I’d be willing to donate ~$10/mo to enable 2-5 requests/second for my API key. This would dramatically speed up bulk workflows for users that are willing to pay for their additional server load and help fund the project.
5 Likes
Alternatively, you can build your own copy of the server and API with all the data stored locally.
with a docker version:
2 Likes
That assumes you have the necessary hardware and ability to do so. I’d find the possibility to just pay for less strict API limits appealing.
Depending on the use case this would also be simpler or the only sensible solution than self-hosting.
For example, as an editor who uses the API via userscripts and always needs the freshest data.
3 Likes
A bit of a fight here.
Problems with Docker, MusicBrainz and Windows - General chatter - MetaBrainz Community Discourse
and here:
Me too. I even bought a T-shirt for 20 euros.
The down side to this is that it requires the already busy MetaBrainz team to:
- Add and maintain code to provide a secondary (account-based) rate limiter.
- Maintain a list of paid user accounts and account balances (financial accounting).
- Process payments and update the paid users accounts list (add / remove / suspend accounts) regularly (daily / weekly / monthly / whatever).
- Deal with account sharing (multiple users using the same account to avoid payment) and other system “gaming”.
- Deal with a whole new support commitment.
- and probably a ton of other things that I’m missing.
I’m also not sure how this might impact their not for profit corporate status and tax accounting requirements.
From their perspective, I can see why they may not want to provide such a service.
15 Likes
Maybe an annual, mandatory donation with no cancellation option.
I understand that they may not want to do it for the aforementioned reasons but in 2026 all of those issues have pre-existing solutions that are trivial to implement. Smaller projects use paid APIs with very little overhead. But it’s not my project so I’ll just leave it at that.
Easy to say, but that doesn’t address the additional time commitment for the team to provide the additional day-to-day management and support activities, nor does it address the possible tax implications. Personally, I wouldn’t touch it if I were in their position.
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If a community member wanted to set up a faster MBz mirror and charge for access, I don’t see why not. Not affiliated at all with MBz ofc, but just offering a service.
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Well, that would be a commercial use of the data, so it’s not really that simple 
They’d need to be supporting MetaBrainz financially to some degree, at least.
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Are there current examples of companies hosting their own mirror in exchange for financial support? Would that be the same as commercial support tier pricing?
A lot of the commercial supporters host their own mirrors, yes - using the Live Data Feed, which for commercial use is limited to supporters giving $100/month or more.
3 Likes