down just yet then. We’ll get started once we have all of our ducks in a row — to get more updates from us before we start, please follow @musicbrainz on Twitter or join us in IRC at #musicbrainz on irc.freenode.net.

Thanks, and wish us luck for a smooth schema change tomorrow!

We’ve just finished deploying a new update to the MusicBrainz website, but before covering release notes we’d like to clarify a few points regarding the recent password leak.

There have been a few reports suggesting that MusicBrainz was attacked or compromised, but we can assure that this is not the case. As stated in our original blog post, we accidentally included private information in our otherwise routine public backups. As the majority of MusicBrainz data is available under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA or CC0, these backups are intended to be public – the mistake was the human error in accidentally including password hashes.

A few of you also mentioned that we didn’t respond in a timely fashion in alerting users via emails. We completely agree with these comments, and apologise for not being able to respond quicker. Unfortunately, we did not have the infrastructure to do such mass mailing, and as we didn’t want to rush this out to the point of making yet more errors, it took us a little longer than we all would have liked.

With that out of the way, here’s what we’ve done in the last fortnight. Many thanks to Michael Wiencek, Nicolás Tamargo, and the rest of the MusicBrainz team for their work on this release.

Bug

• [MBS-4277] – Guess Case: Keep uppercase option should be clearer
• [MBS-4468] – “Enter vote” button incorrectly also adds edit note
• [MBS-5597] – Funky Caps inConsisTency in Edit search paGes (presets or not)
• [MBS-5832] – Rating not showing on Merge Recordings page
• [MBS-5967] – No feedback after editing a user
• [MBS-5998] – Barcodes incorrectly represented in mo RDF
• [MBS-6077] – Reorder tracks edit not working
• [MBS-6081] – Viewing MusicBrainz Events and Cover Art information makes the CAA launch event appear to the left of the actual graph
• [MBS-6082] – “Remove Label” edit page has broken documentation link
• [MBS-6100] – Internal server error with webservice requests which require authentication
• [MBS-6111] – Amazon taking precedence over CAA after merging releases
• [MBS-6121] – Logging in with non-ascii password throws exception
• [MBS-6122] – Unable to merge release groups when cover art is set
• [MBS-6169] – Check for edit user uses the wrong sub

Improvement

• [MBS-4632] – Link to archive.org item from cover art tab
• [MBS-4658] – Report: duplicate ISWCs
• [MBS-5261] – Link to How to Add Disc IDs from the Disc ID tab of releases
• [MBS-5667] – Rename “Other release groups”
• [MBS-5800] – Remove restriction on entering standalone recordings
• [MBS-6001] – Make the autoeditor election overview more useful
• [MBS-6034] – label search is missing country column
• [MBS-6086] – Setting cover art type (from nothing to something) should be an autoedit
• [MBS-6109] – Work search doesn’t show type
• [MBS-6110] – Relate To URL should auto-identify audiojelly.com as “can be purchased for download” relation.
• [MBS-6119] – Seeing vote counts on closed elections shouldn’t require log in

New Feature

• [MBS-1891] – Anchors/Permalinks on Edit Notes
• [MBS-5737] – Notification when RE has created a release

Task

• [MBS-6096] – Add soundtrackcollector.com to the Other Databases whitelist

The Git tag for this release is v-2013-04-11.

We’ve just updated our search servers to the latest version. Thanks to Paul Taylor for his long hard work porting our code to Lucene 4.1. Big thanks also to Murdos and Nikki for helping with this release!

Also, we’ve installed a small gigabit ethernet switch for our search server cluster so that we can move new search indexes around much faster. Hopefully we will see indexes updating in just over 2 hours from now on.

Read on for all the details of this release:

Release Notes – MusicBrainz Search Server – Version 2013-03-29

Bug

• [SEARCH-239] – Search updater doesn’t update the index last-updated value returned by SEARCH-232
• [SEARCH-244] – Since the October Schema Change Release, search server is now returning empty join phrases when once doesnt exist , whereas before it didn’t display it all
• [SEARCH-247] – Runtime Exception: The property or field count on the class org.musicbrainz.mmd2.Medium$TrackList is required to be included in the propOrder element of the XmlType annotation.
• [SEARCH-263] – Search server applications do not gracefully disconnect from PostgreSQL on termination

Improvement

• [SEARCH-217] – Allow searching and displaying of folksnomy tags for the release entity
• [SEARCH-246] – Extend support for searching for blank parameters to ISWC and ISRC

New Feature

• [SEARCH-228] – Let Dismax Search for Labels search Label Code

Task

• [SEARCH-243] – Update Lucene version to 4.0

We’ve just finished deploying changes from the last fortnight. This release is mostly bug fixes, but we also have a bit more validation when entering label URLs and some improvements to reports. Many thanks to Alastair Porter, Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, Lukáš Lalinský, Nicolás Tamargo, Paul Taylor, Pavan Chander and the MusicBrainz team for their work on this release. Detailed changes follow:

Bug

• [MBS-4364] – Various Artists should not have a gender (and other attributes)
• [MBS-4868] – Regression : « → view aliases » link disappeared from alias edits
• [MBS-5947] – Changed AC display doesn’t detect unchanged gaps
• [MBS-5953] – oauth: web application reauthorization creates table spam
• [MBS-5958] – Release editor did something very very wrong
• [MBS-5979] – Automatic redirect to beta clear release editor seeding
• [MBS-5996] – Release and work level relationships getting mixed up in release pages
• [MBS-6012] – Internal server error in Wikipedia extract
• [MBS-6016] – browse works by invalid artist id causes an error

Improvement

• [MBS-2535] – Lookup labels based on Label Code when entering releases
• [MBS-4894] – Reject non-BBC Music URLs when using the BBC Music relationship
• [MBS-5491] – Check for “vs.” and “feat.” in PossibleCollaborations report
• [MBS-5912] – Report of releases with cover art relationships

Task

• [MBS-5975] – Add Anime News Network Encyclopedia to “Other Databases” whitelist
• [MBS-5976] – Add Generasia.com to the “other databases” whitelist

The Git tag for this release is v-2013-03-25.

Thanks to work from Nicolás Tamargo, nikki, Lukáš Lalinský, Paul Taylor, and the MusicBrainz team, we’ve just released a new version of the MusicBrainz website. As usual, this is mostly a bug fix release, but we do have one shiny new feature once again… OAuth2! It is now possible to authenticate with MusicBrainz using this, rather than the old digest auth system. For more details, see the Development/OAuth2 documentation page. This feature is new, so if you encounter any problems (here or elsewhere), please be sure to let us know!

Here’s a full list of what’s changed:

Bug

• [MBS-4155] – Clicking twice the same relationship link → Internal Server Error
• [MBS-4419] – Memcached should not be used for persistent data
• [MBS-5358] – Can’t enter fuzzy ending date in the same year as the start date
• [MBS-5829] – Internal server error when requesting /tracklist/ with an invalid ID
• [MBS-5856] – Reorder medium edits use “Disc”
• [MBS-5866] – “Direct database search” for a new artist is missing at least Gender and Country
• [MBS-5873] – Modbot recommending to merge label with an artist
• [MBS-5875] – Internal server error approving an edit with no votes
• [MBS-5877] – Internal server error when adding a release with a non-existent release group MBID
• [MBS-5878] – Internal server error when doing tag lookup
• [MBS-5884] – Internal server error when viewing editing history
• [MBS-5896] – Error in Spanish even though the interface language is German
• [MBS-5908] – Some Wikipedia extracts not appearing on translated MB
• [MBS-5914] – Tagger icons are not showing up in tables
• [MBS-5915] – Add ISWC/IPI buttons display incorrectly
• [MBS-5938] – sever-side warnings generated on a proper client request on /ws/2/
• [MBS-5939] – User applications page shows empty tables when there’s nothing to display
• [MBS-5945] – oauth2: entering an invalid URI then switching to “Installed Application” fails to submit (silently)
• [MBS-5946] – oauth: web applications don’t remember authorizations for the same scope
• [MBS-5950] – Crappy-written multiple-artist paragraph on FreeDB import
• [MBS-5951] – Display the actions column for applications the same as elsewhere on the site
• [MBS-5954] – Confirm revoking OAuth access

Improvement

• [MBS-950] – Only allow permitted sites for some relationships
• [MBS-5020] – Report:: recordings linked to same work more than once
• [MBS-5218] – Report: Duplicate dated/undated relationships
• [MBS-5839] – Relate To URL should auto-identify beatport as “can be purchased for download” relation.
• [MBS-5940] – Remove fref=ts from Facebook URLs
• [MBS-5949] – Update the wording about deleting accounts

New Feature

• [MBS-5501] – OAuth authorisation

Sub-task

• [MBS-2917] – Report:Releases with unknown track times

Thanks to work from Ben Ockmore, Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, Michael Wiencek, Nicolás Tamargo, nikki, Sean Burke, and the MusicBrainz team, we’ve just released a new version of the MusicBrainz website. As usual, this is mostly a bug fix release, but we do have one shiny new feature… collection subscriptions! It is now possible to subscribe to your own collections, or other public collections, and receive daily emails summarizing edits recently made that might affect releases in these collections. This feature is new, so if you encounter any problems, please be sure to let us know!

Here’s a full list of what’s changed:

Bug

• [MBS-3514] – Part of an edit was applied but not shown in preview nor in edit history
• [MBS-3952] – Last Updated time is wrong on the Statistics page
• [MBS-4543] – Seeding the create relationship page ignores some parameters
• [MBS-4774] – Edit to swap two recordings creates a blank edit
• [MBS-4947] – /edit/open won’t load
• [MBS-5016] – Buttons misaligned in Firefox
• [MBS-5309] – Not all artist credit changes are shown in tracklist edits
• [MBS-5388] – Relationship editor allows linking an entity to itself
• [MBS-5397] – Edit medium’s diff (insert track) : shows track duration change where there are none
• [MBS-5402] – Country (and language) dropdown is sorted by English alphabet
• [MBS-5461] – No space between releases in collection and button to remove them
• [MBS-5520] – Translation problem on disc IDs page
• [MBS-5547] – Relationship Editor: Can’t unselect orchestra type
• [MBS-5560] – Internal server error (after creating recording-work relationship via relation-editor)
• [MBS-5565] – Link to add new label is missing when there are results
• [MBS-5677] – URL MBIDs missing from the webservice
• [MBS-5726] – Internal server error when requesting /ws/2/discid in JSON
• [MBS-5765] – Very long releases have bad release length parameters
• [MBS-5787] – i18n: “This beta test server allows testing of new features with the live database” is untranslatable
• [MBS-5799] – Relationship editor doesn’t allow adding multiple relationships with different attributes
• [MBS-5815] – Use “Died” in edit artist page like on sidebar
• [MBS-5819] – Instrument select in relat. editor requires accents
• [MBS-5821] – i18n: work types are untranslatable inside the relationship editor
• [MBS-5824] – Internal server error loading Wikipedia extract for page name containing &
• [MBS-5825] – Internal server error when requesting an artist with a really large ID
• [MBS-5828] – Internal server error on /chrome_frame
• [MBS-5836] – Relationship editor accepts POST data containing mismatched entity/link type combos
• [MBS-5842] – “Position” is untranslatable in add_cover_art.tt
• [MBS-5880] – Internal server error for Wikipedia extract when Wikipedia page is a redirect
• [MBS-5889] – Subscription summary test fails, does not check collection subscriptions

Improvement

• [MBS-1955] – Sort relationship types tree
• [MBS-2225] – Subscribe to collection
• [MBS-3990] – Add a user preference for using beta version of MB
• [MBS-4094] – Make artist credits more compact in edits
• [MBS-5568] – Work types list should be sorted
• [MBS-5644] – relationship editor : check all/several recordings and batch-add relationship to same work
• [MBS-5759] – Make reorder cover art an auto-edit
• [MBS-5823] – Work alias page doesn’t allow to select the guess case options

New Feature

• [MBS-5833] – Show off the latest releases on the homepage

Task

• [MBS-3856] – Revert MBS-1052 “Amazon should lookup cover art by barcode too”
• [MBS-5802] – Add autoselect + sidebar links to VIAF
• [MBS-5849] – Adding lyricsnmusic.com to the lyrics whitelist

Sub-task

• [MBS-4270] – Release editor JS strings should be in text.js or similar so they are translatable
• [MBS-4997] – Add lookup url to webservice
• [MBS-5490] – CAA coverart over SSL

The Git tag for this release is v-2013-02-25.

We’ve just finished pushing out another two weeks changes to the MusicBrainz web site. While this release is predominantly a bug fix release with a few small improvements, we’ve made a fairly substantial change to the way edits are applied.

As of this release, all subsequent edits entered will have an expiration period of 7 days – a reduction from the previous 14 days. We’ve made this change in order to reduce the time that editors have to wait for changes to be applied, which should lead to an improved user experience; and we’ve also made the change to hopefully try and make the edit queue a little bit more managable. This change is exploratory, so if you find it counterproductive, we’d love to hear your thoughts. IRC, the forums and the mailing lists are all good channels to voice your feedback.

Also, we have finally made the switch to GitHub. While the existing repository URLs will continue to work, they will no longer be updated. If you want to stay up to date with the latest code, make sure to update your checkout information.

Many thanks to Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, Michael Wiencek, Nicolás Tamargo and the rest of the MusicBrainz team for their work on this release. Here’s what’s new:

Bug

• [MBS-3457] – Direct search results incorrectly reports a recording as "standalone"
• [MBS-3962] – Edit search doesn’t really exclude artists with "is not"
• [MBS-4522] – Empty annotations are not merged correctly
• [MBS-5144] – The MusicBrainz logo in the top-left corner has a different background color than the rest of the header
• [MBS-5395] – "Actions" column on alias page is too narrow for translations
• [MBS-5432] – Internal server error when editing cover art
• [MBS-5434] – Inconsistent terminology: primary/secondary types and type/extra types
• [MBS-5506] – Edit search for "My vote is not" does not work as expected
• [MBS-5525] – Blank edit relationship type edits
• [MBS-5566] – No more autoedit mark ?
• [MBS-5567] – Internal server error entering remove cover art edit
• [MBS-5617] – "new image goes here" is not translatable
• [MBS-5650] – ISE when attempting to approve already-closed release group edit
• [MBS-5655] – It’s possible to "Remove [a] release label" although there’s none
• [MBS-5696] – ModBot can fail to close ‘edit artist’ edits that violate uniqueness on (name, comment).
• [MBS-5698] – Some move disc ID edits display nothing for the old release
• [MBS-5700] – Subscribers aren’t removed when a user deletes their account
• [MBS-5705] – Rows in the appearances section of the artist relationships tab are sometimes one column too short
• [MBS-5719] – The track number of the last track on some 2-disc releases is missing
• [MBS-5724] – Sort/copy name missing for work aliases
• [MBS-5728] – Possible to enter ‘edit release group’ edits that fail to apply due to spaces in artist credits
• [MBS-5732] – Empty labels don’t warn for deletion pending
• [MBS-5740] – Useless "select all" checkbox on Release Duplicates tab
• [MBS-5742] – Editing a work without JS on will enter a silent remove ISWC edit
• [MBS-5748] – Not possible to "Approve" an edit where yours is the only "No" vote
• [MBS-5750] – Subscriptions report filtering ignores labels
• [MBS-5754] – Editing recordings from tracklist does not work if "Release Duplicate" is chosen
• [MBS-5762] – "Work Type" and "Work Language" incorrectly left blank for "Merge Works" edits when viewing predefined edit searches
• [MBS-5763] – Edit release edits not properly translated
• [MBS-5764] – Work language column in the stats links to releases
• [MBS-5770] – There is no constraint on release_label that either (or both) the label or catalog number are not null.
• [MBS-5771] – Add utamap.com （うたまっぷ） in the lyrics URL white list
• [MBS-5774] – "Vote on all edits" is not translatable
• [MBS-5776] – Cover art types are not being translated on the cover art tab
• [MBS-5777] – Users’ work ratings page has no title
• [MBS-5786] – i18n: secondary RG type labels on overview are untranslatable
• [MBS-5788] – No edit is created when trying to submit/attach a DiscID
• [MBS-5791] – ISRCs can’t be removed
• [MBS-5797] – Internal server error if the Wikipedia link is not really a Wikipedia link

Improvement

• [MBS-1413] – Make profile bios support WikiFormat
• [MBS-1774] – Webservice: expose UUID for AR type
• [MBS-3535] – Stack traces should mention which server was handling the request
• [MBS-4880] – Add Help/Info about How "Merge mediums and recordings" works
• [MBS-4902] – Add Google+ links to the sidebar
• [MBS-5505] – Add j-lyric.net to the lyrics whitelist
• [MBS-5605] – Ratings on collection pages
• [MBS-5707] – Add autoselect for IMDb URL relationships for labels
• [MBS-5727] – Disc [medium] title missing from edit relationships page
• [MBS-5767] – Add an index on (editor, id DESC)
• [MBS-5775] – Update Facebook URL cleanup to use https
• [MBS-5779] – Remove useless nbsp on common-macros.tt
• [MBS-5798] – Normalise wikisource URLs to http
• [MBS-5803] – Add autoselect for SecondHandSongs artist URL

Task

• [MBS-5757] – Consider diminishing time edits stay open
• [MBS-5766] – Open up /release/ and /work/ in robots.txt
• [MBS-5810] – Add Open Library to the other databases whitelist

The Git tag for this release is v-2013-02-11.

We’ve just finished releasing the last release for January, 2013. This release is a combination of bug fixes and improvements to existing features, and was worked on by Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, Michael Wiencek, Nicolás Tamargo, Pavan Chander and the rest of the MusicBrainz team. Thanks for your hard work, everyone! Here’s what’s changed:

Bug

• [MBS-5022] – Release Editor: Missing entities page doesn’t handle 0 or only 1 result
• [MBS-5453] – Bad redirect(s) https→http
• [MBS-5540] – Release editor eats tracklists
• [MBS-5586] – ISE when trying to submit an “Edit artist” edit with no changes
• [MBS-5609] – JSON webservice doesn’t send relationship attributes
• [MBS-5614] – Links to edit notes to other edit notes always use http
• [MBS-5691] – Artists’ recording lists show ISRCs but don’t link to them
• [MBS-5699] – CD stubs use “disambiguation” instead of “comment”
• [MBS-5711] – IPIs missing from IPI element in JSON webservice
• [MBS-5712] – JSON webservice handles missing values inconsistently
• [MBS-5713] – Alias types missing from the JSON webservice

Improvement

• [MBS-4536] – Include the presence of cover art in the webservice
• [MBS-5304] – “Other Databases” whitelist: “Trove” ammendment
• [MBS-5447] – Bandwidth performance: revert MBS-4764 now that thumbnail quality has improved
• [MBS-5606] – Implement STYLE-160 (The Session) in code
• [MBS-5651] – Clicking link for packaging types loses all entered information
• [MBS-5652] – Release Label sorting makes no sense on Release Group page
• [MBS-5702] – Change the text on the “Read more…” link under wikipedia extracts
• [MBS-5739] – Disconnect database handle on page timeout
• [MBS-5741] – Time out edit searches in 45 seconds, rather than 30.
• [MBS-5749] – 401 error: Add link to profile edit page

Task

• [MBS-5758] – Remove schwag/store links from musicbrainz.org pages

The Git tag for this release is v-2013-01-28.

We don’t rest for seasonal holidays at MusicBrainz, and we’ve just finished pushing out another release! This one is quite a small one release – thanks to Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, Nicolás Tamargo, Pavan Chander and the MusicBrainz team for their work on this release. Here’s what’s changed:

Bug

• [MBS-5288] – Use API when checking for WikiDoc changes
• [MBS-5497] – CAA uploads are setting x-archive-meta-mediatype to ‘images’, but it should be ‘image’
• [MBS-5664] – musicbrainz_unaccent serverlog error message

Improvement

• [MBS-2966] – Give artist credits a special mark
• [MBS-3412] – Recording name in tooltip when hovering cursor over track title
• [MBS-4605] – S3 settings in DBDefs.pm are badly named

Task

• [MBS-5440] – Add lieder.net to the lyrics whitelist
• [MBS-5684] – Add Yate Tagger to Products menu and home page
• [MBS-5685] – Add SongKong to Products menu and home page
• [MBS-5686] – Update to new Amazon Affiliate Tags