Live Data Feed

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Live data-feed (Replication)

MusicBrainz has been offering its live data-feed since spring 2004. This live data-feed enables a server running a PostgreSQL database in conjunction with the MusicBrainz Server software to automatically stay in synch with the main server. A mirror (slave) server downloads replication packets from the main MusicBrainz FTP site at hourly intervals and applies them to the local database. This enables the mirror server to never be more than about an hour off sync with the main server.

As mentioned above, the replication packets contain both Public Domain and Creative Commons licensed data. The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license allows anyone in a non-commercial setting to use this live data feed. However, if you would like to use this live-data feed in a commerical setting, you will need to obtain a commercial data license from the MetaBrainz Foundation. For information on what entails commercial use and how to obtain a commercial use license for the live data feed, please visit the MetaBrainz data license page.

Please note that MusicBrainz is not charging for access to the data! Anyone can download the data snapshots that are at most a few days old (which is better than our closest competitors) or use our web service to access the data now. We are charging for timely and convenient access to the data for commercial users so that we can fund the operation of the non-profit foundation and in turn develop new features.