MusicBrainz

MusicBrainz is a project by the MetaBrainz Foundation that aims to create a collaborative music database similar to the freedb project. MusicBrainz was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the Compact Disc Database (CDDB), a database used by software applications to look up audio CD information on the Internet.

MusicBrainz has expanded its goals beyond serving as a CD metadata repository, evolving into a structured online database for music information, including details about artists, performers, and songwriters.

MusicBrainz captures information about artists, their recorded works, and the relationships between them. Recorded works entries capture the album title, track titles, and the length of each track at a minimum. These entries are maintained by volunteer editors who follow community written style guidelines. Recorded works can also store information about release date and country, the CD ID, cover art, acoustic fingerprint, free-form annotation text and other metadata. As of May 2026, MusicBrainz contains information on over 2.8 million artists, 5.4 million releases, and 38.7 million recordings. End-users can use software that communicates with MusicBrainz to add metadata tags to their digital media files, such as AAC, ALAC, FLAC, Monkey's Audio. MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WavPack.