I've gotten a few (3) e-mails asking about why we aren't using Music Brainz for our metadata project, and I think I need to elaborate on what we are doing.

First I do not mean to slag Music Brainz in any way. In fact we are using Music Brainz for our project. We think it is valuable. However, we cannot avoid the main issue that updating and editing Music Brainz is tedious and complex, and that is the nut of the problem. Wikipedia, with all its crazy syntax, is easy to update and it is immediately satisfying. The same cannot be said about Music Brainz.

So, where should our efforts be?
Improving the update experience in Music Brainz would be a daunting task. I have been involved in a number of massive media repository projects, and I know the can of worms that will result. It is a major effort that will result in major arguments, accusations, and acrimony. Librarian verus tagger. If you have been there you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, no amount of talking can explain the pain - you have to experience it yourself.

OR

Take all the hard work (data entry) that has been put into Music Brainz, augment it with Wikipedia data and make it dead easy for any person or service to update. This also means not caring about rigid data structures. This we can do relatively quickly. Once it's done, it's open for everyone to use including Music Brainz. In fact, I'd be keen to have metabrainz.org take over the project if it looks like there is broad support for what we are doing.

Our project is not meant to replace Music Brainz in any way. We want to have an open and dead-easy-to-update music metadata web service for fans. It uses Music Brainz it is not trying to be a replacement for Music Brainz.