# Implementing an alternative to the coverartarchive **URL:** https://community.metabrainz.org/t/implementing-an-alternative-to-the-coverartarchive/720408 **Category:** Development **Tags:** internetarchive, cover-art-archive **Created:** [October 21, 2024, 10:04am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/implementing-an-alternative-to-the-coverartarchive/720408 "2024-10-21T10:04:52Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 4
### Author: ![sound.and.vision](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/sound.and.vision/32/35417_2.png) [@sound.and.vision](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/sound.and.vision) #### Post date: [October 21, 2024, 2:28pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/implementing-an-alternative-to-the-coverartarchive/720408/4 "2024-10-21T14:28:48Z")
> [@gamebeaker](#): > > I am not sure how torrent files are generated. I think you need to have the file and compute a hash of it to create the file. (Only possible after the backup got created) I’m sure someone else might be able to confirm but my undersanding is that Torrents are pretty static, they have a table of contents (i.e. files/directories) that are generated at the point of creation; this ToC can’t be updated dynamically and so a new Torrent file would need to be produced to handle these changes. With how rapdily CAA changes that would mean needing to periodically recreate that file. * * * Honestly I think it should be handled in a way that there is a 1:1 mirror of CAA hosted _somewhere else_ and any applications that need to query it (be it MusicBrainz website or Picard) could maybe use a round-robin approach; if the first entry doesn’t respond or is seemingly overloaded then it would move to the next endpoint. The major hurdle I can think of needing to over come is if you have two endpoints A+B (where A is Internet Archive, and B is something MetaBrainz host) is ensuring that if a change is made on B it happens on A, and if it happens on A it also happens on B. Although there’s probably someone smart out there who could probably figure that out already 😛 --- _[View the full topic](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/implementing-an-alternative-to-the-coverartarchive/720408)._