Recorded works can also store information about release date and country, the CD ID, cover art, acoustic fingerprint, free-form annotation text and other metadata.

[5] End-users can use software that communicates with MusicBrainz to add metadata tags to their digital media files, such as ALAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC.

[6] Until May 16, 2022,[7] cover art was also provided for items on sale at Amazon.com and some other online resources, but CAA is now preferred, because it gives the community more control and flexibility for managing the images.

The popularity of this feature drew in a large user base into the platform, enabling the database to expand rapidly.

The Chromaprint acoustic fingerprinting algorithm, the basis for AcoustID identification service, was started in February 2010 by a long-time MusicBrainz contributor Lukáš Lalinský.

Chromaprint works by analyzing the first two minutes of a track, detecting the strength each of 12 pitch classes, storing these eight times per second.

In December 2004, the MusicBrainz project was turned over to the MetaBrainz Foundation, a non-profit group, by its creator Robert Kaye.

[17] On 28 June 2007, BBC announced that it had licensed MusicBrainz's live data feed to augment their music web pages.

[19][20] MusicBrainz Picard is a free and open-source software application for identifying, tagging, and organising digital audio recordings.

[21] Picard identifies audio files and compact discs by comparing either their metadata or their acoustic fingerprints with records in the database.