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FreeDB Is Shutting Down

freedb.org

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some more details about the files for future reference. (Sizes listed below are measured in bytes.) . freedb-complete-20191203.tar.bz2: bzip2 compressed data curl -I http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/freedb-complete-20191203.tar.bz2 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2019 02:42:04 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) Last-Modified: Tue, 03 Dec 2019 19:14:50 GMT ETag: "542dff-3b460112-8295de80" Accept-Ranges: by…

Would it be too much trouble to ask to put these in the Internet Archive as items while you’re at it?

Good idea. I haven't uploaded to IA before, but it looks like I was able to do it. I put the software metadata attribute on the files, but other than that I wasn't sure of what other metadata to add if any.

The files that were mentioned above should now be available at https://archive.org/details/freedb

After uploading the files I noticed that there were some results on IA already for FreeDB, and one of the results is even a user named freedb which I guess might be an official account of the FreeDB people.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#42
post #37
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.

Sorry, musicbrainz would be good if there were any good interface to enter data. A good part of my CDs is from independent Brazillian musicians. They have no data in musicbrainz and the interfaces to fill it are a pain in ...

What about the interface makes it difficult for you?

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#43
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 Picard can look up discs based on the ToC and disc ID. Other software can implement the algorithm used by MusicBrainz if they wish: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Disc_ID_Calculation

They do also store FreeDB disc IDs, for example: https://musicbrainz.org/cdtoc/lwHl8fGzJyLXQR33ug60E8jhf4k-

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#44
The death of yet another free, bespoke service from the halcyon days of the web.

Every time this happens I get more and more angry about the trash-heap-dumpster-fire services from exit-focused "enterpreneurs" that seek to replace them

How much could freedb have been costing MAGIX? Could they not have handed it off to someone else?

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#45
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Data is never obsolete when it comes to archival, unless you’re a consumer who doesn’t read books or care about the past.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#46

Disclaimer: I know nothing about what led to this situation Found it a bit sad to see this notice followed by a recent news headline saying the project was guaranteed to continue: Continuation of the free database guaranteed With the acquisition of the www.freedb.org domain MAGIX also takes on all duties regarding the worldwide freedb community

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.

I made a torrent:

  magnet:?xt=urn:btih:96208ba12ca7ffdac5b5adccf1a41e484de94f4a&dn=freedb&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tiny-vps.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrentyorg.pl%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fexplodie.org%3A6969%2Fannounce
This includes all the files from your mirror except for the older database backups and the "latest" directory (which is just the extracted version of cddbd-1.5.2.tar.gz).

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#48

The death of yet another free, bespoke service from the halcyon days of the web. Every time this happens I get more and more angry about the trash-heap-dumpster-fire services from exit-focused "enterpreneurs" that seek to replace them How much could freedb have been costing MAGIX? Could they not have handed it off to someone else?

> How much could freedb have been costing MAGIX?

More than zero. MAGIX acquired freedb in 2006, so I assume this decision was an easy one for some middle manager who has been there for a couple years and has no love for some crusty Old Internet service that's beyond obsolete (aka can't figure out how to put ads on it).

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#49
post #40
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.

Apologies, but it feels so strange to me to see FreeDB framed as being "in competition" with anything. It was designed to do exactly one thing: continue a community-focused and technically-compatible version of CDDB after that project pulled a bait-and-switch in the late '90s by taking the data that was generously- and freely-submitted by users and then spinning themselves into the for-profit Gracenote LLC: https://e…

It's the correct link but it never did any of that beyond some trials, the free mp3 download was a promo given to us for free by bands that wanted to be highlit, I think we did three of those or so before canning it, it just didn't feel right, but some people really liked it, and it might have been a way to generate some revenue without bugging the users.

Daz was essentially a wiki which allowed people to link artists, bands and media. Unfortunately we never got to the point where we got permission to stream media, but plenty of artists thought that was what we were doing (we just did the legal maximum sample that you could distribute under fair use). I can't count the number of angry 'cease-and-desist' letters that we received, invariably followed by sheepish apologies that they never actually downloaded anything from the site. But some artists really liked it and it was quite interesting to be 'pen pals' with some of the very well known names in the industry.

The whole reason I built it because I saw the writing on the wall with Gracenote, I contributed plenty to CDDB and suddenly saw my own work be used for profit.

Maybe instead of looking at a blog have a look at the archive.org snapshots of the website over time, they give a much better picture. I also built a media player / file sharing client that used daz.com for the meta data called mxchg.com.

But music on the web is very hard to make work as a long term thing, the bills have to be paid and even if the content is user generated you still need to supervise it and ensure that people don't pull tricks to vandalize it or destroy it.

I'm very much impressed with how Musicbrainz has been able to keep it clean, free and have such stamina, that's serious dedication.

Re: FreeDB Is Shutting Down

#50

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.

I made a torrent: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:96208ba12ca7ffdac5b5adccf1a41e484de94f4a&dn=freedb&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tiny-vps.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrentyorg.pl%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2…

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