Frequently Asked Questions

What is the purpose of this project?

There are several companies that provide audio identification services. Unfortunately, so far there was none of them published the fingerprint database and/or the source code for the server architecture. This project started as an experiment to implement a large-scale and fully open source audio fingerprinting solution, that can be used by other open source software without depending on proprietary software. The primary focus is on integration with the MusicBrainz music metadata database. There is a long way to go to reach the goal, but you can help by submitting more fingerprints, helping developing the software or just spreading the word.

Can the service identify short audio snippets?

No, it can't. The service has been designed for identifying full audio files. We would like to eventually support also this use case, but it's not a priority at the moment. Note that even when this will be implemented, it will be still intended for matching the original audio (e.g. for the purpose of tracklisting a long audio stream), not audio with background noise recorded on a phone.

Why do I need to log in to submit fingerprints?

We want to be able to track fingerprint submission for statistical and data quality reasons. If every user has an unique API key, we can generate list of top contributors and similar statistics. Additionally, if we need to do some data cleanup, it's much easier to do if we know the source of the data. You can use any OpenID provider to log in or you can use your existing MusicBrainz user account.

Why is my API key not working?

There are two kinds of API keys. The one you see immediately after logging in is an user API key that is meant to be entered into an application like MusicBrainz Picard for the purpose of identifying yourself or. This is the API key that needs to be sent to the "submit" endpoint as the "user" parameter.

If you are developing an new application and need an API key for the "client" parameter, you need an application API key. You need to register your application to get one.