music
MusicBrainz
An open music encyclopedia that assigns canonical identifiers (MBIDs) to artists and releases. Its web-service API is keyless, rate-limited to one request per second, and our search queries it directly. The go-to source for clean, structured music metadata.
Why it’s useful & how it works
MusicBrainz is the most thorough open music encyclopedia available, assigning permanent identifiers to artists, releases, recordings, and works so that data from different sources can be reliably linked. Researchers use it to resolve ambiguous artist names, find all releases of a track across countries, or confirm canonical credits. Echo queries MusicBrainz directly by artist or title; you can also follow results to the MusicBrainz site to explore linked entities in depth.
What’s inside
As of late 2025, the database holds over 2.7 million artists, 5 million releases, and 36 million individual recordings, all maintained by a global community of volunteer editors. The full database is also available as a free download for offline use.
API access
https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/ (keyless; 1 req/s + UA)
What we measured
Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.
Reachability
- Direct request
- Responded HTTP 200 629 ms
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Responded HTTP 200 963 ms
- API, direct
- Responded HTTP 200 141 ms
- API, through a proxy
- Responded HTTP 200 1.2 s
Did a real search return anything?
Returned results · 29 results for the sample query · median 10.5 s · flaky across runs
Slow: budget for long waits, or call it asynchronously.
Sample query: Radiohead
Benchmark coverage
Found 6 of 8 test items (75%) in the Video / audio / music cluster. Median response 8.8 s.
By how well known the item is: 2/2 well-known, 3/4 mid, 1/2 obscure .
One item it found: NASA NASA NASA NASA NASA
Reachability measured 2026-08-22. Search checked 2026-08-22. Benchmark run 2026-08-22.
Access
Programmatic API access (a key may be required, see the API tag).