[SOLVED] With Freedb going away at the end of the month, what are my options?

[beichman]

So freedb is nicely integrated into MMW4 and when ripping CDs it mostly finds track info which avoids manual input. However at the freedb website it now says "urgent notice, freedb is shutting down march 31st. Reading some posts, it seems MMW5 (five), which is in beta may allow one to choose an alternative provider, such as musicbrainz, but I'm never happy going up to a beta release if I can avoid it. Any other choices. I'm in the process of ripping my entire CD collection to MMW and I'm not sure if I can finish it before the end of the month! Any thoughts?

LATEST VERSION ADDRESS THIS ISSUE AND CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE

[Lowlander]

I'm not sure about MM4, but MM5 already switched to a different provider for this.

[beichman]

I'm aware that MMW5 has switched to MusicBrainz (or so I read elsewhere in the Forum, complete with people asking for discogs as well!), but that would entail moving to MMW5 which is still in beta, and around which there is this warning:

"Test Notes:
-- This is pre-release software and is being provided for feedback/testing and development purposes -- please backup your files to protect against data loss.
Installation of MediaMonkey 5 can be on top of MediaMonkey 4, or independent of MediaMonkey 4. If you run both versions, changes made in one DB will not be reflected in the other.
-- If you have a MediaMonkey 3/4 Gold license, Gold functionality will be active until MediaMonkey 5 licenses are made available for sale.
-- Scripts / Addons from MediaMonkey 4 are not compatible. "

Elsewhere one of the developers states it still has a tendency to crash, which is why it has not been officially released.

So I'm reluctant to move to MMW5 as a solution, and I was wondering if there might be a patch available or coming to point MMW4 at an alternative site. Otherwise there is a lot of manual effort coming my way, or some risk.

john

[Lowlander]

MM5 is beta, but is what I've switched to full time. It does crash, but work with developers and they'll fix that. I have not had actual problems to my files or database this late in the beta cycle, but keeping a backup of the database (can be done by MM5 itself) is something I recommend.

I assume that they're may be too much under the hood that needs to be changed in MM4 for it being worthwhile while being so far along in the MM5 development cycle.

There might be a way to use an alternative freeDB server in MM4 in the meanwhile, but I'm not familiar with this.

[beichman]

Hi Lowlander
thanks for the vote of confidence in MMW 5 as reasonable safe -- buy yes backing up, always in place, will have to be a couple of times a day as I go through moving all of my CDs to disk. I'd hate having to redo an entire day's work.
That said, I agree redoing MMW4 to point to something other than freedb on April 1st might not be a task the development team wants to do -- BTW thanks to all of you for your hard work -- unless and until they get flooded with angry MMW4 user posts wondering what's going on. We shall see.
thanks for you posts.

[Lowlander]

It depends, most tags are saved in the files too, thus can easily be recovered. It's more around Playlists and Play History that the database is important.

[DennyMo]

Freedb look-ups still worked for me until this last night, so looks like the ride is over. How do I set up MM4 to look at musicbrainz or another db for CD info?

[relay22]

Freedb does not seem to be working. Is there another way to tag ripped cds?

[Lowlander]

With some info like Album Artist and Album you should be able to use Discogs Tagger: http://www.mediamonkey.com/broken-auto-tag.htm?l=en if you don't want to use MediaMonkey 5 yet.

[DennyMo]

With some info like Album Artist and Album you should be able to use Discogs Tagger: http://www.mediamonkey.com/broken-auto-tag.htm?l=en if you don't want to use MediaMonkey 5 yet.

Thanks. Not quite as simple as the freedb lookup was, but still workable. And easier than typing it in myself.

[yarguy]

Freedb look-ups still worked for me until this last night, so looks like the ride is over. How do I set up MM4 to look at musicbrainz or another db for CD info?

A better choice is to use a better ripping program, such as dbpoweramp or exact audio copy (the latter is free). Both give you more options for metadata than MM and more options for how the cd is ripped. I have been using dbpoweramp for more than 3 years and would never consider the inadequate ripper in MM (or even the one in MM5) again.

[jebirr]

Took me a while to figure out about the demise of freedb.org for getting CD metadata. Switched to MusicBrainz to no avail. Getting "There was an error while connecting to Freedb: Socket Error # 10060 Connection timed out." Within Tools->Options->Network have following freedb Settings:
Checked Query automatically
Protocol: HTTP
Server Name: freedb.musicbrainz.org

Kinda wished MediaMonkey had sent out a patch/update to "update these" settings given the demise of old freedb.org.

Any help appreciated.

Jim

[Peke]

Does anyone have "freedb-complete-20200601.tar.bz2" or "freedb-update-20200501-20200601.tar.bz2" from FreeDB.org before it got down on 10th of June 2020?

Google cached listing http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... ub/freedb/

[jebirr]

Freedb look-ups still worked for me until this last night, so looks like the ride is over. How do I set up MM4 to look at musicbrainz or another db for CD info?

A better choice is to use a better ripping program, such as dbpoweramp or exact audio copy (the latter is free). Both give you more options for metadata than MM and more options for how the cd is ripped. I have been using dbpoweramp for more than 3 years and would never consider the inadequate ripper in MM (or even the one in MM5) again.

Why do you consider ripper in MM inadequate especially for FLAC?

[Lowlander]

MediaMonkey 4's next release should have an alternative, MediaMonkey 5 already does. You can also use Auto-Tag from Web with the Discogs Tagger in the meanwhile if you enter Album and Album Artist.