covering the week's top textbooks like Linux bias the good old 3d BCD database service that and its services will be shut down on March 31st 2020 now there are dozens of applications that make it easy to rip a music CD to your computer saving digital versions of the tracks as mp3 or WAV or flak or even other audio files but one of the key services many of those applications rely on is set to shut down at the end of March free DB is a free online database of track listings of millions of CDs without this type of database you'd either end up having to have a bunch of nameless files or you'd have to manually type in the album names the artists info the song titles and other data into your computer every time you rip a CD while free DB isn't the only service of its type it's been one of the most prominent services providing track listing data for nearly two decades free DB data was originally based on information from the CD BB data service which eventually became proprietary software and prohibited lice unlicensed applications from using the data so free DB Wow free BB cddb it all runs together doesn't it but they are a free service operated under a GPL license and it now consists of user generated data so service company magics acquired free DB in 2006 and continued to support the free service until now it's unclear why magics has decided to pull the plug after all of these years fortunately there's an alternative online music database called musicbrainz that's operated under a Creative Commons license that effectively places the data into the public domain which means it should continue to work with third-party software indefinitely no matter what but if you're using an old CD ripping service or music management software that only supports free DB it maybe time to look for some kind of alternative [Music]