TheAudioDB
Rich artist/album/track metadata plus high-quality artwork, biographies, moods, and tempo via a dead-simple key-in-URL API.
TheAudioDB is a community music metadata database known for high-quality artwork (artist fanart, banners, logos, album covers) and descriptive fields like biography, mood, style, tempo, key, and time signature. The v1 JSON API puts the key directly in the path; a public test key '123' works for the basic search endpoints so you can prototype instantly, while a low-cost membership unlocks the rest, the v2 API, and higher limits. It cross-references MusicBrainz MBIDs, so it pairs well with MusicBrainz for enriching a UI with biographies and art.
Free tier
Free test key '123' for basic search endpoints (30 req/min). Full access (all v1 methods + v2, higher limits) requires an $8/month premium membership which grants a personal key. The free test key is genuinely usable; no card-then-charge trap.Rate limits
Free/test key: ~30 requests/minute, and only on a subset of endpoints (e.g. artist/album/track search). Premium tiers raise this to ~100-120 req/min.Auth
API keyBase URL
https://www.theaudiodb.com/api/v1/json/What you'd build with it
- Enrich an artist page with biography, genre, mood, and high-res fanart/banners
- Get track-level descriptors (tempo, key, time signature, mood) for playlist logic
- Cross-reference a MusicBrainz MBID to TheAudioDB's artwork and descriptions
- Fetch album cover art and descriptions for a discography view
Key endpoints
- GET
/{key}/search.php?s={artist}Search an artist; returns bio, genre, mood, formed year, artwork URLs. Works with test key 123. - GET
/{key}/searchalbum.php?s={artist}List an artist's albums with cover art and descriptions. - GET
/{key}/searchtrack.php?s={artist}&t={track}Search a track; returns duration, genre, mood, tempo, key, time signature. - GET
/{key}/artist-mb.php?i={mbid}Look up an artist by MusicBrainz MBID.
Members get the runnable recipe
Sign in free to copy the example request, see a sample response, and read the gotchas.