Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] No MusicBrainz auto fill of album information

[Calvin Walton <calvin walton kepstin ca>]

On Sat, 2011-12-10 at 14:49 -0500, Tracy L. Cann wrote:
> Hi. 
> 
> MusicBrainz is not automatically filling in the album information when I
> put in a new CD. This has happened with the last four albums I've
> inserted. These are common albums, not obscure albums, like Pearl Jam's
> Ten and AC/DC's High Voltage.
> 
> I am typing in the album information which is a pain in the ass and
> hitting the "Submit Album" button which opens the MusicBrainz website
> and displays the album information. Then there is a note about joining
> MusicBrainz to submit information. This requires creating an account and
> giving a valid e-mail address. I suspect they are simply collecting
> e-mail addresses so they can sell them or send spam.

As a moderator (autoeditor) on the MusicBrainz site, I am a bit put off
by your statement here. MusicBrainz is a community-edited encyclopedic
database of music information, run as an open (and open-source!)
project. We don't in any way sell user-specific information to third
parties. The only automated emails that you'll get from MusicBrainz
require that you perform manual actions on the site, such as subscribing
to updates for an artist or making an edit.

> Please contact MusicBrainz and ask them to go back to autofilling the
> album information for the convenience of Rythmbox users.

Because MusicBrainz uses only community-sourced data right now, added by
various dedicated users around the globe at their individual whims, some
releases may not be in the database. We rely on people to add releases
themselves, when they find a release that is not yet in the database.
Nobody is paid to add information to the database for you.

The reason that you're not seeing the data for your CDs could very well
be technical; due to a recent change in how the data is represented in
the database, some applications unfortunately will require updates to
make full use of it. I was under the impression that the compatibility
layer for our webservice was still sufficient for use of programs like
Rhythmbox, although there may be some issues with multiple-disk albums.

(It would be helpful if you mention the particular version of Rhythmbox
you're using, to narrow down which of the Musicbrainz APIs you might be
having an issue with.)

Hopefully an update to Rhythmbox in the near future will bring it up to
date with the current state of the database. If I get some time in the
next couple weeks, I would be glad to help look into what changes may be
required in Rhythmbox.

-- 
Calvin Walton <calvin walton kepstin ca>
Homepage: http://www.kepstin.ca/
MusicBrainz: http://musicbrainz.org/user/kepstin