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MusicBrainz

The open music encyclopedia's read API, JSON on request

🎬 MediaHEALTHYchecked 6h ago
AUTH NONECORS ✓AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ✓

MusicBrainz is a community-maintained database of artists, releases, and recordings, and its web service lets you look entities up by MBID (append ?fmt=json for JSON). Play nice: it asks for roughly one request per second and a descriptive User-Agent. Core data is CC0.

82HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
▶ Run liveDocs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 82 · healthy
Uptime history
90.2%90 days
86.7%30 days
660P50 · ms
4770P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 91 ms, slowest 4770 ms, most recent 519 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da?fmt=json

{
  "type": "Group",
  "id": "5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da",
  "name": "Nirvana",
  "sort-name": "Nirvana",
  "disambiguation": "1980s–1990s US grunge band",
  "country": "US",
  "life-span": {
    "begin": "1987",
    "end": "1994-04-05",
    "ended": true
  }
}
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da?fmt=json"
const res = await fetch("https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da?fmt=json");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da?fmt=json")
print(res.json())
Endpoints · 3HealthyFULL DOCS ↗
Monitored path responding — GET /artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da?fmt=json660 mschecked 6h ago
GET/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da?fmt=jsonPROBED

Artist record by MusicBrainz ID (Nirvana).

GET/release?query=release:nevermind&fmt=json

Search releases by title.

GET/recording?query=recording:smells+like+teen+spirit&fmt=json

Search recordings by title.

Machine-readable spec

We probe a documented GET and expect 2xx JSON — full uptime and health score. Export includes every documented route below.

Response-shape history

Stable. No schema drift observed since monitoring began — the response shape has not changed under our checks.

MusicBrainz: common questions

Is MusicBrainz free to use?

Yes — MusicBrainz is a free media API. Free tier: Free — no key required. Commercial use is allowed on the free tier.

Does MusicBrainz need an API key?

No — MusicBrainz needs no API key or signup. You can call it straight away; rate limits still apply (~1 request/second per IP; descriptive User-Agent required).

Can I call MusicBrainz from the browser?

Yes — MusicBrainz returns CORS headers over HTTPS, so front-end code can fetch it directly with no backend proxy. Use the fetch snippet on this page, or hit "Run live" to try it now.

Is MusicBrainz up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, MusicBrainz is healthy with 90.2% uptime over 90 days and a 660 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.