What i think is missing from music brainz

MusicBrainz
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tl;dr: a usecase for non editers.

currently music brainz is only usefull of the nerds who like to do some music research and fill in the data. often helped by some userscripts they contribute by adding the neverending amount of data that still needs to be added.

there is currently no insentive for bands/venues/festivals/… to enter their own data. the only insentive is “preservation”.

while the data could be VERY beneficial for all parties, there currently isn’t a big usecase for them to keep everything updated. and since they’re not doing it, we (the volenteers) have to try add the vast amount of data.

if there would be a user version of music brainz where its more about what artists you like, what venues you like or are close by, some recomendation tools that are based on multiple stuff (similar taste, same band members, support acts for main performers,…) maybe then bands would add their own data. vanues would add their own FULL gig history. we could see FULL artist tours, …

i know that the plan for listenbrainz is to more incorperate a user type site using music brainz data. but this is (currently) only directed at artists. while it would be logical to also add stuff for venues & festivals in there aswel.

i know that a bunch of festivals create a spotify playlist with songs of the bands they booked oon their festival. if they would enter the data in music brainz, this could be automaticly generated. if users could select artists they liked, they could get a personalized playlist to prepare them for their favorite artists on that event.

since the data could be there, the potential could be there. but because the usecase isn’t there, i think it will never be more then it is now. a site full of data that is interesting, but that won’t reach its full potentiol.
and because of that, music brainz probably will not become a household name in the music scene (except for the music nerds).

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I mean yes to pretty much all points and the underlying sentiment here.

The problem comes with how to execute it, many could argue that the bands and artists want to spend more of their time writing, producing and performing their music and not spending hours learning how the project works, learning style guidelines and then entering that information to the site.

So you’d then expect the labels and possibly the distributors to do that, of course that would effectively focus the efforts on just a small area of the world of music; the problem (as I understand it) with this is that those companies are going to do it if they a) have to for legal reasons or b) find that it nets them a good return profit. So that’s why you’ll find metadata in datases like ISWC because they’re expected to do the necessary work to publish the songs. They’ll provide some information to platforms like Spotify/Apple Music/Deezer because it might net them some additional $$$ along the way with however that platform does music recommendations, more streams = more profit.

As for venues, many of them used to contribute their listings to Last.fm when that was top-dog as a music community site - I would often use Last.fm as my go-to place to find gigs that I might be interested in attending in the local area. Problem is that then Facebook came along and broke all of that up, venues (that are more often than not run with a skeleton crew to keep gig tickets down!) would then just simply advertise the gigs via Facebook, they’re only going to want to publish those listings in one place and that would be wherever they’re going to hit the most amount of views.

As of 2024 I think things are even more fractured, I actually find it inherently fustrating to find out what gigs are happening where and often have to resort to my ageing brain to remember names of venues that I have visited in the past to check their websites. I find that venues list gigs on Facebook, Instagram, official websites, aggregate websites and now via streaming platforms (e.g. Spotify). There is no one portal to view everything, I think Mbz could be a good place for it but like you’ve mentioned it would need to become popular for that.

My idea of how it could work is that it get’s incorporated into LB. LB has a page called “upcoming events”, this is a tailored list using your existing listening data. It pulls the event information from MBz and displays it as such.

Of course this is a circular “chicken-and-egg” problem, where you need one thing to exist so the other one can.

The good news is that the introduction of the EAA has really increased the amount of events that are being added, so maybe this isn’t a pipe dream after all.

The historical data will still likely fall to the feet of us nerds who care, but maybe we can get some of the current stuff flowing in if promoters think its valuable to do so.

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i understand that artists much rather be writing new music than having to do fill in all this information. also, i don’t think the big issue is the big bands that already made it, since there are enough people that know about the band so the data will eventually get there.

i’m more talking about smaller bands, if they like it or not they will need to do their own promotion (at least in the beginning). since all the relevant data can be combined in music brainz it would be logical that new bands add there band information (band members & stuff) to music brainz. ideally there would be a tool or something with tips & tricks on how to build an audience.

in belgium there is a website (vi.be) and it is a platform for beginning artists & venues. bands can write a bio (including what band members & what instruments they play (i made an import to musicbrainz userscript). venues that have booked a band and are looking for a local band to support the gig can post on that platform that they are looking for a band for support gig on a certain date and they can give a deathline for signup for that gig, this gives the venue some local options and it gives smaller local bands a change for a gig.

these are also tools that could be provided via music brainz.

(im a big advocate for supporting local bands)

i know that bands don’t want to spend their time learing the style guides. but in my opinion the current site is to much aimed at the data.
it should need some UX that prevents users from entering data that is not according to the style guide.

also if you look at festivals. how annoying it is to create multiple events for the days and then other events for the stages,… there should be a tool that is easier to fill in and to create a festival event with multiple days and multiple stages and when you are finished it creates all the correct events. UX should not care about how the data should look. UX should be user friendly. (which the current website is not)

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I think a lot of us appreciated the UX isn’t great - but I believe that a lot of changes are due in 2025 as the work to update a lot of the page components to new frameworks (like react) will be completed.

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i’m not saying that the current site needs to go. i just think that if there would be a userfriendly website that talks to the music brainz database, more people would be editing (and more correct data would be on the site)

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I once suggested that we start an “adopt a band” initiative where a fan familiar with MusicBrainz can approach the band (or artist) and offer to do all their data entry into MusicBrainz for them at no cost. I’ve done that with a couple of small niche artists whose music I enjoy, and have built a bit of a friendship with them at the same time. They appreciate the help, and their information is a lot more complete (and accurate) in the database.

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This is exactly what Listenbrainz was created to be (as well as letting people track their listens) :slight_smile:

Events is on the horizon for ListenBrainz, keeping mind that the MetaBrainz horizon can sometimes be far away :wink:

re. improving the MB UX… I don’t think you’ll find anyone who disagrees with you there! One thing I will point out though is that there is no way to have the incredibly detail and specificity that the MB database allows and make it easy for everyone to edit. We have to be realistic on that front, and it is unlikely that MB will ever sacrifice the detail. The interface and access to guidelines can definitely be improved though.

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i don’t fully agree with that cleaner ui means that you have to sacrafice how detailed you can edit.
the main issue is the code guidelines. its a bunch of rules to make sure that the data is entered in an organised way. this is something that you can code. so that we can force the data is a structured way.

it could be an unpopular opinion, but code guidelines feels like a lazy way of don’t want to code checks to make sure people enter the data correctly, so instead we add group pressure so people add stuff correctly.

i can understand that when you start with a project you don’t have all the checks in place from the start so you start with guidelines so people can already start to enter the data. but if the project is live for a few years (not to mention 20) there should be some checks that enforce the guidelines so data can’t be entered thats not up to guidelines.

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You can’t force everything via a GUI. A good example is the “Guess Case” button. This attempts to put the correct capitals into place on a release, but anyone who uses it knows it needs checking as it does make mistakes. Even if the GUI forced “Guess Case” on a track list, it still needs corrections.

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i like the idea of that. and i would love to help bands get their data correct in MB
but again: why would they need their info in musicbrainz.
it doesn’t harm them when it is in there.
but again it doesn’t benefit them when it is in there either.

in my visualise stuff userscript i tried to create some visualisations that i think are missing in musicbrainz. they use basic information from music brainz but help see the data in an understanding way.
i, for instance, find it interesting in what other bands the bandmembers play to discover their other bands aswel.
i would also like to see a list of artists that played a support gig for an artist i like.
#supportYourLocals

and maybe when people see the data in an understanding way, they could see the potential of having all the data centralised in an organised way.

the potential of having more information about your own band is endless. how many gigs did we EVER play? with what bands did we shared the stage?
how many times did we play a certain venue (or festival)?
or for bands that are already playing for a long time: when was the last time we played in this country? or on this festival? or at this venue?

and this can also be relevant for venues and festivals: what artist played the most at our venue/festival? maybe group all the artist to see from what country the bands are that played on their stages. how long has it been since a certain band played at our venue/festival?

the potential is there, the excecution currently just isn’t.

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Can you give an example of a guideline that could be replaced entirely with a code check?

If we can implement that where possible that would be great.

We definitely need a “cleaner UI”! But ultimately some people will still get confused by things like release groups, recordings (vs tracks), even simpler (to us) things like release country and release date. I’m not making excuses for MB’s ancient UI/UX though, I’m just pointing out the need to be realistic when it comes to editing complexity.

Easier access to guidelines from within the editing page/relevant parts, so you don’t need to go to another page as you are editing, would be top of my to-do list for MB UI improvements. Personally as well as based on feedback from a user survey from years back.

Have you thought about committing some improvements to the MB codebase? I don’t think any of your feedback is new or something people don’t agree with, the small team just doesn’t have the capacity to implement all the fixes. This ticket would be an excellent addition, and is related to stuff you’ve already done via userscript, for instance:

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one thing to consider is that in most areas, artist intent supercedes these guidelines. like if an artist only refers to an album IN ALL CAPS, it should be entered this way in MusicBrainz. if an album has official track titles in brackets (which in the guidelines is how we denote unknown or untitled entities), that’s how it should be in the database

this could simply be done with an “Artist intent” checkbox, but it is something to think about. there are a lot of edge cases that won’t fit into neat little boxes

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i think the subject has shifted a bit.

the main issue was that there is no benefit of artists/venues adding all the information to music brainz and solely relying on volunteers will never reach the goal of having ALL the music data in music brainz.

the discussion about the ui not being very userfriendly came that it currently is to difficult to add stuff if you haven’t done that before.

but the main reason about this post is to talk about a version of the app that is not for editors.
a version that is for users who just want to view the data and be able to discover artists or find interresting information about music related stuff.

but for some reason everybody focusses on the edit part not being userfriendly.

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I don’t know LB very much, but it seems there was an answer about this:

Which is actually in line with the answer you got on your older topic:

What do you think about it?

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i currently find listenbrainz currently to focussed on “magic data” all suggestions are based on user listens. which i can understand for a certain degree.
but there is nothing that connects artists based on purly the music brainz data.
for instance there is no way to go from a band to another band that have a common bandmember.
it’s not possible to look for active bands from your neighborhood.
#supportYourLocals

also the fact that listen counts are broken for a long time doesn’t give much confidence.

i didn’t know that there where plans to add events to listenbrainz, that would be a very good thing. but when will this happen?
if it will be added and it can be used to search for what bands play in your neighboorhood, that would be nice and could be usefull.

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What about streamers ? Their metadata information is incomplete, fragmented and not consistent across music genres, they lack a proper data model. Apple being a possible exception.

One would think, that steamers could use well structured and consistent MB metadata to enhance the user experience and if this is realized, they could contribute to releases on MB. Same goes for record companies, it should be in their vested interests.

I’m pretty sure any approach to the big streamers would be challenging, but there are smaller players that might react differently, for example Idagio, Qobuz or Presto from UK. Being a smaller outfit, they do not have resources to maintain metadata properly.

Was this ever attempted ?

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