General FAQ

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1 Purpose
2 General Questions
3 Metadata Questions
4 CD Submission Questions
- 4.1 I'm confused by the CD submission process. Why do some CDs have more than one CD Index ID? Some of my CDs are already in the system, but they have a different number of tracks than my CD. What's up?
- 4.2 What's a CD Index ID and why should I care?
5 Licensing Questions
6 Technical Questions
- 6.1 Can MusicBrainz handle international metadata?
- 6.2 What MusicBrainz-enabled software is there?

Purpose

This page lists some very general Frequently Asked Questions about MusicBrainz and how to use the site. There are also Frequently Asked Questions specific to different subjects.

If that still doesn't help, please find us in one of the MusicBrainz Forums or via the contact page. If you would like to update the content of this page on the wiki, feel free to do so but please do not add questions without answers.

General Questions

What's the purpose of this site?

This site is intended to be a free, on-line encyclopedia of music information. We (and you, if you decide to join us) are building an open-source database containing all the information you would ever want to know about songs, releases, and artists.

Why would I need to use your site? What's wrong with Gracenote's CDDB?

No one needs to use our site, and nothing is wrong with CDDB. We just have a different aim from the maintainers of CDDB. Check the history page for more information on the origins of this project.

This site is free. CDDB is not.

CDDB was made by volunteers sharing the track listings of their CDs with the central server that was run voluntarily, not for profit. This freely volunteered effort was effectively stolen by Gracenote, who made it a commercial service that you have to pay to use in your music player software, or if you want to download large parts of the database for whatever reason.

Why would I need to use your site? What's wrong with FreeDB?

FreeDB is based on the last version of CDDB that was freely available. While it is a very useful site, it is technically inferior to this site as it is based on a flat format. i.e. releases are not grouped by artists, they just have a text field "Artist Name". Different printings of the same release that are not quite identical go into the listing twice etc. There is no concept of a single track being on more than one release -- a track doesn't really exist in its own right. While MusicBrainz is not perfect in this respect, it is a lot better, and plans for improvements are laid down. The path to achieving those goals is clear. It would be very hard to give FreeDB those facilities. Eventually it is envisioned by some that MusicBrainz could take over from FreeDB, although they may evolve to take different markets, or be competitors continually spurring each other on.

MusicBrainz allows users to import data from FreeDB, although it should be corrected according to our style guidelines.

Is there a mailing list for this project?

Yes. Please feel free to subscribe to the Mailing Lists.

Who are the people responsible for creating MusicBrainz?

Check out our biography page for the answer.

I want to chat with other MusicBrainz editors. Where do I go?

A number of MusicBrainz editors hang out in the IRC channel on IRC chat at irc://irc.freenode.net/musicbrainz. Come join us for a chat!

Why the name MusicBrainz?

It indicates the overall goal of the project: a lot of people (brains) collaborating to enhance the digital music experience.

Which digital audio players support MusicBrainz?

Take a look at the MusicBrainz Enabled Applications page. If your favorite tool/player doesn't support MusicBrainz, please contact the author and ask them to support MusicBrainz.

Metadata Questions

What is metadata?

Metadata is the data that is associated with music. Artist name, release name, track number, release event, audio track signat