Beginners Guide

Welcome to MusicBrainz! This beginners' guide should get you started on both correcting tags in your digital music and contributing data back to MusicBrainz. If this is your first visit to this page, it might be good to read it all before diving into more advanced topics. If you want to dive right in anyway, the How Tos are a quite good place to do so.

MusicBrainz (often abbreviated to MB) currently consists of three parts:

• The web interface and its backend, the database.
• The documentation (you're reading part of it!).
• The applications and services.

If you're like most users, you will probably start to tag your files with information that was already in the database. But remember that MusicBrainz is user-edited, so if you find that something is missing, you can add it, and if it is wrong, you can fix it! These changes are not always applied instantly, as they pass through our voting system, so it would be good for you to check our introductions to editing and to voting that will help you understand how that works.

Documentation

The documentation includes guides and how-tos, but also the definitions for MusicBrainz terminology and the guidelines editors are expected to follow when editing. You don't need to memorise or even read all of the guidelines from the beginning, although taking a look at the ones that apply to most edits, like Titles, Artist or Release, is a very good idea.

Web interface

Before making any changes to the data, you will need to register and log in. You need to provide a valid email address, which won't be shown by default, so other editors can contact you, and then verify it (you might want to read our privacy policy).

Definitions

When an user modifies the data in any way, that's editing. This is different from the wiki-like editing you might be used to from sites like Wikipedia, because most edits must go through a voting process before being applied.

The term release refers to a specific issuing of an album, single, compilation, etc., and includes a specific set of recordings in a particular order. Different editions of a release, in different formats for example, should be entered separately.

A Disc ID is a kind of signature for a CD, and allows it to be recognised automatically. It contains the precise timing information of the CD. When you use MusicBrainz Picard, you can automatically retrieve the disc ID of your CD to include it in the MusicBrainz database (see the help about how to add disc IDs).

One of the fundamental aims of MusicBrainz is to offer correct and well structured information. To enforce this, we have guidelines which allow us to ensure the data input by all users is accurate.

Adding a Release

Please note that MusicBrainz strives for data which is as accurate as possible. An example of this policy is, that we do not like homeburnt Disc IDs to be added to the database. This does not mean that you are not allowed to add track listings from these mediums, but only Disc IDs of official releases (in this case meaning factory produced media, band release CD-Rs and mass produced bootlegs) are allowed.

Adding a release is probably one of the first things you will want to do. Either you have a CD, or you don't (vinyl, cassette, ...)

• If you have a CD, first run Picard. Clicking the lookup CD button will make Picard analyze your CD and connect to MusicBrainz. If the CD exists in MusicBrainz, please check that the track listing matches. If they are the same, you can attach the information from your copy to the existing release. If they are not the same, it probably has not been entered before. This is a chance for you to enhance MusicBrainz by adding your copy. It is generally better to add a new version of the same release if the previous step does not turn up a match, than trying to manipulate existing track lists which are, in many cases, perfectly valid.

If MusicBrainz doesn't know your CD, it automatically tries to recover it from FreeDB. If it finds it, it recovers the FreeDB data. If MusicBrainz really can't offer any useful suggestion for your CD, then you will have to input the tracks manually. A word of warning. You must carefully examine the FreeDB data since it needs to be corrected in most cases to conform with the MusicBrainz style guidelines. Also, it is good practice to provide proof of your release in the edit notes, FreeDB is not considered as a proof, as their submissions process is not monitored.

• If you don't have a CD handy, you will need to search by hand. Usually the best way is to search for the title of the release. If you can't find the release you have, or the only matches in MusicBrainz are reasonably different from yours, then you have a new release and you should enter it manually.
• It helps immensely if you can provide a link to a page containing more information on the release. Official websites and comprehensive fan sites are good, as are online shops, such as Amazon. These links not only help other editors double check accuracy, but help us find any extra information which can be added. While welcoming bootlegs, we try and discourage a home made various mix. Our aim is toward widely reaching and readily usable accurate information. Thus your local factory made various artist disc may not be accepted for its very slim range of user need.

Pending edits

When editing MusicBrainz, be careful about edits that are open. If there is a pending edit (usually highlighted in yellow) you should check if it is already doing what you wanted to do. If so, you don't need to do anything - except voting Yes so it will be applied sooner! If it is different and you don't agree with it, you probably should say so in an edit note. Make sure you follow the Code of Conduct while doing so!

If you realise you've made a mistake, and the edit is still pending, don't enter a new edit to remove the problem! Just find your original edit and cancel it.

Guides

You might be interested in this forum post that explains how to add releases. There's also an (outdated, but still partially useful) annotated screenshot by screenshot guide for how to add a new artist, a new release, and some relationships.

And of course, you can read our how-tos on different matters.

Software

You can download MusicBrainz Picard, our tagger, to tag your digital files and submit disc IDs to MusicBrainz. If you have doubts about it, check the documentation and this illustrated how-to. You can install all kind of plugins for it too!

Next steps

Thank you for taking the time to read and learn more about what makes MusicBrainz thrive. Please, make sure you read the Code of Conduct before editing.

Discussion

Of course, remember that if you can't find an answer to some doubt in the documentation, you can (should!) ask about it.