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.

Welcome Summer of Code 2025 contributors!

We are thrilled to announce the selection of 6 contributors to work with us for this year’s Google Summer of Code program!

MetaBrainz received many great applications this year. Selecting the final contributors was tough and involved deliberating various factors – what these contributors did right is getting in early, engaging with our community, presenting specific and detailed proposals, and proving excellent communication skills and the ability to integrate our feedback back into their proposals.

Thank you to all contributors who submitted a proposal with us!

The whole list of selected proposals can be found on the GSOC website but here is a TL;DR breakdown:

MetaBrainz proposals

Matrix Archiver (libretto) (Jade Ellis AKA JadedBlueEyes)

This project proposal replaces BrainzBot with a new archival service that archives messages directly from Matrix to HTML files on disk and a PostgreSQL database. It will support Matrix features like message editing, reactions and media, and provide full text search over all messages. Both historical and new messages as they come in will be archived.

Centralized Notification System for MetaBrainz (Junaid AKA fettuccinae)

MetaBrainz contains multiple sub-projects which sends out standalone notifications. This project aims to centralize those by developing a shared notification system within metabrainz-org, enabling all sub-projects to deliver user notifications through this notification system. Expected Outcome: A functional notifications system with relevant API endpoint.

ListenBrainz proposals

Importing Listening History Files in Listenbrainz (Suvid Singhal)

This project aims to develop a feature that enables users to import their listening history from various services, including ListenBrainz exports, Spotify, Apple Music, and other CSV file formats. The proposed solution involves creating a backend API endpoint to handle file uploads, building normalizers to parse and validate data from different services, and converting the data to the JSONL format required by ListenBrainz. The solution also includes a frontend to handle file uploads and show the progress to the user.

Onboarding Revamp in Listenbrainz-Android (Hemang Mishra)

A smooth and intuitive onboarding experience is essential for any app, ensuring that users understand its features while maintaining trust and engagement. This project focuses on enhancing the ListenBrainz Android onboarding flow by making it more informative, user-friendly, and privacy-conscious. Key improvements include a dedicated Listen Submission screen to give users full control over which apps contribute listens, clear permission rationales, and fallback mechanisms for denied permissions. Additionally, a revamped sign-in screen will provide better navigation, including a bug report option for easy issue submission.

Development of Advanced User Statistics Visualizations (Granth Bagadia AKA holycow23 AKA granth23)

The project aims to design and implement advanced interactive visualizations for ListenBrainz using Nivo for data visualization and integrating with the existing Flask API. Apache Spark will handle efficient data processing and aggregation. These visualizations will offer granular insights into genre trends, artist diversity, and temporal listening patterns, enhancing user experience and engagement. The project will result in the development and integration of the following four interactive charts into ListenBrainz: Artist Listening, Activity Statistics, Listens by Era Statistics, Genre-Based Listening Patterns and Top Listeners.

Integrate music streaming from Funkwhale & Navidrome (Mohammad Amanullah AKA mAmanullah7)

Allow users to play music from their Funkwhale servers as well as Navidrome directly in BrainzPlayer, as both are self hosted music streaming platforms. Funkwhale used a OAuth2 for secure and safe authentication, but currently Navidrome used basic subsonic authentication (username/password + salt), but soon OAuth2 authentication also will be available for Navidrome. Once these are availanble, we can support Subsonic streaming in the ListenBrainz Player.

What if you’re not in GSoC 2025?

Reading this and feeling inspired for contributing to the code still? Volunteer contributors are very welcome all year round even though we might have slightly less time available to help you during the summer. It is also putting you in an ideal situation for applying to next year’s GSoC. You can find some tips for applying to GSoC with us in one of our previous posts. When you are ready, join us on the MetaBrainz Matrix Channel and showcase your initiative and your skills !

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.

Rest in Peace drsaunde!

Hello!

It is with a heavy heart that I share this sad news today; we’ve just found out that one of our most prolific editors, David Saunders (AKA drsaunde) has passed away.

We don’t know much about the circumstances of what happened, but a friend of David’s was kind enough to reach out to us to let us know of his passing. The friend said:

“Our dear friend, David Saunders aka drsaunde sadly passed away March 26, 2025 surrounded by friends listening to his favourite music. Dave was a brilliant man with a great sense of humour and obviously an avid fan of music. I knew he wrote for a music site but never learned which one. Quick search for a common username he used landed me on your site.”

To put into context who drsaunde really was, lets look at his impressive statistics:

He made a total of 2,191,225 edits, with only 37 rejected edits, for an astonishing acceptance rate of 99.998%. He was a member of MusicBrainz since 2006-05-06 for a total of 18 years, 10 months and 20 days, which amounts to 317 edits for each day he was a member of MusicBrainz. 🤯🤯🤯

On top of that he was our Areas editor, the person in charge of maintaining our database of cities and regions in the world. Needless to say, drsaunde has left a giant hole in our community and our hearts.

In keeping with his spirit, his friends will hold a celebration of life for drsaunde on May 3rd. We’ve sent some funds to help ensure that celebration really honors his spirit.

Finally, if you would like to take a moment to remember drsaunde, you could head over to ListenBrainz radio and make a playlist from his most listened tracks.

Rest in peace, drsaunde, you will be missed.

Updates to Audiobooks, Audio Dramas, Broadcasts and Podcasts

If you are a fan of words going into your ears, please fasten your seatbelt. We have a number of exciting updates for podcasts, broadcasts, audiobooks and audio dramas, including new relationships and updated guidelines!

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.