[mb-users] Last.fm launches audio fingerprinting stuff

[Robert Kaye]

I'm really sorry for not jumping in sooner, but between Burning Man  
and a stiff cold that I picked up in the desert I've been very slow  
to return to the land of MusicBrainz -- my apologies.

On Aug 30, 2007, at 1:18 AM, mll wrote:

> http://blog.last.fm/2007/08/29/audio-fingerprinting-for-clean-metadata
>
> My feeling: the tip of the last.fm <-> MB relationship iceberg that  
> I can
> see is the size of a nail, and it's very frustrating. I'd be  
> interesed in
> some authorized and knowledgeable MB member telling us clearly  
> where this
> relationship is going ?

Well, I am not sure I can tell you much more beyond what you already  
know.

Last.fm and MusicBrainz are in the last phases of hammering out the  
data license contract. Back in June we had a gentleman's agreement in  
place that agreed on the general terms of the contract. Since then  
Last.fm, myself and CBS lawyers have been chasing each other to nail  
down all of the nuances of the contract and just this week we  
hammered out the last details and I am waiting for the final contract  
now. I would expect to finalize that contract before September is out.

This contract covers the live data feed that we're providing to  
last.fm and nothing else. This means that last.fm will use the  
MusicBrainz data... in some way -- the exact way I am not sure about,  
but it sounds very much like they will use it to improve the metadata  
as part of their offering. They will, however, make last.fm  
addressable with MusicBrainz IDs -- meaning that there will be some  
URL scheme were you can go to an artist/release in last.fm if you  
know the MB ID.

That's realistically all I can tell you, since that is all I know. We  
have put no restrictions in place (other than re-selling our data  
feed) that prevents them from doing anything specific. I hope that we  
will see MB IDs present in the fingerprinting services they offer --  
this is very much in our interest since it goes one step further for  
establishing MusicBrainz IDs as the de-facto industry standard for  
IDing music.

I hope this helps!

--

--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob at eorbit.net     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net