Music data APIs are application programming interfaces that allow developers to access and integrate the functionalities of music applications or services, such as streaming and downloading audio files, into their own product. These APIs enable users to search for music related data including artist names, album titles, song lyrics, and genre information for any given track. These APIs can also be used to fetch artist bios, concert dates and more.
By using these APIs, developers can create a wide range of applications ranging from personal music players with custom soundtracks, interactive soundboards for DJs or radio stations and even full-fledged e-commerce businesses dedicated solely to selling digital audio files. The availability of this type of API makes it easier for developers to leverage existing music assets and create better user experiences without having to start from scratch.
Music data APIs can also be used by music analytics companies to analyze musical trends over time or cross-reference various pieces of data related to a particular song or artist in order to gain insight into consumer behavior. They provide a reliable source of information and authentication about the state of the industry at any given moment and can help inform business decisions accordingly.
FAQs
What is a Music Database API?A music database API usually refers to a web service or REST API that retrieves and returns music info such as song tracks, lyrics, artist or album information. Some popular music database APIs include Deezer, iTunes (an apple music api data connector), and more.
View Rapid's Best Music and Audio API Collection
What is the best free music API?Below are our top picks for best free music APIs.
After reviewing over 28 music APIs, we found these 8 APIs to be the very best and worth mentioning:
| Deezer | Best for Finding Tracks & Building Playlists | Connect to API |
| Shazam | Best for Detailed Data & Song Detector | Connect to API |
| Spotify | Best for Music Metadata & Playlists | Connect to API |
| Genius | Best for Song Lyrics | Connect to API |
| Radio World | Best for Live FM Radio | Connect to API |
| TheAudioDB | Best for Simple and Accurate Music data | Connect to API |
| iTunes | Best for Connecting to iTunes and Mac Store | Connect to API |
| 30,000 radio stations | Best for Radio Station Steams | Connect to API |
Below are the most commonly used music APIs on the Rapid API Hub:
Deezer is the No. 1 site and music streaming platform for streaming and listening to music on demand. With more than 30 million tracks in its music library, developers can create playlists and share their favorite tracks.
Endpoints:
The Shazam Core API provides detailed data on songs and artists. Discover, artists, lyrics, videos & playlists to create a song detector site/application such as shazam.com.
Shazam is an identifier for songs, it does this by creating a unique digital fingerprint to match what you’re hearing in playback with one of the millions of songs in the Shazam database.
Endpoints:
The Spotify API gives developers access to millions of songs & podcasts, artists, albums, playlists, user’s libraries , and more.
Endpoints:
There are four primary — and undeniably Genius — things you can do with the Genius API:
1. Create, Manage & View Annotations — Add, edit, and view annotations on any piece of text on the Internet, or on any song hosted on Genius.com.
2. Upvote & Downvote Annotations — Vote on annotations and earn Genius IQ in the process.
3. Go Behind Your Favorite Artists & Songs — Build products that bring Genius’s millions of lyrics-based annotations to life.
4. Search Our Musical Metadata — Dive into Genius’s rich music library of musical metadata about artists, albums, and tracks to help power interactive experiences through any connected app or service.
Offering the largest collection of FM Radios API from around the world, Radio World has 79,000+ radio stations. All the stations are updating on a daily & weekly basis, with at least 100+ stations added and 1000+ stations are fixing to the API Weekly (This is minimum ratio).
Endpoints:
TheAudioDB API is a community driven database of audio metadata. The API also provides a repository of data that can be used in various types of HTPC software to make viewing experiences more visually appealing.
Endpoints:
Connect to the iTunes Search API and developers can add iTunes and Mac Store search fields to their app. Test an API in a browser and export the code snippet into an app. This is an apple music api data connector.
Endpoints:
The 30,000 radio stations and music charts API gives developers access to 30,000 radio stations stream urls updated everyday and classified by music genre and country (over 130 countries and 167 music genres). The API also provide the top 50 music charts (daily, weekly, and monthly) and the Now Playing songs.
Endpoints:
These are some of our favorite free music data APIs. Have you built any cool projects with these APIs? Did we miss your favorite music data API? Let us know in the comments below!
All APIs mentioned above and accessible on RapidAPI.com are available in the following programming languages:
Learn more how to get started with RapidAPI SDKs.
| API | Track Data | Album Data | Lyrics | Playlists | Free |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deezer | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Shazam | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spotify | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Genius | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Radio World | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| TheAudioDB | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| iTunes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| 30,000 radio stations and music charts | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
From Spotify: Our API is what is commonly known as a RESTful API. Basically it is an interface that programs can use to retrieve and manage Spotify data over the internet. The Web API uses the same HTTP protocol that’s used by every internet browser. In fact, you can access the API directly from your own browser. Try clicking this link and see what happens
Yes, Spotify‘s API is free to use.
A lot of words, not much code? Can you fix?
Thanks for reaching out! This was a round-up post, not a technical tutorial. You can read our tutorials here: https://rapidapi.com/blog/category/tutorial/
You can also click the link to call any of these APIs and dig straight into the code.
Do any of these APIs actually allow you to stream the music itself (besides the 30 second preview from Spotify)? It seems like these are more for the information about the music than the actual music itself, unless I’m missing something.
Not any of *these* api’s as far as I’m aware. I know with google play, you can stream the music but it’s unofficial, so I’m not 100% clear on the ToS. Here’s a link: https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi. There’s plenty of libraries in other languages built up around it.
@ekalaracha This article was more focused on music data (ex. song titles, lyrics etc.) vs. actually streaming.
RapidAPI currently doesn’t support any API functionality that streams music. However, you can apply for access through the Spotify API page: https://developer.spotify.com/technologies/libspotify/
Hi, Mark Nejmeh here. Hope you are all well. Can you tell me where the best and largest database of older songs for download might be found?
Hi, I am looking for an API that can tell me in live time how many people are listening to a song on a particular platform such as Spotify etc. Do you have any advice?
Which one is the best api for commercial use?
And is there free api for commercial use?
Except that Soundcloud hasnt let you register a new app for over a year now. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNxc82RJuzC0DnISat7n4H-G7IsPQIdaMpe202iiHZEoso9w/closedform
Thank you. 6 sites to download music very well.
Hey there! Do you use LinkedIn? I’d like to follow you if that would be okay. I’m definitely enjoying your blog and look forward to new updates
Most of the sites I have used and develop musical sites, It looks like amazing, I love it.