MetaBrainz API

All endpoints require an access token which you can get from your profile page.

MusicBrainz Live Data Feed

There are two endpoints for fetching live data:

Hourly Replication Packets

GET https://test.metabrainz.org/api/musicbrainz/replication-<PACKET_NUMBER>.tar.bz2?token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>

It is possible to get a signature for each replication packet. Just replace .tar.bz2 with .tar.bz2.asc.

You can find the latest replication packet number from this endpoint:
GET https://test.metabrainz.org/api/musicbrainz/replication-info?token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>

Hourly Incremental JSON Dumps

GET https://test.metabrainz.org/api/musicbrainz/json-dumps/json-dump-<PACKET_NUMBER>/<ENTITY_NAME>.tar.xz?token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>

The JSON dumps are partitioned by entity type. <ENTITY_NAME> can be one of: area, artist, event, instrument, label, place, recording, release, release-group, series, or work.

It’s possible that a JSON dump for a particular entity type doesn’t exist if no entities of that type have changed in a given hour.

Each dump contains a file named mbdump/<ENTITY_NAME>. This file must be read line-by-line; each line contains one changed entity in JSON format.

As with replication packets, you can obtain a file signature by replacing .tar.xz with .tar.xz.asc.