Making Metadata: The Case of MusicBrainz Jess Hemerly [email protected] May 5, 2011 Master of Information Management and Systems: Final Project School of Information University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 Making Metadata: The Case of MusicBrainz Jess Hemerly School of Information University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 [email protected] Summary......................................................................................................................................... 1! I.! Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 2! II.! Background ............................................................................................................................. 4! A.! The Problem of Music Metadata......................................................................................... 4! B.! Why MusicBrainz?.............................................................................................................. 8! C.! Collective Action and Constructed Cultural Commons.................................................... 10! III.! Methodology........................................................................................................................ 14! A.! Quantitative Methods........................................................................................................ 14! Survey Design and Implementation...................................................................................... 15! Python Scraping & Data Gathering ...................................................................................... 16! B.! Qualitative Methods .......................................................................................................... 17! Participant Observation......................................................................................................... 17! Editor Interviews................................................................................................................... 17! IV.! Findings ............................................................................................................................... 20! A.! Demographic Overview .................................................................................................... 20! B.! How MusicBrainz Works.................................................................................................. 24! C.! Patterns & Processes ......................................................................................................... 29! Patterns of Contribution........................................................................................................ 29! Peer-produced Information Science...................................................................................... 33! Distributed Work and Musical Taste .................................................................................... 35! Discovering MusicBrainz ..................................................................................................... 38! Music Discovery through Contribution ................................................................................ 40! Consensus and Resolution .................................................................................................... 41! D.! Attitude & Motivation....................................................................................................... 44! The Importance of Open Source........................................................................................... 44! Sense of Community............................................................................................................. 45! Reward & Responsibility...................................................................................................... 48! Barriers and Tradeoffs .......................................................................................................... 52! The Act of Editing ................................................................................................................ 53! E.! Future Work ...................................................................................................................... 55! V.! Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 56! VI.! Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................. 58! VII.! References .......................................................................................................................... 59! VIII.! Appendix........................................................................................................................... 62! Hemerly ii Index of Tables and Figures Table 1: Completed Editor Interviews.......................................................................................... 18! Table 2: Summary of Scraped Profile Data .................................................................................. 21! Table 3: Years Registered............................................................................................................. 22! Table 4: Which of the following activities have you performed? ................................................ 30! Table 5: Likert-type Questions on Voting .................................................................................... 31! Table 6: Edits vs. Votes (all-time, as of January 15, 2011).......................................................... 32! Table 7: Information Source Likert-type Question....................................................................... 35! Table 8: How did you learn about MusicBrainz? ......................................................................... 38! Table 9: t-test Results: Edits entered based on responses to “How did you learn about MusicBrainz?” ...................................................................................................................... 39! Table 10: MusicBrainz has helped me expand my knowledge about music. ............................... 41! Table 11: t-test Results — Have you ever discovered an artist through MusicBrainz? ............... 41! Table 12: I have had to defend my edits to other people.............................................................. 43! Table 13: Open Source Likert-type Questions (Registered Users Only)...................................... 44! Table 14: As a contributor, I feel part of a community and its mission. ...................................... 47! Table 15: Likert-type Recognition (Auto-Editors vs. Non-Auto-Editors).................................... 49! Table 16: Chi-Square Table, Auto-Editor Hypothesis A.............................................................. 49! Table 17: t-test Results, Auto-Editor Hypothesis B...................................................................... 49! Table 18: t-test Results, Auto-Editor Hypothesis C...................................................................... 50! Table 19: t-test Results, Auto-Editor Hypothesis D ..................................................................... 51! Table 20: Likert-type Questions relating to Accuracy and Quality of Contributor...................... 53! Table 21: Likert-type questions relating to the act of editing....................................................... 54! Figure 1: Top 25 Representations of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" [48]...................................... 4! Figure 2: When did you last log in to MusicBrainz?.................................................................... 16! Figure 3: Gender Makeup of Age Groups (All Respondents) ...................................................... 20! Figure 4: Respondents by Region................................................................................................. 21! Figure 5: Total Edits Entered (Respondents who provided usernames)....................................... 22! Figure 6: Respondents by Number of Years Registered............................................................... 23! Figure 7: Screenshots of the Tagging Process .............................................................................. 25! Figure 8: Screenshot of the Edit Release Title form..................................................................... 27! Figure 9: Likert-type Questions Regarding Musical Taste and Knowledge................................. 36! Figure 10: Donation Check Message............................................................................................ 45! Hemerly iii Making Metadata: The Case of MusicBrainz Jess Hemerly School of Information University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 [email protected] Summary MusicBrainz is a “community music metadatabase” and an “open music encyclopedia” to which users contribute information about artists, releases, tracks, and other aspects of music toward the goal of creating a “comprehensive music site” [1,2]. As a peer-produced music metadatabase, MusicBrainz is a constructed cultural commons where users develop and distribute musical knowledge through the community website, an institution that supports and manages the pooling of metadata into a database [56]. Studying how MusicBrainz works and why people contribute builds on a growing body of research that seeks to understand how contributors