MusicBrainz is an open source database/encyclopaedia of the world’s music. It stores information about the music and not the actual recordings. It operates in a similar way to Wikipedia in that it is maintained by the community of users. It collects information about music regardless of type or where it’s from, or whether it is published or not. Most of the information stored is publicly available and free for anyone to use.
If you are UK based and uploading your music to the BBC Introducing uploader it will ask you for your MusicBrainz ID
MusicBrainz state their aims to be:
- The ultimate source of music information by allowing anyone to contribute and releasing the data under open licenses.
- The universal lingua franca for music by providing a reliable and unambiguous form of music identification, enabling both people and machines to have meaningful conversations about music.