Distributed media fingerprint repositories

Media fingerprints, which are each derived from and uniquely correspond to a portion of media content, are stored over a distributed database. An instance of one or more information containers of the distributed database are each disposed over two or more computing devices, which are communicatively linked over a data network. The media fingerprints are distributed among the information containers based on a criterion that relates individually to each of the media fingerprints. Upon a query directed to one of the media fingerprints, at least one of the two or more computing devices is selected based on the criterion. The query is executed over the distributed database instance of the selected computing device.