MusicBrainz
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 3 music databases
Free, freely licensed music metadata database that people use to tag, catalogue and look up releases. Critics mainly cite a poor user experience.
Free, freely licensed music metadata database that people use to tag, catalogue and look up releases. Critics mainly cite a poor user experience.
28 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 24
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 24 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Detailed release and edition metadata
“I greatly appreciate the pedantry and flexibility for noting down when creative works are the same versus where they differ”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “The Perils of ISBN” “Listing every issue of an album in every country and every format is precisely what Musicbrainz was founded for”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “RSS Feeds for Last.fm” “incredible well thought out postgres database that differentiates, for example, a recording from a release”
Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “Backing up Spotify” Free, openly licensed data
“Musicbrainz can represent nearly everything musically related and its all freely licensed”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Beets: The music geek’s media organizer” “it's a quick and easy way to contribute and then it's available for everyone”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “AI Generated Music Barred from Bandcamp” Helpful for tagging music files
“Beets is what got me into MusicBrainz. It's an incredible resource.”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Beets: The music geek’s media organizer” “super helpful for figuring metadata tags”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Picard 3.0” Broad coverage of releases
“I very rarely come across releases that don't already exist on MusicBrainz.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Picard 3.0” “It has a huge amount of stuff - it already had 95% of my collection”
Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “The Perils of ISBN”
Other music databases people recommend
The two most recommended other music databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MusicBrainzThis page | 24 | 4 | 86% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Discogs | 12 | 2 | 86% | 7 | — | Approved |
| RateYourMusic | 8 | 6 | 57% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 30 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“super helpful for figuring metadata tags”
“I very rarely come across releases that don't already exist on MusicBrainz.”
“I love MusicBrainz for everything they did”
“their JSON dumps can be coaxed into giving the sort of metadata that I wanted to get from RYM”
“For this audience, there are few decent, clean metadata sources.”
“Listing every issue of an album in every country and every format is precisely what Musicbrainz was founded for”
“MusicBrainz is an excellent resource marred by horrible user experience”
“MusicBrainz[1] is also doing god's work.”
“It has much better API access”
“Flesh out missing albums and metadata on musicbrainz.”
“I think its more effective to click around on Music Brainz and Wikipedia”
“the majority of my tracks weren’t in their database at all”
“It has a huge amount of stuff - it already had 95% of my collection”
“I wound up making an account, uploading the info, managing the 29 different reasons a neophyte makes a mistake”
“I greatly appreciate the pedantry and flexibility for noting down when creative works are the same versus where they differ”
“it's a quick and easy way to contribute and then it's available for everyone”
“Grateful for Metabrainz putting in this work to keep the service up.”
“I downloaded it in the order of an hour; if I need a MusicBrainz lookup, I just do a local query.”
“incredible well thought out postgres database that differentiates, for example, a recording from a release”
“MB is one of the best resources out there - precisely because of what you said”
“The value that MusicBrainz adds is the community editor who spent a few hours going through YouTube videos”
“it would be amazing, if they built a MusicBrainz like service around it”
“Musicbrainz can do events”
“You're still assuming that all of a person's music metadata _belongs_ in a global database.”
“Musicbrainz can represent nearly everything musically related and its all freely licensed”
“that's the exact opposite of making my life easier”
“Beets is what got me into MusicBrainz. It's an incredible resource.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.