I know that Rob has sort of outlined the connection in his email post: http://www.freeamp.org/pipermail/musicbrainz/2001-March/000573.html However, I was curious if anything more specific had been decided. It would be great to have a small utillity that would update the ID3 tags in a file by looking it up on MusicBrainz and getting the necessary information.

That's certainly a possibility, although not a specific plan. We're still in the process of definining raw programmatic interfaces to our database, so that standalone programs (like the utility you describe, or other media-player/file-handing applictions) can effectively utilize the best of our collected data.

ID3 tags are kind of a mess -- as are many attempts to embed metadata inside a file itself, where it can be altered or become outdated. Our ideal is that you can always get the latest/best metadata from us; fixing problems in locally persistent embedded metadata is just one of many benefits future software from us and others could provide.

Think of ID3 and other embedded metadata as a potential local Bitzi cache.

Johan Pouwelse is working on a such a program, but he's having a few problems with the TRM stuff on 95. I'll bug him about it and try to help him along the way in the next few days.