General FAQ

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NOTE: We are currently standardizing the terminology used in our documentation. In some the following terms used interchangeably. 

• Album and Release
• Moderate and Edit

Release and Edit are now standard.

You can update the content of this page on the wiki but please do not add questions without answers. If your question has not been answered here, ask on the MailingLists instead.

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This page lists some very general FrequentlyAskedQuestions about MusicBrainz and how to use the site.

There are also FrequentlyAskedQuestions specific to different subjects. If that still doesn't help, please find us in one of the MusicBrainzForums or via the contact page.

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General Questions

What's the purpose of this site?

• This site is intended to be a free, on-line encyclopedia of music information. We (and you, if you decide to join us) are building an open-source database containing all the information you would ever want to know about songs, albums, and artists.

Why would I need to use your site? What's wrong with Gracenote's CDDB?

• No one needs to use our site, and nothing's wrong with CDDB. We just have a different aim from the maintainers of CDDB. Check the history pages for more information on the origins of this project.

• This site is free. CDDB is not.

• CDDB was made by volunteers sharing the track listings of their CDs with the central server that was run voluntarily, not for profit. This freely volunteerd effort was effectively stolen by Gracenote, who made it a commercial service that you have to pay to use in your music player software, or if you want to download large parts of the database for whatever reason.

Why would I need to use your site? What's wrong with FreeDB?

• FreeDB is based on the last version of CDDB that was freely available. While it is a very useful site, it is technically inferior to this site as it is based on a flat format. Ie. Albums are not grouped by artists, they just have a text field "Artist Name". Different printings of the same album that are not quite identical go into the listing twice etc. There is no concept of a single track being on more than one album - a track doesn't really exist in its own right. While MusicBrainz is not perfect in this respect, it is a lot better, and plans for improvements are laid down. The path to acheiving those goals is clear. It would be very hard to give FreeDB those facilities. Eventually it is envisioned by some that MusicBrainz could take over from FreeDB, although they may evolve to take different markets, or be competitors continually spurring each other on.

• In certain places, MusicBrainz itself uses FreeDB when it doesn't know an album already.

Is there a mailing list for this project?

• Yes. Please feel free to subscribe to the MailingLists.

Who are the people responsible for creating MusicBrainz?

• Check out our biography page for the answer.

I want to chat with other MusicBrainerz. Where do I go?

• True MusicBrainerz hang out in the IRC channel on IRC chat at irc://irc.freenode.net/musicbrainz. Come join us for a chat!

Why the name MusicBrainz?

• It indicates the overall goal of the project: a lot of people (brains) collaborating to enhance the digital music experience.

Which digital audio players support MusicBrainz?

• Take a look at the MusicBrainzEnabledApplications page. If your favorite tool/player doesn't support MusicBrainz, please contact the author and ask them to support MusicBrainz.

Metadata Questions

What is metadata?

• Metadata is the data that is associated with music. Artist name, album name, track number, release date, audio track signature, and CD Index disc IDs are all examples of metadata.

Why does MusicBrainz not support genre information?

• Because doing genres right is very hard. We have thought about how to implement genres, but we haven't completely settled on the right approach yet.

CD Submission Questions

I'm confused by the CD submission process. Why do some CDs have more than one CD Index ID? Some of my CDs are already in the system, but they have a different number of tracks than my CD. What's up?

• The identification of CDs is a tricky matter. Please check out our DiscSubmission that explains these issues.

Licensing Questions

Do I need to sign a licensing agreement in order to use MusicBrainz?

• No. Unlike GraceNote's CDDB you do not need to sign a licensing agreement. Please see our GPL (GNU General Public License) for more details.

What license covers the metadata in MusicBrainz?

• A portion of the data is in the Public Domain and the other portion uses a Creative Commons license. Please see our data license page for more details.

What license covers the MusicBrainz server source code?

• The server source code is available under the GPL (GNU General Public License).

What license covers the MusicBrainz client source code?

• The client source code is available under the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). This means that closed source applications such as WinAmp and Sonique are allowed to use the client library in binary form without any fees or royalties.

Technical Questions

Can MusicBrainz handle international metadata?

• Yes. MusicBrainz uses UTF-8 for all its data, which means that all the data is stored in UNICODE and supports lots of different languages.