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Considering the poor state of many of the Freedb entries, is that data really useful? I've been volunteering with the MusicBrainz project since October and I've found the data at Freedb to be a complete mess. MusicBrainz users can use Freedb to import albums so that we don't have to re-enter things into MusicBrainz by hand, but with so many duplicate and poorly edited entries (typos, etc) I'm wondering if it's worth it to even keep the data.

MusicBrainz is a better designed system. It's not limited to the archaic interface and design of the old CDDB system. It has interfaces that programmers can use to retrieve the same kind of data that they get from Freedb. The site also has a system in place for editing of entries and peer review of changes. I think it's a better solution, although I'm biased because of my involvement and interest with the project.

Surely Musicbrainz is a viable replacement?

Are you sure you were not really using musicbrainz? I don't think freedb is able to do this.

freedb has sucked almost since it's inception. Multiple entries for the same album, hard to do Various Artist albums, lots of misspellings and mistakes, and no way to ""fix" the problems.

I really hope people take this opportunity to check out Musicbrainz, a MUCH nicer alternative. It's (mostly) open source, runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Also, it's community moderated like Wikipedia, and it has loads of information about releases, something which was nonexistent on freedb.

That sucks. I hope that freedb2 will be compatable with the old freedb protocol. Pretty much every open source tagger/ripper/whatever I know of uses freedb.

Then again, maybe it's time for MusicBrainz to take over. :)

These online companies were previously protecting themselves from liability for their customers' transmissions by claiming that filtering this data would be an expensive and prohibitive task. By volunteering this service, they've crossed that line. It should be possible for the music companies, MPAA, etc. to demand filtering as well.

It's a pretty stupid plan nonetheless. These digital fingerprints will only catch casual or newbie child porn traffickers. Encryption will easily render these fingerprints useless. The worrisome side effect is the false positives that will be triggered by this fingerprinting technique. As an example, try using one of those packages that tries to tag your mp3s by fingerprinting... Pretty unreliable stuff.

Seth

MusicBrainz is the service you're looking for; it's been around for a few years now and they're just coming out with a new beta for Linux and Windows users alike. Someone already mentioned iEatBrainz, the Mac variant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz

http://musicbrainz.org/

While CDDB and freedb may be fraught with errors, another database exists, with the distinction of being editable (a la wiki) by the masses, with voting, so that the metadata is generally correct.

See MusicBrainz: http://musicbrainz.org/

If you use Windows (i.e., you can't afford a Mac yet), Tag&Rename and MusicBrainz make a pretty powerful combination for fixing tags.

You can start with the MusicBrainz codebase. The schema already supports albums, tracks, and annotations. You could extend it for your purpose to add lyrics. A daily dump of the database is available as is the source code to the server application.

You can start with the MusicBrainz codebase. The schema already supports albums, tracks, and annotations. You could extend it for your purpose to add lyrics. A daily dump of the database is available as is the source code to the server application.

You can start with the MusicBrainz codebase. The schema already supports albums, tracks, and annotations. You could extend it for your purpose to add lyrics. A daily dump of the database is available as is the source code to the server application.

You can start with the MusicBrainz codebase. The schema already supports albums, tracks, and annotations. You could extend it for your purpose to add lyrics. A daily dump of the database is available as is the source code to the server application.

Sounds kinda like Relatable's TRM fingerprints, which are used by MusicBrainz and in the Neuros audio player.

IIRC, the fingerprints don't have any actual content in them, but instead describe the characteristics of the audio. So it's plausible, at least, that they can't listen in on your conversations, but could still uniquely identify what you're listening to.

I really suggest you take a look at the microformats site to see some examples of how semantic annoatations are being worked into existing standards.

For a good Classical ID3 tagging guide, you should also consider MusicBrainz's Classical Style Guide

I LOVE MusicBrainz, but it assists in fixing the artist/title/album tags, and renames your files with that information if you wish.

It specifically does NOT support genre
It might support genre in some form at a later date (see the MusicBrainz Tomorrow section)

I LOVE MusicBrainz, but it assists in fixing the artist/title/album tags, and renames your files with that information if you wish.

It specifically does NOT support genre
It might support genre in some form at a later date (see the MusicBrainz Tomorrow section)

MusicBrainz is a free (libre) CCDB-like database of audio CDs.

What (I think) you're asking for is an alternative CDDB source for track information when ripping your CDs? If this is the case then, to my knowledge there are only two CDDB (now Gracenote and commercial) and FreeDB. Both of these accept submissions from the general public so you can't guarantee that what they choose to clasify the artists as will be in line with your own opinion.

You can always edit the tracks afterwards, I use the already recommended Tag&Rename myself however there are a number of open source utilities which are just as good especially if you're not using Windows.

Another alternative might be to try Musicbrainz which identifies individual tracks using some kind of hash of the song itself and might have "better" genres assigned to artists.

this service already exists by musicbrainz, and if you use amarok then you have already witnessed it in action.

seriously, do people google before they ask slashdot?

this service already exists by musicbrainz, and if you use amarok then you have already witnessed it in action.

seriously, do people google before they ask slashdot?

http://www.musicbrainz.org Haven't used the new picard looker-upper, but I know the original works wonders. Check that out.

For tagging music files with properly spelled artist names and song names and the like, I find the MusicBrainz tagger to be quite useful. It's also got the advantage of being editable by the users, and easier to clean up than other places.

However, you'll get no genre info there. That's something that's just really, really hard to do well. Especially because of the overlap that some artists have between genres, and how specific someone wants to be. Is VNV Nation EBM? Futurepop? Or just Electronica? How about Dead Can Dance? I think they've hit a dozen different genres over the years, how do you pick one?

For the most part, I've tried to just give up on genre entirely. It rarely says anything of value anyway.

Have you ever considered using http://musicbrainz.org/ to tag your music? They are trying to build up a "perfect" tag and music db.

Identifying the good songs is pretty easy these days if you use a little organization and seperate your stuff into different folders and use the right tools:

Folder 1) downloads: P2P clients, web site downloads, etc go here.

Folder 2) unzipped: where I unzip/unrar/unarchive files from folder 1. This is especially useful as I use Emule and usually just download entire albums/discographies (this seems to really cut down on falsely/poorly titled tracks and polluted files.)

Folder 3) tagged. I run MusicBrainz Tagger on the unzipped files and put them into this directory. The nice thing about MBTagger is that now all my files are consitantly sorted by band name and album name, and most of the relevant ID3 info is generally inserted. It does a really good job of automatically labeling most of my music. Then I go through the stuff that isn't automatically tagged and decide if it's worth giving the extra effort.

Within the tagged folder, I then look for subfolders which were obviously not the songs I intended to download (Generally this is just stray artists.) This usually means A)I downloaded something that was mislabeled or B)MBTagger got it wrong. These files usually get deleted as I don't care enough to put in the extra effort just to get a complete collection, unless it is actually a song I was really looking for.

Now, MusicBrainz does a fairly thorough job with western pop music and even modern indie, but is often quite lacking when it comes to tagging jazz, classical, and some ethnic musics (and of course the more obscure, the harder of a time it has.) If that is your cup of tea, you'll probably just have to do your stuff manually. That just is not the userbase of the software, so the database will not be as complete or thoroughly tested. This would probably be true of any similar software. Although the more independant low-profile stuff seems to be a lot more documented, meaning either A)consumers of pop-culture have no respect for music or B)indie fans are in it to impress people with their catalog, not for the music.

After all this, I finally just move everything over to my main media library, and go through the task of picking through duplicates. I just do a find on anything with the pattern (1) in the file name as incrementing copies are given that designation by MusicBrainz. I choose which one I want to keep manually in Windows Explorer, generally keeping the higher sampled quality version.

And finally, as I find files which are still messed up in some way (incomplete, taken from an obviously scratched CD, etc) I get rid of them, and decide whether or not to find a fresh copy.

This method generally seems to work pretty well, and is pretty much the only way I've been able to keep my music collection in any semblance of order (It was fairly manageable in the 1000 track range, but now I have over a month's worth of music (that's I could keep playing for a month, not I've been downloading for a month.)) And then when I find a band I really like, I'll try to go to their show if they come around, or buy a CD or other merchandise.

However it seems alot more likely for me to purchase a band's stuff if I can download music right from their website (Examples include Harvey Danger, Mellowdrone, McChris even though I don't know if they all still have their music for free download, Tortured Soul) than if I download it P2P. Although I have found some great music through P2P that I Probably would not have given a chance otherwise: Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Tindersticks, Tosca, Portishead, Stereolab, Zero 7, Rasputina, Cat Power, Shivaree, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casinova, and rediscovered bands that I forgot that I really like: They Might Be Giants, Violent Femmes, Dead Milkmen... unfortunately it has become a lot more difficult to

Spot on. Usually I arrange my MP3s into genre folders, then band folders. I'd like to be able to browser like that. iTunes seems like it is pretty spiffy if you have the ID3 tags all spelled out, and I know there are software apps like MusicBrainz that help with that, but a lot of the classical music I like is done released for free by individual performers who don't tag their MP3 files and who aren't popular enough to have entries on the MusicBrainz servers.

musicbrainz is pretty much just that. play with it here (it's GPL):

http://musicbrainz.org/

If 3 people unanimously vote for or against a suggested change, the change is immmediately accepted or rejected, respectively. If the votes are not unanimous the system will wait for 1 week and then accept the suggested change into the database if the simple majority of moderators voted yes. If the vote fails to achieve a simple majority it is dropped from the moderation table without being applied to the database.

Also, they support some automoderations by users that have contributed enough in the past. Of course, information on albums and artists is a lot less contraversial and usually easier verifiable than some of the content on Wikipedia... Still, something similar might be useful.

http://www.musicbrainz.org/ Musicbrainz already has music fingerprints. Albiet, it's not exact, but it's there. Easy to add your own music and fingerprints.

http://last.fm/ Last.FM already is a place where you can listen to music based on music you like, for free, with no commercials.

At least at those two sites I can find more than just the top 40.

Richard Thompson thought it was a fine tune: he covered the tune in his "1,000 Years of Popular Music" live show. You can hear him perform it on NPR's Live in Studio 4A show and sure enough, stripped of all the pop production and processing, there's a nifty song living in there.

Actually, Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa did a heavy version of "Baby One More Time" on the Ready to Rumble soundtrack, and I'll be darned if it doesn't kick quite a bit of butt as well.

Maybe the problem with Britney's music isn't the music but the Britney?

Try MusicBrainz

• http://www.mutopiaproject.org/
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sound (Check bottom)
• Internet Archive: Open Source Audio
• Free Classical Music Archive recordings performed by the MIT choir and other amateurs (quite high quality)
• The Choral Public Domain Library describes itself as 'A Free Sheet Music Archive'
• Mutopia: a collection of public domain sheet music
• Project Gutenberg music section
• MusicBrainz: a database of structured metadata about audio releases

Music Brainz might be a good way of doing this. By comparing features of the song, duplicates can be matched up. Song length, general volume/pitch patterns, etc.

This sounds rather like MusicBrainz software.

Yes, this sort of service has been around in the UK and France for several years now.

Giles.

In response to the final sentence of the OP, if you're simply trying to identify music *files* on your hard drive, use MusicBrainz for that. The TRM audio fingerprinting system can identify any song in the database to within 4 or so matches (fingerprint collision does happen.)

I wonder if the aforementioned service works if you hum the melody into the phone.

Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags?

Well with google you can already do this for free.

I'll do you one better: musicbrainz recognizes songs by music fingerprint. The API is rough around the edges but it works pretty well. I cobbled together a python script to tag my 1300 mp3s and it identified all but a handful correctly. I'll throw a copy up on this page later for anyone who's interested.

Yup not only that, but so has the 'listen to' and 'identify' id3 tagger mentioned... oh well. http://www.musicbrainz.org/

there is a program called MusicBrainz tagger, and you can download it and run it agains all your mp3s to tag them properly http://www.musicbrainz.org/ it uses each mp3's digital signature to do this, and works fairly well, though if most of your songs are off p2p and not ripped cds, it has more trouble due to crappy variations..

AT&T Wireless has had its own version of this for a while now, #ID. http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA521810.html. Looks like this offering is from MusiKube as mentioned in the linked article.

Note that from a PC you could always use http://www.musicbrainz.org/ if you're trying to fix those ID3 tags.

Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags? MusicBrainz

Actually, I do tag all my music before adding it to my library. With http://www.musicbrainz.org/

I used MusicBrainz to completely overhaul my mp3s. If it can't figure out the name of your song exactly (through id3 or otherwise, it'll compare hashes to songs in it's database and provide the closet matches.

http://www.musicbrainz.org/

--Dave

Grab a MusicBrainz tagger while you're at it.

From the description on its homepage:

The MusicBrainz Tagger application allows you to automatically look up the tracks in your music collection and then write clean metadata tags (ID3 tags or Vorbis comment fields) to your files. As you tag the files in your collection that MusicBrainz didn't recognize, you submit the acoustic fingerprints (TRM ids) of your files back to the server. Submitting acoustic fingerprints will allow MusicBrainz to automatically identify these tracks in the future, so that other people using the Tagger can benefit from the work you have done.

Don't let that discourage you, though. The program is fully usable right now.
From the Statistics page:
Artists 155884
Albums 261790
Disc IDs 124538
Tracks 3211514

It's a gem.

For now there's only a Windows version out, but the program is GPL'd, and the source code is available to everyone.

Download it here:
http://www.musicbrainz.org/tagger/download.html

Use MusicBrainz!

I have just started to use the MusicBrainz Tagger to organize my mess of mp3 files. It does all of the normal re-tagging functions, but it will also make an AcousticFingerprint of the music file, and check your it with their database. This solves the problem of tags that are incorrect or missing altogether. It is a little slow, but otherwise a good program. It is available as Windows, MacOS X, and Python. Works with mp3 and Ogg. It's free & GPL'd.

Check out MusicBrainz. It's spiffy.

In Windows... Edit->Preferences->"Store" tab->"Show iTunes Music Store". So basically the same thing.

I tried using iTunes some time last year and really didn't like it. It was big and bulky and didn't help me tag/manage music. However, now that I've got my music tagged with MusicBrainz I'm loving iTunes. I had to switch my thinking from "playing mp3s" to "playing playlists" though. Smart Playlists are nice.

I'm surprised that they haven't collaborated with the MusicBrainz project. That seems to be one problem with these Semantic Web projects, they don't see to have awarness of what other people have already done. MusicBrainz is collection a lot of information on artists, records, composers, etc. and they're even going to have more classical-oriented support soon.

• MusicBrainz
• MoodLogic
• QuickNamer
• MusicMagic Mixer
• UltraTagger
• FixTunes
• Tag&Rename