What do you use MusicBrainz for?

This is sort of a continuation of the earlier thread asking about user surveys, but just out of idle curiosity:

How do you use MusicBrainz?

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I use MusicBrainz to tag my digital music collection, both for consistency (uniform capitalization!) and to add extra information for searching (e.g. original release dates and album artist names). I also use the songs’ release MBIDs to group them into albums and to associate them with their cover art.

When I buy and download a new album, I use Picard to tag the songs before adding them to my collection. If I can’t find the release, I add it to MusicBrainz. If I notice capitalization errors or typos, I correct them. I don’t typically retag songs after I’ve added them, and I don’t do much editing besides adding/correcting albums that I own and reviewing edits to artists that I added.

I also run a script that uses the MusicBrainz API to notify me about new releases from artists that I like. (Bandcamp does a decent job of telling me about new releases if I’ve bought a artist’s previous work there, too.)

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Honestly? Everything.

Anything that MBz can do I will try and make use of it. It’s a core part of my music lifecycle.

From making sure I tag and rate things that I like, as almost a record that I have encountered it. To filling in gaps to further enhance the ever-connected web of information. Keeping track of my collections, want lists. Interacting with other users. Writing reviews.

It’s all great fun :smiley:

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I buy and rip CDs for fun. I buy albums I’ve heard and like, albums that seem interesting, and random CD lots. I use whipper as my ripper and it requires that disc-ids be linked to a MusicBrainz release before it will rip a CD so I end up adding a lot of releases so I can rip them. Currently have a couple hundred discs on my desk that at the very least need Disc IDs added if not completely new releases.

My collection then goes into Beets where I use a MusicBrainz plugin to make sure the metadata can be updated when changes are made on MusicBrainz and another plugin to submit AcoustIDs for everything added to my library. Beets also updates my collection here.

Occasionally I also add digital releases for releases that can’t be linked in ListenBrainz or just edit stuff on MusicBrainz for fun. Currently working on Celtic Woman, will probably start on Owl City once I finish

I really want a stat on my user page to show Disc IDs I’ve added, finding unrecognized CDs is always fun because it means I’m archiving a more uncommon release.

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Look at your “Total Applied” and select “View”, then “Refine this Search”, select Type \ Add DiscID

This would create: Search for edits - MusicBrainz

As that is about 10% of your edits, that is an impressive rate of disc additions

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Thanks, cool to hear about what other people are doing with MusicBrainz! At the very least, I figure that I’ll hear about interesting features or new use cases.

Just out of curiosity, do you hang onto the physical CDs after you rip them and add them to MB, or is your main goal preserving them in (on-computer) digital form? I kept mine in boxes for quite a while, but I eventually gave up on them. I’m probably atypical in that I’m okay with having lossy copies instead of using FLAC, but now I’m trying to track down replacement copies of songs that skip due to errors back when I ripped them (or in some cases, MP3 purchases that skip and that I can’t re-download now – looking at you, Amazon :angry:).

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I just found that the other day, just bookmarked your link though so I can find it easier in the future. Thanks

Yeah, currently holding onto them, bought several binders that hold 400 each and putting them in there. Papers from the CD cases I take out and have put in some shoeboxes, plan to scan them at some point but don’t have a scanner or a good workspace to scan them at the moment.

For albums I enjoy, I use the CDs in my car. I’m not necessarily trying to preserve the CDs perfectly after they’re ripped, but I also don’t want to get rid of them lol. I’d like to photograph or scan the CDs themselves at some point too.

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I use MB exclusively for tagging of my extensive digital collection.

It is very importantfor me to me to know what is being played, work composer artists. I mostly listen to classical and jazz, and for the first one, the idea of a work relation is the best feature of MB. It does not matter what the publisher named the track, what matters is the standarized work name from the catalogue series.

As for jazz, I meed to know who plays bass on a particular track, and MB can provide that.

I use squeezebox as my overal music management server with directory structure that is derived from tags provided by MB.

I do not use Picard, instead I use beets for original track identification and my own scripts to tag and rename.

MB is the only open DB that can handle complexities of Classical music that I know of, and for that I’m very grateful.

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Managing my physical collection.

And find new interesting music through my known artist loved music relationships to music or artists I want to discover.

And avoid buying duplicates:

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I think I made my account years ago so I could submit missing acoustic IDs and needed an account here to get a key? I think. Or maybe I needed that even just to use the acoustic ID recognition? Something like that I think.

Then a friend of mine released her first album so I wanted to add her info everywhere I could so I added her on here. SEO, more places her info exists the better placement in searches, right? :stuck_out_tongue:

And now I have been trying to add missing releases from less widely known KPop(And a few from other genres) artists. I have come across so many amazing smaller groups and individuals and it makes me sad that haven’t gotten more attention, so I am trying to do my tiny part in adding their work where I can. And while working through that I am slowly building up a collection on MB of every K(Pop/Rock/Rap/etc) group I can find. “Found in 1 user collection” That’s me! :smiley:

Also I started using ListenBrainz(diff account than this) and I didn’t like seeing the generic album art placeholder in my recent listens, so I think I’ve added over 100 cover arts in the past 2 weeks to prevent myself from seeing that.

I have a large music video collection, and one day I hope Plex/Jellyfin have good support for them. And I seen music videos can be added to MB, so I think I will have to figure that out as well yet so that if Plex/Jellyfin ever use MB for MVs data will be there for them.

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To add my releases and to see other’s music info

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Initially to add data to link to from greyed out Listenbrainz listens, but kind of doing it for the love of cataloguing now…

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