There is now an Urgent notice on freedb.org, saying:
freedb.org and its services will be shut down on March 31st of 2020.
And I have been unable to use their search at all for the last few days or week.
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Is there anything left in FreeDB that’s worth saving? To be honest I’m not that sad to see it go.
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I often use it to add track times, including when checking ongoing recording merges.
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I used to do something like this; when I would add an older, semi-obscure Japanese CD, I would often use the FreeDB Import feature to easily grab track times. I was devastated when we removed that feature; track times for CDs that old are not easy to come by.
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Yes, our own FreeDB release search was really advanced and powerful.
Since this loss, I’ve been using their not so good FreeDB search, it was quite very much more difficult to find stuff, but it was better than nothing. 
Is there any possibility of downloading and archiving the data?
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I asked Jason Scott, who has archived some MusicBrainz dumps before:
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Looks like both the server code and database dumps are at http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/
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For very old releases in MBz which were originally imported from freedb, there was often additional information there, for example about the performers and the label, which never made it across. I sometimes found it useful.
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I sometimes use http://db.cuetools.net/ as a replacement.
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It looks cool. How do you search it?
It is only possible to search manually for artists via URL:
http://db.cuetools.net/?artist=ACDC
The database is mainly intended to be used with CUEripper or EAC (CTDB plugin), but it offers partial FreeDB, Discogs and MusicBrainz integration.
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https://musicbrainz.org/doc/FreeDB might be improved by:
“freedb.org has been shut down on March 31st of 2020.”
Or should we wait until it’s really dead?
BTW: Using iTunes for ripping CDs has an option to use FreeDB. There are millions of typos.
What does this mean for iTunes?
As long as FreeDB is not really dead, this stuff works as in the past.
In the case FreeDB is really dead, the import will not work. This are good news.
Will Apple change to switch to MetaBrainz?
I’m in doubt. Apple avoids fixes which are “not needed”.
macOS: Apple provides software fixes only if they are “urgent”.
The packet manager Homebrew provides fixes on nearly every day.
Windows once a week.
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iTunes has been using Gracenote (formerly known as CDDB) for a long time. Dunno where you see that freedb option.
See also:
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Note that data dumps are still available on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200331001503/http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/
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if available any Metadata Plugin, like within Exact Audio Copy, then as alternative: http://gnudb.gnudb.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi
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About GnuDb.org, since it’s always available can we imagine a comeback of the ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶d̶b̶ GnuDb gateway?
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I doubt it, because it is unrelated to this. The FreeDB gateway was providing a freedb compatible interface to the MusicBrainz database. It was meant as an intermediate workaround to allow applications and users to migrate to MB. It was shut down after 11 years of service in March 2019. This has absolutely nothing to do whether FreeDB or GnuDB or any other FreeDB compatible service exists.
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