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MusicBrainz API

Open music encyclopedia: artists, releases, recordings and MBIDs, no key

MusicBrainz is a community-maintained open music encyclopedia with a free web service covering artists, releases, recordings, labels, and works, all linked by stable MusicBrainz IDs (MBIDs). Non-commercial use is free with no API key; you must send a descriptive User-Agent. It is the canonical free source for cross-linking music metadata.

Free tier

Free for non-commercial use; no key, no signup

Rate limits

~1 request/second per IP (average); a meaningful User-Agent header is mandatory

Auth

No key

Base URL

https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2

What you'd build with it

  • Resolve an artist or album to a stable MBID for linking across services
  • Enrich a music dataset with canonical metadata and relationships
  • Cross-reference cover art via the linked Cover Art Archive (coverartarchive.org)

Key endpoints

  • GET/artistSearch artists by name (?query=&fmt=json)
  • GET/release-groupSearch release groups (albums/EPs/singles)
  • GET/recording/{mbid}Look up a recording by MBID with inc relations
  • GET/release/{mbid}Look up a release by MBID
Members

Members get the runnable recipe

Sign in free to copy the example request, see a sample response, and read the gotchas.

Tags

musicmetadataopen-datacatalogue