Plaintext
Unify your local
music library
[WORKSHOP] Introducing MusicBrainz,
Picard, and ultimate music categorization
Justin W. Flory (licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0)
Twitter: @jflory7
Blog: blog.justinwflory.com
: Wat?
● Open source music metadata encyclopedia (est. 2000)
○ Creative Commons
● Store, categorize, sort (all languages and scripts)
● Used by…
○ Developers: Build cool music apps!
○ Commercial users: Update local music databases with live updates
from MusicBrainz (Spotify, Amazon, Google, Last.fm, etc.)
○ Users (that’s us!): Tagging your own music
Metadata matters
Visibility
Find your music!
Record keeping
Write music history!
Research
Discover music science!
Is MusicBrainz really that big?
Let’s look at some numbers…
● Artists: 1,189,376
● Releases: 1,769,002
● Recordings: 17,152,131
● Artist locations:
○ Countries: 259
○ Cities: 74,087
○ Islands: 96
● Editor accounts: 1,781,906 registered (1,329 active last week)
But what about my audio dramas?
Yes, you can have your audio dramas, all 257 of them.
Introducing… ● Tool to sort, scan, and correct
metadata for you
○ References MusicBrainz database
● Puts the right metadata in the
right place
○ Album name, artist name, album
artwork, release year…
○ Helpful for music tracking services
(e.g. Last.fm / Libre.fm)
○ Helpful for cloud music players
(upload and forget)
● Available for Windows, macOS,
Linux
Installing and using
Available for… almost everything
picard.musicbrainz.org
● Windows / macOS: Installers available
● Linux:
○ Ubuntu:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:musicbrainz-developers/stable
sudo apt-get update
○ Fedora:
sudo dnf install picard chromaprint-tools
Why do I need chromaprint-tools?
○ Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, and others (see the docs)
Exploring the MusicBrainz Picard interface
Conceptual demo
(1) Hey, look, this album doesn’t have album artwork, but I have it on my computer.
(2) Looks like there’s no artwork added to this release… let’s fix that!
(3) Adding the front cover of the album artwork to the album (and cite the source!)
(4) Awesome, we did it! Album artwork is open to review for seven days before approval.
(5) Guess who's album artwork is in their music player now?
Hands-on demo!
Two different scenarios…
I know what I I have literally no idea
downloaded, but the what this MP3 is or
music metadata could where it came from,
be improved or be but it’s catchy and I
more accurate. Now want to know more
what? about it. Halp?
Find these slides
and more at:
git.io/vSU2d
Questions? Ideas?
Comments?
Open floor!
MetaBrainz, the project behind
MusicBrainz and plenty of other
music-related projects, is
participating in Google Summer of
Code!
By the way… If working on open source music
projects over the summer and
Looking for a summer internship? getting paid sounds interesting,
check out their slots!
musicbrainz.org/doc/Development/
Summer_of_Code/2017