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FreeDB Is Shutting Down

freedb.org

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Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#21

Post by big_chungus »

Scoundreller wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That acquisition was the reason why I made a fork of the freedb database, I'm actually pretty happy with how long they held out. I would encourage everybody to download the software: http://www.freedb.org/en/download__server_software.4.html And the db: http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/ It would be good to have multiple copies floating around.

4gb for the whole database (compressed). It seems like so little for artists/tracknames of every piece of music ever published (to CD), because it would take 0.1% of my disk space, while knowing it's so much data.

It's less than 1GB; the four large archives you see that are each nine-hundred-and-change megs are dated snapshots. Just pull the latest from here (current as of 12/03/2019): http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/freedb-complete-20191203.ta...

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#23

Post by stordoff »

big_chungus wrote: post #12
mark-r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is, and it works brilliantly for that use case. I like to rip my own CDs so that I know the source of my music and can control the quality. I use Exact Audio Copy which has an automatic download from freedb.org. I have no idea what I'm going to do once it shuts down.

The DB and server software are available; I use it for the same case and am putting up my own instance. EAC allows adding a custom freedb server, as I recall.

I'm tempted to do the same, but as someone who is buying _new_ music on CD this doesn't particularly help.

It seems CTDB provides access to MusicBrainz, so that might be my alternative.

http://cue.tools/wiki/CTDB_EAC_Plugin

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#24

Post by jmillikin »

zozbot234 wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #4

That's a real pity, but they didn't stand a chance against musicbrainz: https://musicbrainz.org/ I ran a similar service for years (daz.com) and eventually shut it down because musicbrainz was not worth competing with though I think we did a better job of tying the links between the various bands by tracking artists from one act to another, also studio artists which made it quite nice for music discovery.

Does musicbrainz support the 'Disc ID' tags that FreeDB uses? Also, ISTM that it should be quite feasible for musicbrainz to track artists and "acts", in a pinch by cross-referencing wikidata.org which acts as a sort of shared focus for the whole Linked-Open-Data metaverse.

MusicBrainz has its own format of disc ID (checksum of an entire audio disc), plus per-track fingerprints.

Artist credits can be tracked -- there are extremely fine-grained relationship models -- but most entries don't have the associated metadata because it's a hassle to input.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#25

Post by jmillikin »

yoavm wrote: post #19
ianlevesque wrote: post #2

It seems like this is some archaic service that provides song titles and album artist information for some physical DRM-free uncompressed audio format from years gone.

I guess "archaic" is how we call actual useful online services these day. Websites and services that just work, without harassing the user, and do what they do well. If this is archaic, gosh, may we have more of these archaic things.

"Archaic" because FreeDB has been obsolete for ... 10 years or so? Quite a long time at any rate. MusicBrainz and Discogs are the contemporary equivalents, with MB having (in my opinion) higher quality data, and Discogs having better coverage of obscure Western releases.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#26

Post by emmelaich »

big_chungus wrote: post #21
Scoundreller wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4gb for the whole database (compressed). It seems like so little for artists/tracknames of every piece of music ever published (to CD), because it would take 0.1% of my disk space, while knowing it's so much data.

It's less than 1GB; the four large archives you see that are each nine-hundred-and-change megs are dated snapshots. Just pull the latest from here (current as of 12/03/2019): http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/freedb-complete-20191203.ta...

Thanks! It's 948Mb.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#27

Post by StavrosK »

mark-r wrote: post #10
ianlevesque wrote: post #2

It seems like this is some archaic service that provides song titles and album artist information for some physical DRM-free uncompressed audio format from years gone.

Yes it is, and it works brilliantly for that use case. I like to rip my own CDs so that I know the source of my music and can control the quality. I use Exact Audio Copy which has an automatic download from freedb.org. I have no idea what I'm going to do once it shuts down.

EAC is still around? Is it still being updated?

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#28

Post by Lammy »

Avamander wrote: post #8
jacquesm wrote: post #4

That's a real pity, but they didn't stand a chance against musicbrainz: https://musicbrainz.org/ I ran a similar service for years (daz.com) and eventually shut it down because musicbrainz was not worth competing with though I think we did a better job of tying the links between the various bands by tracking artists from one act to another, also studio artists which made it quite nice for music discovery.

Just wanted to say the same. This is the last time to update all the clients relying on FreeDB to use MusicBrainz, it's about time.

Updating FreeDB clients to use Musixbrainz used to be as easy as changing the API URL, but unfortunately Musicbrainz deprecated their side of that interface a year or so ago: https://blog.metabrainz.org/2018/09/18/freedb-gateway-end-of...

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#29

Post by Lammy »

ianlevesque wrote: post #2

It seems like this is some archaic service that provides song titles and album artist information for some physical DRM-free uncompressed audio format from years gone.

This seems needlessly hostile for something that affects you so little if you don't have a use for it. I have a huge digital (in the FLAC/MP3 sense) music library ripped almost exclusively from my own physical CD collection, and FreeDB has been an absolutely enormous boon to me over the years. CDs may be "ancient" technology these days, but they sound better than Spotify/YouTube/Apple, have effectively zero* DRM, can be resold, and I will continue buying them as long as I'm able. This is a sad day :(

[*] Assuming they care about putting the "CDDA" logo on their product, but luckily those non-standard outliers—Sony rootkit included—mostly came and went with the the 2000s.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#30

Post by Lammy »

StavrosK wrote: post #27
mark-r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is, and it works brilliantly for that use case. I like to rip my own CDs so that I know the source of my music and can control the quality. I use Exact Audio Copy which has an automatic download from freedb.org. I have no idea what I'm going to do once it shuts down.

EAC is still around? Is it still being updated?

Yep! It's been "stable" (>= 1.0) since 2015, has seen a handful of releases since, and will surely see more when the time comes: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=EAC_release_histo...
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