Freedb

History

The original software behind CDDB was released under the GNU General Public License, and many people submitted CD information thinking the service would also remain free. The license was later changed, however, and some programmers complained that the new license included certain terms that they couldn't accept: if one wanted to access CDDB, one was not allowed to access any other CDDB-like database (such as Freedb), and any programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup.

In March 2001, CDDB, now owned by Gracenote, banned all unlicensed applications from accessing their database. New licenses for CDDB1 (the original version of CDDB) were no longer available, since Gracenote wanted to force programmers to switch to CDDB2 (a new version incompatible with CDDB1 and hence with Freedb). The license change motivated the Freedb project, which is intended to remain free.

In a 2006 interview with Wired, CDDB co-creator Steve Scherf pushed back against criticism that with the license change, Gracenote had privatized a public good created by the work of unpaid volunteers, noting that the data submitted to CDDB before the license remained available for download on freedb, and arguing that the stagnation of freedb at that point showed that "the focus and dedication required for CDDB to grow could not be found in a community effort".

Because it inherited CDDB's limitations, there is no data field in the Freedb database for composer. This limits its usefulness for classical music CDs. Furthermore, CDs in a series are often introduced in the database by different people, resulting in inconsistent spelling and naming conventions across discs.

Freedb was used primarily by media players, cataloguers, audio taggers and CD ripper software. As of version 6 of the Freedb protocol, Freedb accepted and returned UTF-8 data.

Magix acquired Freedb in 2006. MusicBrainz – a project with similar goals – released a Freedb gateway in 2007, allowing users to harvest information from the MusicBrainz database rather than Freedb. This service was shuttered in 2019. A 2011 review observed that "unlike the flat file database structure of freedb.org, MusicBrainz is structured as a relational database, which has allowed MusicBrainz to expand its scope."

In June 2020, Freedb.org went offline (after its impending shutdown had been announced in March 2020). Asked by Heise News about the reasons for the service's demise, Magix stated that the updates required by a changing legal and technical environment had made it uneconomical to maintain. An expert quoted by Heise ruled out server costs as the reason, observing that a single request to the service amounted to just around five kilobytes of transferred data.

gnudb.org, short for 'Global Network Universal Database', has continued to provide the Freedb.org database after Freedb.org was shut down. gnudb.org is not affiliated with the GNU project.

Client software

Freedb‐aware applications include:

• Asunder
• Audiograbber
• CDex
• cdrdao
• Exact Audio Copy
• foobar2000
• fre:ac
• Grip
• JetAudio
• Mp3tag
• MediaMonkey
• puddletag
• Quod Libet

References

References

1. Haas, Karl-Gerhard. (2020-06-23). "CD-Datenbanken: freedb ist tot, es leben die Alternativen!".
2. joerg. (2006-04-24). "Massive duplicate cleanup completed". freedb.
3. Kaye, Robert. (2007-06-25). "FreeDB -> MusicBrainz gateway now available! – MetaBrainz Blog".
4. (2018-09-18). "Freedb gateway: End of life notice, March 18, 2019".
5. "Why freedb.org?". freedb.
6. Van Buskirk, Eliot. (2006-11-13). "Gracenote Defends Its Evolution".
7. "Tips on using CD Trustee - Classical music". Sane Soft, LLC.
8. Brown, Stan. (2016-12-18). "Taming iTunes & iPod for Classical Music (and Non-Classical Too)".
9. kaiser. (2006-10-04). "[MAGIX acquires] freedb.org".
10. (18 September 2018). "Freedb gateway: End of life notice, March 18, 2019".
11. Stutzbach, Alisa Rata. (2011). "Review of MusicBrainz". Notes.
12. "A new home for the freedb.org database to make sure it stays free.".