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== Overview ==
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'''MusicBrainz is a community-maintained open source encyclopedia of music information.


This means that anyone - including you - can [[How To Contribute|help contribute]] to the project by adding information about your favorite artists and their related works.
MusicBrainz is a user-maintained open community that collects, and makes available to the public, music metadata in the form of a relational database.


In 2000, Gracenote took over the free CDDB project and commercialized it, essentially charging users for access to the very data they had themselves contributed. In response, Robert Kaye founded MusicBrainz. The project has since grown rapidly from a one-man operation to an international community of enthusiasts who appreciate both music and music metadata. Along the way, the scope of the project has expanded from its origins as a mere a CDDB replacement to today, where MusicBrainz has become a true encyclopedia of music.
MusicBrainz was initially created by Robert Kaye in response to Gracenote taking over the free CDDB project and charging people for access to the (what up till that point had been free) data. The MusicBrainz community has grown considerably since then, and the project has expanded its scope from being a CDDB replacement to a true "Wikipedia for music".<ref>Highfield, Ashley. "[http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/highfield_iea.shtml Keynote speech given at IEA Future Of Broadcasting Conference]", BBC Press Office, 2007-06-27. Retrieved on 2009-10-30.</ref>


As an encyclopedia and as a community, MusicBrainz exists solely to collect as much information about music as we can. We do not discriminate or prefer one "type" of music over another though, in fact we collect information about as many different types of music as possible. Whether it is published/unpublished, popular/fringe, western/non-western, human/non-human - we want it all to be entered into MusicBrainz.
=== What data does MusicBrainz collect? ===
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== MusicBrainz Database ==
MusicBrainz collects a vast amount of music metadata, far more than the traditional artist/album/track model; for a complete list see the [[MusicBrainz Database]] page. All of the data in MusicBrainz is contributed to, and maintained by, its users - who follow community written [[Style Guideline|style guidelines]] when editing to help ensure a standard of quality.


The [[MusicBrainz Database]] is where all of the various pieces of information we collect about music are stored, from artists and their releases to works and their composers, and much more. '''Note:''' We do not actually store or have access to any of the music recordings!
The database is made available by MusicBrainz to [[Database Download|download]] for free by the general public. Some portions of the data are placed into the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain public domain] and some portions are covered by a Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0] license.


The majority of the data in the [[MusicBrainz Database]] is licensed under the [http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ CC0], which is effectively placing the data into the Public Domain. That means that anyone can [[MusicBrainz Database/Download|download the data]] and use it in any way they see fit. The remaining data is released under a Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0] license.
If you come across a mistake in the database feel free to [http://musicbrainz.org/user/register.html create an account] and fix it!


All of our data is available for commercial licensing. If you are interested in licensing this data for commercial use, please [[Contact Us|contact us]].
==== Copyright infringement ====


== What can I do with MusicBrainz? ==
MusicBrainz provides data ''about'' recordings, ''not the music itself''.


If you have a digital music collection, [[MusicBrainz Picard]] will help you tag your files.
MusicBrainz does not condone copyright infringement and will not help you find a place to illegally download copyrighted works.


If you are a developer, our [[Developer Resources|developer resources]] will assist you in making use of our data.
=== What can I do with the database? ===


If you are a commercial user, our [[Live Data Feed|live data feed]] will provide your local database with replication packets to keep it in sync.
Users can browse and use our database to...
* ...find what music their favourite artists have published.
* ...find out which albums they're missing from their personal collection to complete an artist discography (using MusicBrainz Collections).
* ...receive notifications about upcoming album releases.
* ...examine (if data is available) who exactly is credited on an album, or even on a track.
* ...contribute their own data.
* '''''...discover completely new music!


== MetaBrainz Foundation ==
Another usage scenario is the lookup of information by media players. Most audio CDs do not contain the recording's metadata on the physical media, but MusicBrainz can use the digital characteristics of the CD (i.e. number of tracks, the length of the tracks) to look up the metadata and use this information to enhance the listening experience.
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MusicBrainz is operated by the [http://metabrainz.org MetaBrainz Foundation], a California based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit corporation dedicated to keeping MusicBrainz free and open source.


If you feel that MusicBrainz is a worthwhile effort, please consider [http://metabrainz.org/donate making a donation] to help support further growth and development.
The database - and its ability to uniquely identify music - enables non-ambiguous communication and discussion about music, and allows other services to be built on top of the MusicBrainz database.
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== Products ==
: ''For a complete list of products, see our [[Products|products]] page.''

MusicBrainz takes its database service one step further by providing several products and services that build on top of it. These products and services are all open source and/or free for non-commercial use.

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=== MusicBrainz Picard ===

[[MusicBrainz Picard]] is MusicBrainz' currently supported tagging application.

Picard uses an album oriented tagging concept, as opposed to the track/file oriented concept used by the previous tagger (Classic Tagger). Picard is written in Python and makes use of cross-platform libraries, this allows the same code to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
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=== MusicBrainz Server ===

Whether you're a user or a developer, the [[MusicBrainz Server]] is available to download and setup.

Once setup, the server can make use of MusicBrainz' live data feed in order to keep it up to date with the latest changes being made to the main database.
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=== XML web service ===

MusicBrainz provides a comprehensive [[XML Web Service|XML web service]], and a [[libmusicbrainz|client library]] that contains support for several different development languages. These can be used to query MusicBrainz data from any application which is able to parse XML.
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=== Live data feed ===

MusicBrainz provides a [[Live Data Feed|live data feed]] for mirror servers, free of charge for non-commercial users. MusicBrainz licenses this data feed for commercial use.
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== Licenses ==
: ''For more details on this topic, see our [[License|license]] page.''

'''Any user that contributes to MusicBrainz should be aware that their contributions will be made available to the public under the licenses described below.'''
<br/>Furthermore, MusicBrainz users give the MetaBrainz Foundation the right to license this data for commercial use.

The data collected by the MusicBrainz project falls into two categories explained below.

The income from these licenses keeps MusicBrainz running and covers the paychecks of paid MusicBrainz developers.

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=== Public domain data ===

MusicBrainz' core data is placed in the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ public domain], for anyone to download and use any way they see fit.

The core data consists of all the factual information (eg. artists, albums, tracks, etc.) contained in the database.

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=== Creative Commons licensed data ===

The remaining portions of the MusicBrainz data are released under the Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0] license.

This allows non commercial use of the MusicBrainz data as long as MusicBrainz is given credit and that derivative works, works based on MusicBrainz' CC licensed data, are also made available under the same license.

The CC licensed data consists of non-factual information that users have added to the database such as [[Annotation|annotations]], [[Folksonomy Tagging|folksonomy tags]], [[Rating System|ratings]] and wiki documentation; in addition the [[Live Data Feed|live data feed]] is also published under the CC license.

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== Our commitment ==
: ''Read our [[Social Contract]].

== Corporate parent ==

MusicBrainz is a project of the [http://metabrainz.org MetaBrainz Foundation], a 501.(c).3 tax-exempt non-profit based in San Luis Obispo, California.

The MetaBrainz Foundation was founded in 2005 to provide a legal entity for the MusicBrainz project to operate under.

Robert Kaye, the executive director of the MetaBrainz Foundation, originally managed MusicBrainz as a private project from its inception in the fall of 2000 until the project was turned over to the new company in December 2005.

== Privacy policy ==
: ''For the full text, see the [[MusicBrainz Privacy Policy]].

# You do not have to provide any personal data to be able to browse the contents of the MusicBrainz database.
# You do not have to provide any personally-identifying information if you choose not to.
# Any personal information you choose to provide will not be revealed to anyone else.

== References ==

<references/>
[[Category:WikiDocs Page]] [[Category:Philosophy]]
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[[Category:WikiDocs Page]]

Revision as of 07:52, 3 January 2018

MusicBrainz logo 2016.svg

MusicBrainz is a community-maintained open source encyclopedia of music information.

This means that anyone - including you - can help contribute to the project by adding information about your favorite artists and their related works.

In 2000, Gracenote took over the free CDDB project and commercialized it, essentially charging users for access to the very data they had themselves contributed. In response, Robert Kaye founded MusicBrainz. The project has since grown rapidly from a one-man operation to an international community of enthusiasts who appreciate both music and music metadata. Along the way, the scope of the project has expanded from its origins as a mere a CDDB replacement to today, where MusicBrainz has become a true encyclopedia of music.

As an encyclopedia and as a community, MusicBrainz exists solely to collect as much information about music as we can. We do not discriminate or prefer one "type" of music over another though, in fact we collect information about as many different types of music as possible. Whether it is published/unpublished, popular/fringe, western/non-western, human/non-human - we want it all to be entered into MusicBrainz.

MusicBrainz Database

The MusicBrainz Database is where all of the various pieces of information we collect about music are stored, from artists and their releases to works and their composers, and much more. Note: We do not actually store or have access to any of the music recordings!

The majority of the data in the MusicBrainz Database is licensed under the CC0, which is effectively placing the data into the Public Domain. That means that anyone can download the data and use it in any way they see fit. The remaining data is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

All of our data is available for commercial licensing. If you are interested in licensing this data for commercial use, please contact us.

What can I do with MusicBrainz?

If you have a digital music collection, MusicBrainz Picard will help you tag your files.

If you are a developer, our developer resources will assist you in making use of our data.

If you are a commercial user, our live data feed will provide your local database with replication packets to keep it in sync.

MetaBrainz Foundation

MeBnt.png

MusicBrainz is operated by the MetaBrainz Foundation, a California based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit corporation dedicated to keeping MusicBrainz free and open source.

If you feel that MusicBrainz is a worthwhile effort, please consider making a donation to help support further growth and development.