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MusicBrainz Identifier
One of MusicBrainz' aims is to be the universal lingua franca for music by providing a reliable and unambiguous form of music identification; this music identification is performed through the use of MusicBrainz Identifiers (MBIDs).
In a nutshell, an MBID is a 36 character
Universally Unique Identifier
that is permanently assigned to each entity in the database, i.e.
artists
release groups
releases
recordings
works
labels
areas
places
and
URLs
. MBIDs are also assigned to
Tracks
, though tracks do not share many other properties of entities. For example, the artist
Queen
has an artist MBID of
0383dadf-2a4e-4d10-a46a-e9e041da8eb3
, and their song
Bohemian Rhapsody
has a recording MBID of
b1a9c0e9-d987-4042-ae91-78d6a3267d69
An entity can have more than one MBID. When an entity is merged into another, its MBIDs redirect to the other entity.
Contents
Using MBIDs for disambiguation
Using MBIDs in applications
2.1
Taggers
2.2
Music players
2.3
Flickr
Uniform Resource Identifier
See also
Using MBIDs for disambiguation
MBIDs are used to disambiguate between entities that share the same name in the
MusicBrainz Database
For example, there are two popular artists with the name "John Williams":
John Williams
, the soundtrack composer and conductor, has an artist MBID of
53b106e7-0cc6-42cc-ac95-ed8d30a3a98e
John Williams
, the classical guitar player, has an artist MBID of
8b8a38a9-a290-4560-84f6-3d4466e8d791
And there are two different singles titled "99 Red Balloons":
99 Red Balloons
, the original by
Nena
, has a release MBID of
189002e7-3285-4e2e-92a3-7f6c30d407a2
99 Red Balloons
, the cover by
Goldfinger
, has a release MBID of
c9f91cdc-984e-4303-9a51-4ac0dfa2348f
Using MBIDs in applications
MBIDs play an important role when managing a digital music collection and there are several applications that are
MusicBrainz enabled
Taggers
Multiple MBIDs may be written to a file by a MusicBrainz enabled
tagger application
. They are commonly used to identify:
the recording itself
the release
the label
the track artist
the release artist
For more information, see the
tag documentation
and the
tag mappings
of the MusicBrainz Picard tagger.
Music players
Music player applications can take advantage of a file that has been tagged with MBIDs to do things such as:
query the
MusicBrainz Database
for further information about the file or related entities
reliably search for related files based on a unique string, instead of by potentially ambiguous strings such as
artist name
or
release title
Flickr
See
Flickr Machine Tag
for information about adding MBIDs to photos on Flickr.
Uniform Resource Identifier
URIs can be constructed by prefixing the MBID with the address of the MusicBrainz server and the entity type, for example
Queen's
URI becomes
, and
Bohemian Rhapsody's
URI becomes
See also
There are several other identifiers that MusicBrainz uses:
Disc ID
: An ID calculated from the TOC of a CD.
AcoustID
: the open-source
acoustic fingerprint
system used by MusicBrainz since 2013.
Barcode
: Machine-readable numbers used as stock control mechanisms by retailers.
ISRC
: The International Standard Recording Code, an identification system for audio and music video recordings.
ISWC
: The International Standard Musical Work Code, an identification system for musical works.
IPI
, a number identifying persons connected to ISWC registered works (authors, composers, etc.).
PUID
: The IDs used in the proprietary
MusicDNS
audio fingerprinting
system operated by
MusicIP
(used by MusicBrainz 2006–2013)
ISNI
: The International Standard Name Identifier, used to uniquely identify artists and/or labels.
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MusicBrainz Identifier
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