Products > MusicBrainz Database

Introduction

The MusicBrainz Database is built on the PostgreSQL relational database engine, it's used to store all of MusicBrainz' music metadata. This data includes information about artists, release groups, releases, tracks, labels and the many relationships between them. The database also contains a full history of all the changes that the MusicBrainz community has made to the data.

Data Overview

Artist data includes

• A MusicBrainz ID (MBID)
• Name
• Sortname for displaying the artist name in a sorted list
• Common aliases and misspellings
• Type (person/group)
• Begin date, a birth date or formation date, depending on type
• End date, a death date or dissolution date, depending on type
• Comment, a short disambiguation field that distinguishes artists with same or similar names
• Annotation, a free form text field that allows editors to make notes about the artist

Release Group data includes

• A MusicBrainz ID (MBID)
• Title
• Artist
• Type (album, single, EP, compilation, soundtrack, spokenword, interview, audiobook, live, remix, other)

Release data includes

• A MusicBrainz ID (MBID)
• Title
• Artist
• Type (album, single, EP, compilation, soundtrack, spokenword, interview, audiobook, live, remix, other)
• Status (official, promotion, bootleg, pseudo-release)
• Language (see ISO 639)
• Annotation, a free form text field that allows editors to make notes about the release
• Disc ID (zero or more disc IDs that allow audio CD identification)
• Amazon ASIN, an Amazon product code that is suitable for linking to cover art
• Release events that each contain:
  • Release date
  • Release country
  • Label
  • Catalog number
  • Barcode (EAN/UPC)
  • Format (CD, cassette, vinyl, wax cylinder, etc.)

Track data includes

• A MusicBrainz ID (MBID)
• Title
• Artist
• Duration (in milliseconds)
• Annotation, a free form text field that allows editors to make notes about the track
• PUID, the MusicIP acoustic fingerprint identifier for the track
• ISRC

Label data includes

• A MusicBrainz ID (MBID)
• Name
• Sortname for displaying the label name is a sorted list
• Common aliases and misspellings
• Type (original production, bootleg production, reissue production, distributor, holding)
• Code, the IFPI label code
• Begin date (formation date)
• End date (dissolution date)
• Comment, a short disambiguation field that distinguishes labels with same or similar names
• Annotation, a free form text field that allows editors to make notes about the label
• Country (ISO 3166 Codes)

The various artists, releases, and tracks can be linked together with relationships that enrich the depth of collectible data. For example, relationships can provide information about web resources (e.g. Wikipedia pages, download locations, review pages, etc), or they can indicate instrument/vocal performances on a piece of music. These relationships allow MusicBrainz to capture most of the data contained in the liner notes of an Audio CD.

Download

Since the database is built on PostgreSQL and the data files are provided in the PostgreSQL "COPY TO" format, the files are only suitable for restoring to a PostgreSQL database. See the database schema documentation for a description of the schema, and what each of the tables are used for.

Download and/or install the database.

License

See the license page for full details.

The majority of the data is released into the public domain, with the remaining portions released with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license

Live data-feed (or Replication)

The live data-feed enables a server running a PostgreSQL database in conjunction with the MusicBrainz Server to automatically stay in sync with the main server (See live data-feed for more details).