The MetaBrainz Team
Robert Kaye — Executive Director
Robert is the founder and lead geek for MusicBrainz, and Executive Director of the MetaBrainz Foundation, the non-profit organization that pays the bills for MusicBrainz. After studying Computer Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, he joined Xing Technology where he shaped the MP3 efforts and then spent time for the dot com boom on EMusic’s FreeAmp team. While at EMusic he started working on MusicBrainz, the open music encyclopedia, and fell in love with Open Source software.
Robert is also an active hardware hacker, creating art projects for Burning Man and Nowhere. He is the co-founder of Party Robotics where he co-created Bartendro the open source cocktail robot.
Originally from Germany, he now lives in Barcelona, Spain.
Michael Wiencek — Senior Software Engineer
Michael is the senior developer for MusicBrainz, residing in his hometown of Chicago. He heard about MusicBrainz when he was still in grammar school, started editing in high school as his music collection got unwieldy, and participated in three GSoC projects during college. In his copious free time he enjoys going to concerts, making music no one will ever hear, binge-watching old TV shows, and being the best drummer in the world on Rock Band 4.
- Chat: bitmap
- GitHub: mwiencek
- Last.fm: fancy_lb_proxy
Nicolás Tamargo — Style Leader/Customer Support/Community Manager/Software Engineer
Nicolás started (and still moonlights as) a hardcore editor, because he just likes organizing data that much. He was eventually offered the style leader position, in which he helps the community decide how all the data should be organized. Later he was put in charge of answering any support issues, and finally started to actually write code to fix those complaints (and sometimes, to be honest, to cause new ones!). When he's not actively working for MetaBrainz, he's busy editing MusicBrainz or traveling around trying to watch some wildlife.
Originally from Spain, he now lives in Tartu, Estonia.
- Chat: reosarevok
- MusicBrainz: reosarevok
- GitHub: reosarevok
- iNaturalist: reosarevok
Laurent Monin — System Administrator
A zealous music devotee, Laurent Monin first stumbled upon MusicBrainz and Picard in attempts to codify his vast collection of over 1500 CDs. In addition to being a music fanatic, Laurent has been programming on anything with more than 1 bit since 1982 and has been an esteemed Linux system administrator since 1998.
With his extensive repertoire of skills and passions, Laurent has actively contributed to a myriad of open source projects, notably ELinks and Geeqie, and loves to tinker with the hardware of various audio gadgets, including amplifiers and loudspeakers. However, Laurent's contributions do not end there. He currently sustains the MetaBrainz servers while residing near Besançon, France.
- Chat: zas
Yvan Rivierre — Software Engineer
Yvan is a software engineer for MusicBrainz and comes from Nancy, France. Initially he discovered MusicBrainz as a simple user, then started to edit it, then reported issues, then fixed issues reported by others, and got hired in the end. Besides that, he casually plays music, listens to music, eats music, … music, for an healthy way of life.
- Chat: yvanzo
Nicolas Pelletier — BookBrainz Lead, Software Engineer & Graphic Designer
Nicolas comes from a graphic design background, but was always a computer and electronics tinkerer at heart. He followed his curiosity into the land of development never to return again. He has always had a passion for music and books, and enjoyed working on MetaBrainz projects so much he eventually joined the team.
In his free time, Nicolas likes to go rock climbing, hence the nickname, and designing and building structures.
Born in Canada and raised in France, Nicolas now lives in Barcelona, Spain.
- Chat: monkey
- GitHub: MonkeyDo
Kartik Ohri — ListenBrainz/CritiqueBrainz/Android App Lead & Junior Software Engineer
Kartik joined the MetaBrainz community during Google Code-In 2018 and since then there has been no looking back. Now as a contractor for MetaBrainz, Kartik leads the development of the MusicBrainz Android App and CritiqueBrainz projects. He also spends a lot of time on the AcousticBrainz and ListenBrainz projects.
- Chat: lucifer
- GitHub: amCap1712
Adam James — System Administrator
Adam is a system administrator and occasional developer with over 15 years experience in Linux and Open Source software. A huge music lover, he became an active MusicBrainz editor whilst organising his digital music collection, which led to his involvement in the MetaBrainz community. Adam's time is being provided on a pro-bono basis by Transitiv Technologies, where he is a consultant and technical director.
Julian Anderson — System Administrator
Julian took a liking to terminals as soon as he could get his hands on one, and in high school, he began building, breaking, and rebuilding virtual machines in an effort to learn how they worked. Over the course of the following decade, he refined his skills and eventually began a career in IT, with a focus on helping organizations make the most of their digital infrastructure. Along the way, he developed a sizable music library, as well as a growing need to manage this library; this need led him towards the MetaBrainz community. In addition to assisting the MetaBrainz team with their system administration efforts, Julian enjoys listening to a wide variety of music (& contributing to MusicBrainz accordingly), taking in natural scenery, reading, and traveling.
Simon Hartman — Design, UX Consultant & Social Media Jockey
Simon has been contributing data and complaints about UX and design to MusicBrainz since 2009. In 2022 he started complaining about UX and design in an official capacity. He lives in New Zealand and has 15 years experience across various graphic design/comms/marketing roles.
Ansh Goyal — Junior Software Engineer
Ansh is a Software Engineer and is based in New Delhi, India. He joined MetaBrainz as a Google Summer of Code student in 2022 and has been a part of the community since then. He started contributing to CritiqueBrainz and BookBrainz and is now also working on ListenBrainz. In his leisure moments, Ansh enjoys binge-watching movies and listening to music.
- Chat: ansh
- GitHub: anshg1214
- ListenBrainz: anshgoyal31
Voluntary Project Leaders
Akshat Tiwari — Junior Software Engineer
Akshat started contributing to the MusicBrainz Android App out of love for the project and after dwelling on the variety of projects MetaBrainz operates, he decided to focus on the MusicBrainz project. He was accepted as a Google Summer of Code student and is now a contractor for MetaBrainz, where he focuses on the improvement of the MusicBrainz user interface and user experience. Akshat has always been fascinated by the creativity of people. He resides in New Delhi, India.
Param Singh — Former ListenBrainz team leader
Param is a software engineer and the former leader of the ListenBrainz project. Param joined MetaBrainz as a Google Summer of Code student in 2017 and has been part of MetaBrainz since then. Param loves both programming and music a lot, so MetaBrainz was love at first sight for him. When not staring at a screen, Param plays some chess and tries to listen to new music.
- Chat: param
- GitHub: paramsingh
- Last.fm: singhparam
- ListenBrainz: iliekcomputers
David "drsaunde" Saunders — MusicBrainz Areas
David is in charge of adding new areas to MusicBrainz when they're requested by the community. He has been active in MusicBrainz for over a decade, and is one of the few editors to have surpassed the one million edits mark. A proud Canadian, when he's not in MusicBrainz, he is often enjoying some of his favourite things, such as THC, TFC, CTS & GnT's, as well as cheering for the Toronto Raptors.
- Chat: drsaunders
- MusicBrainz: drsaunde
Akira Holm — MusicBrainz Instruments
ApeKattQuest or MonkeyPython has been a MusicBrainz editor since 2004, and is in charge of adding and improving the musical instruments in MusicBrainz (the very unseriously-named, yet quite important "Instrument Inserter" position). When not looking all over the internet (and the library!) for instrument data, his other hobbies include playing games, listening to all sorts of different music, Lupin III, colouring, and collecting all sorts of things, from stickers and stamps to bottlecaps.
- Chat: ApeKattQuest, MonkeyPython (plus a whole lot of other Lupin III references)
- MusicBrainz: ApeKattQuest, MonkeyPython
- ListenBrainz: ApeKattQuest, MonkeyPython