The Ultimate 2024 Music Data API Guide

Introduction

Pulling song/album metadata, streaming playlists listing and radio spins, sorting artists by engagement, or filtering them by nationality. There are thousands of ways to use music data to bring insights to someone discovering music or developing an app.

Due to the ever-growing demand for music data and diversification of use cases, music industry datasets are fragmented - and it is easy to get lost.

Soundcharts API

Chances are you’re reading this guide on our blog, and we are inevitably biased, but we think that Soundcharts does the best job to get a unified source of truth. Our data-engine aggregates, merges, deduplicates data coming from 23 sources, and makes it easy to use for anyone.  Our data engine relies on real-time cross-platform data enrichment and natural language processing. We detect and match heteroclite and non standardize data from all sources (compound artists, artist name, track title variations, and non-Latin alphabets). Want to try it out for real? Get in touch by filling out this form!

Soundcharts API Form

Below, we break down the eight distinct types of APIs to highlight the industry's structure and options available to developers. We’ve also listed APIs split into said ten categories to give you some perspective. Those players have the most impact on the industry — the ones we think every developer and music professional should know.

8 Types of Music Data APIs

The APIs can be divided into the following categories:

• Audio Analysis
• Audio Content
• DSPs
• Events
• Lyrics
• Miscellaneous
• Music Analytics
• Music Metadata

List of Music Data APIs

Audio Analysis

• Auphonic: Automatic audio post-production web service for podcasts, broadcasters, radio shows, movies, screencasts, and more.
• sonicAPI: Web API for online music processing. sonicAPI provides professional-grade audio technology for multimedia app developers.

Audio Content

• 7digital: The core of 7digital's business is the provision of robust and scalable technical infrastructure and extensive global music rights used to create music streaming and radio services.
• 8Tracks: 8tracks is an internet radio created by people, not algorithms.
• AI Mastering: AI Mastering improves sound quality automatically and brings the sound quality of music closer to that of commercial music.
• ccMixter: ccMixter is a produsage community music site that promotes remix culture and makes samples, remixes, and Acappella tracks licensed under Creative Commons available for download and re-use in creative works.
• Freesound: Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds.
• Jamendo: Jamendo.com is an independent online music platform that provides free music for personal entertainment and various licenses for projects or businesses.
• Mixcloud: Mixcloud is a collaborative platform for sharing and listening to music online, specially dedicated to mixing sessions recorded in the studio and broadcast on radio or podcast.
• Napster: Napster is the original music industry disruptor and pioneer in music streaming and subscription services.
• Songsterr: Songsterr provides guitar, bass and drums tabs and chords.
• SoundCloud: SoundCloud is an audio platform that enables anyone to upload, record, promote and share their sounds across the web.

DSPs

• Amazon: Amazon Music is a music streaming platform and online music store operated by Amazon.
• Apple Music: Apple Music is an on-demand music streaming service offered by Apple.
• Audiomack: Audiomack is a youth-driven, artist-first music streaming platform that allows creators to share unlimited music and podcast content for free.
• Bandcamp: Bandcamp is an online music store that caters mainly to independent artists.
• Deezer: Deezer is a French digital distribution platform dedicated to music streaming.
• KKBOX: KKBOX is a music streaming service from Taiwan.
• Spotify: Spotify is a subscription music streaming service from Sweden.
• YouTube: YouTube is a video sharing service where users can watch, like, share, comment and upload their own videos.
• Beatport: Beatport is a US streaming platform offering the largest electronic music catalog.

Events

• Bandsintown: Bandsintown is a music website, which allows users to receive notifications about tours and bands playing in the user's area. It also has tools for artists to manage tour dates.
• SeatGeek: SeatGeek is a mobile ticketing platform that allows users to buy and sell tickets to live sporting events, concerts and theaters.
• Songkick: Songkick is a place where fans can track their favourite artists’ live tour dates. As well as purchase tickets for their live shows.
• Ticketmaster: Ticketmaster is an American company specializing in the sale and distribution of entertainment tickets.

Lyrics

• ChartLyrics Lyric: ChartLyrics is a lyrics database sorted by artists or songs.
• Genius: Genius provides the lyrics, the stories behind the songs, and the creative connections that meaningfully drive culture.
• KSoft.Si Lyrics: KSoft.Si is a content provider for Discord bot developers, server owners and end-users, providing an up-to-date database of lyrics, images, artists...etc.
• Lyrics.ovh: Lyrics.ovh is a simple API to retrieve the lyrics of a song.
• Musixmatch: Musixmatch focuses on building music metadata and lyrics database using AI & machine learning technology.
• Vagalume: Vagalum is a crowdsourced lyrics and music knowledge database.

Miscellaneous

• BBC: The BBC is a public service broadcaster.
• Cover Art Archive: A joint project between the Internet Archive and MusicBrainz, whose goal is to make cover art images available to everyone on the Internet in an organised and convenient way.
• Noteflight: Noteflight is an online music writing application that lets you create, view, print and hear professional quality music notation right in your web browser.
• Radio Browser: Radio Browzer is a community driven effort (like wikipedia) with the aim of collecting as many internet radio and TV stations as possible.
• Reverb: Reverb is an online marketplace for new, used and vintage music equipment.
• Spreaker: Spreaker is a podcasting tool, providing solutions to help podcasters of all sizes throughout their journey.
• TasteDive: TasteDive recommends music, movies, TV shows, games, books and authors, based on what you already like.
• This Is My Jam: This Is My Jam was a community of music lovers, sharing their taste one song at a time from late 2011 to September 2015.

Music Analytics

• Soundcharts: Soundcharts offers real-time insights into artists' performances and industry trends, combining data from streaming platforms, social media, radio airplay, playlists, and charts.
• Chartmetric: Chartmetric is an online tool that provides music and artists analytics data collected from a wide range of external sources.
• Songstats: Songstats provides a comprehensive overview of how the music is performing across the most important streaming services and download stores.

Music Metadata

• Discogs: Discogs is a giant comprehensive music database and marketplace.
• Gracenote: Gracenote helps connect people with the digital entertainment they love by offering the largest database for music, sports, movies and TV shows, and creating services and technologies on a highly scalable platform.
• LastFm: Last.fm is both a web radio and a website offering a music statistics collection and recommendation system.
• Music Story: Music Story specializes in the processing of music metadata. It offers to professionals curation, aggregation and editorial hierarchy services.
• MusicBrainz: MusicBrainz is an open music encyclopedia that collects music metadata and makes it available to the public.
• OneMusicAPI: The databases OneMusicAPI aggregates data from MusicBrainz, Cover Art Archive, Acoustid, Wikipedia, Discogs and FreeDB.
• Rovi: Rovi provides entertainment data and images for website, application, or consumer electronics device.
• TheAudioDB: TheAudioDB is a community database of Music Artwork, Metadata and Charts with a free JSON Music API.