freedb
| freedb | |
|---|---|
| www.freedb.org | |
| description | Online music database |
| languages | English (data: all languages) |
freedb was a free database of information about the content of audio CDs . This information is available on the Internet and enables compatible programs to output metadata such as the title of the album and the individual tracks when playing or reading an audio CD. The shutdown of the services from freedb.org was announced on March 31, 2020 and has now been completed.
functionality
The basis for identifying a CD is the so-called disk ID , which was calculated from the table of contents ( TOC ) of the CD using a specific process . Essentially, a kind of checksum was formed from the start sectors and lengths of the individual tracks . Because these checksum for a CD is in principle not necessarily unique, it comes with growing size of the freedb archive increasingly to so-called. Collisions of disk IDs ( disk-id collisions ), so that when you add a new audio CD in an emergency to a another genre must be used.
With the disk ID as the key, various information is stored in the database:
- title
- Interpreter
- year
-
genre
- Predefined categories:
- blues, classical, country, data (ISO9660 and other data CDs), folk, jazz, newage, reggae, rock (including funk, soul, rap, pop, industrial, metal etc.), soundtrack (films, performances), misc (anything that doesn't fit into the previous categories)
- Information on the individual tracks
- title
- Interpreter
- length
- Further information
The information is added to the database by volunteers and is licensed under the GPL . The input is made using appropriate functions in suitable programs for playing or reading audio CDs. CDs that have already been recorded can then be automatically provided with the above information when they are read out.
root
The forerunner of freedb was the Compact Disc Database (CDDB), designed in 1996 by Ti Kan with the CDDB server software by Steve Scherf. Freedb was created after the CDDB operator Gracenote changed the license terms in 2001 and the use of the Gracenote service for developers of commercial software had to be paid for (the Gracenote license terms, however, allow free use of non-commercial software; as of August 18 2007). At the same time, CDDB switched to an expanded but proprietary data format.
Further history of the project
On July 1, 2006 it became known that the two main supervisors of freedb, Jörg Hevers and Ari Sundolm, could not agree on the future of the project with the owner Michael Kaiser. The problem was triggered by the Australian Andrew Smith. He worked on a new edition of the underlying software, but did not publish any source code for many months . Instead, he announced in Internet forums that he wanted to earn money with the project himself. When Smith registered the domain "freedb2.org", he caused such disputes that Hevers and Sundolm vacated their posts at the same time. Kaiser was unable to continue freedb with the remaining resources and put the project up for sale. The condition was a continuation in its free form. The company Magix then took over freedb.org in mid-September 2006 and relocated the entire database to its own server. New mirror servers have also been set up and a further development of the project in GPL has been guaranteed.
The website founded by Smith as freedb2 in early December 2005 has since been renamed “TrackType.org” and later discontinued. For similar reasons, “gnudb.org”, licensed under GPL, went online in October 2006. This database is also based on a memory dump of the freedb database.
After MusicBrainz maintained an interface via the freedb protocol for 11 years, access has only been possible directly since March 2019.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Julius Stiebert: Magix takes over freedb.org , Golem.de , October 6, 2006
- ↑ Freedb gateway: End of life notice, March 18, 2019 - MetaBrainz Blog. In: blog.metabrainz.org. September 18, 2018, accessed October 19, 2019 .