Diskunion Scraper – Japanese Vinyl, CDs & City Pop Records

Extract release titles, prices in JPY, vinyl condition grades, formats, catalog numbers, labels and stock status from Diskunion — Japan's largest specialist record store chain, and the main domestic source for city pop, Japanese jazz, and rare Japanese pressings. Built for international vinyl collectors, record dealers, Discogs sellers, price researchers, and AI agents that need structured Japanese record-market data without writing a scraper or logging in. No coding required: enter an artist name, run, and get clean JSON.

A key feature is the used catalogue with Diskunion's 盤質 condition grade (S / A / B+ / B). You get per-copy second-hand pricing graded by the shop's own standards — the number that actually decides whether a Japanese pressing is worth importing.

Two modes are supported: look up one artist's catalogue by name, or walk a whole genre's newest used arrivals — the second is built for scheduled monitoring, so an agent can poll for fresh city pop or Japanese jazz stock as it lands.

What data can you extract?

Field	Description
releaseId	Diskunion's catalogue ID for the release. Shared between the new and used catalogues, so the two can be joined
stockId	ID of the individual second-hand copy (used catalogue only)
catalog	used or new — which catalogue the row came from
title	Release title
artist	Artist as registered on Diskunion, usually carrying both spellings (MARIYA TAKEUCHI 竹内まりや)
price	Price in Japanese yen (JPY), tax included
stockStatus	Raw Japanese stock label, e.g. 新品在庫あり, 売切, 廃盤
conditionGrade	Diskunion's 盤質 vinyl grade: S, A, B+, B … (used catalogue only)
label	Record label / distributor
format	LP(レコード), 7"(レコード), CD, CASSETTE TAPE, DVD, combinations like CD+DVD
catalogNumber	Label catalog number, for matching the exact pressing on Discogs
country	Pressing country code, e.g. JPN
releaseDate	Release date (ISO 8601)
category	Diskunion shop category, e.g. 日本のロック
imageUrl	Jacket artwork URL
url	Direct link to the Diskunion product page

Why scrape Diskunion?

• Import arbitrage on Japanese pressings — city pop and Japanese jazz originals sell on export-facing storefronts at a large markup over Japanese domestic listings. Diskunion is where the domestic price is set.
• Condition-aware price research — conditionGrade plus price gives you a graded price curve per release, instead of a single undifferentiated "used" number.
• Discogs cross-referencing — catalogNumber and country identify the exact pressing, so rows can be matched to a Discogs release and compared against its marketplace price.
• Back-catalogue and reissue tracking — monitor which titles are in stock, sold out (売切) or out of print (廃盤) across an artist's discography.
• New-arrival monitoring — genre-new-arrivals mode returns a genre's newest used listings first, so a scheduled run can surface fresh stock (with grade and price) before it sells. Combine it with inStockOnly to see only what is still buyable.
• AI agents / RAG — feed structured Japanese record-market data into an LLM workflow. This Actor is discoverable and callable through the Apify MCP server, so a Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT agent can request Japanese vinyl pricing on demand.

How to use it (no coding)

1. Click Try for free / Start.
2. Pick a Mode:
   • Artist catalogue — enter an Artist name. Romanized English works as well as Japanese (Mariya Takeuchi and 竹内まりや both resolve to the same artist).
   • Genre new arrivals — pick a Genre instead; the newest used listings come back first.
3. Choose a Catalogue (artist mode only): Used only for resale research, New only, or Both.
4. Tick In-stock only to drop sold-out, out-of-print and out-of-stock rows.
5. Optionally set Max items to cap your spend.
6. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or pull them via the API (below).

Input example

One artist's second-hand catalogue:

{
  "mode": "artist",
  "searchKeyword": "Tatsuro Yamashita",
  "catalog": "used",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Newest used arrivals across a genre, buyable stock only — the shape to run on a schedule:

{
  "mode": "genre-new-arrivals",
  "genre": "showakayou",
  "inStockOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 100
}

All fields are optional — running with no input uses sensible defaults (artist Mariya Takeuchi, both catalogues, 100 items).

Output example

A used-catalogue row, with the vinyl grade:

{
  "releaseId": "1008607313",
  "stockId": "22U0887313077",
  "catalog": "used",
  "title": "SPACY(LP)",
  "artist": "TATSURO YAMASHITA 山下達郎",
  "price": 3850,
  "currency": "JPY",
  "stockStatus": "新品在庫なし",
  "conditionGrade": "B+",
  "label": "ソニー・ミュージック・エンターテイメント",
  "country": "JPN",
  "format": "LP(レコード)",
  "catalogNumber": "BVJL94",
  "releaseDate": "2023-08-02",
  "category": "日本のロック",
  "imageUrl": "https://st.diskunion.net/images/jacket/1008607313.webp",
  "url": "https://diskunion.net/used/ct/jp/udetail/1008607313",
  "query": "Tatsuro Yamashita",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-09T02:32:40.901Z"
}

Field notes:

• conditionGrade — Diskunion's own 盤質 scale, from S (best) down through A, B+, B. Present only when catalog is used; null on new-catalogue rows.
• stockStatus — the shop's live label. 新品在庫あり (new, in stock), 新品在庫なし (new, out of stock), 新品在庫取寄せ (backorder), 取引先新品在庫あり (supplier stock), 売切 (sold out), 廃盤 (out of print).
• releaseId vs stockId — releaseId identifies the release and is shared across both catalogues; stockId identifies one physical second-hand copy, so several used rows can share a releaseId at different grades and prices.
• label, format, catalogNumber, country and releaseDate come from one metadata line and are null together on the minority of listings where Diskunion omits it.
• stockStatus values 売切, 廃盤 and 新品在庫なし mean the copy can no longer be ordered. They are kept by default because they still carry price signal; set inStockOnly to true to drop them.

How much does it cost?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: a small charge when a run starts, plus a per-result charge for each release returned. You only pay for the data you actually receive, so a 100-item run costs about the price of 100 results. Use maxItems to cap your spend.

Rows filtered out by inStockOnly are never returned and never billed. Note that most second-hand stock on Diskunion is already sold, so an in-stock run reads more pages per returned row — the crawl takes longer, but you are not charged for the rows that were dropped.

Integrations: API, MCP, and AI agents

This Actor is read-only: it only reads publicly available catalogue pages and performs no login, purchase, or write actions — safe for autonomous agents to call.

API (curl)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/datalab-jp~diskunion-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode": "genre-new-arrivals", "genre": "jp", "inStockOnly": true, "maxItems": 50}'

Synchronous runs time out after 300 seconds. For large scrapes, use the standard run endpoint and fetch the dataset afterwards.

Python (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("datalab-jp/diskunion-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchKeyword": "Mariya Takeuchi",
    "catalog": "used",
    "maxItems": 50,
})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(items)

JavaScript (apify-client)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('datalab-jp/diskunion-scraper').call({
    searchKeyword: 'Mariya Takeuchi',
    catalog: 'used',
    maxItems: 50,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

MCP / AI agents

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server. AI agents (Claude, and any MCP-compatible client) can discover it with search-actors, inspect its inputs with fetch-actor-details, and run it with call-actor — no manual setup on your side. It is read-only, so it is safe for autonomous agents and RAG pipelines to call directly.

Related Actors

Part of a family of Japanese second-hand & collectibles market scrapers with consistent output shapes, so you can combine them for cross-marketplace research:

• Yahoo! Auctions Sold Scraper — sold-price history from Japan's largest auction site
• Mercari Japan Scraper — listings and sold comps from Japan's largest C2C marketplace
• Japan Flea Market Scraper — Rakuma & Yahoo! Flea Market listings
• Suruga-ya Scraper — used hobby goods, figures, and collectibles
• CardRush TCG Price Scraper — trading card prices across 9 card games
• Melonbooks Scraper — doujin goods and otaku merchandise

FAQ

How do I monitor new arrivals instead of searching? Set mode to genre-new-arrivals and pick a genre — the feed returns that genre's newest second-hand listings first, so a scheduled run sees fresh stock as it lands. Add inStockOnly: true to ignore copies that are already gone. This mode reads the used storefront only, so catalog, searchKeyword and maxArtists do not apply.

Which genres can I monitor? Twenty feeds are available, including jp (Japanese music — city pop, J-pop, Japanese rock), showakayou (Showa kayokyoku), heiseijpop, jazz, rock, metal, progre, punk, indiealt, clubh, clubt, black, reggae, latin, classic, avant, anisong, gamemusic, movie and bestalbum. For city pop, jp and showakayou are the two worth watching.

Can I search by album title instead of artist? No. Diskunion's search matches artist records, so pass a performer or band name in searchKeyword. An album title on its own usually returns nothing. Once an artist is matched, every release in their catalogue is returned, so you can filter by title on your side.

Do English artist names work? Yes. Diskunion stores the romanized and Japanese spelling in one artist record, so Mariya Takeuchi and 竹内まりや both resolve to MARIYA TAKEUCHI 竹内まりや. This is what makes the store usable for buyers who do not read Japanese.

What is the 盤質 condition grade? It is Diskunion's in-house grading of the physical record, running from S (best) down through A, B+, B. Japanese shops grade conservatively, which is one reason overseas buyers trust Japanese used stock. It appears in conditionGrade on used-catalogue rows.

Why does the Actor use a Japan residential proxy by default? Diskunion is a Japan-only storefront and rate-limits repeated requests from a single IP — bursts start timing out and recover after about a minute. Japanese residential addresses give the most reliable results. You can override proxyConfiguration with datacenter proxies to cut cost, but expect timeouts on longer runs.

Why do runs take a while? The Actor deliberately crawls with a single concurrent request because of the rate limiting described above, and Diskunion's own listing pages can take over 20 seconds to render. Use maxItems to keep runs short.

Is scraping Diskunion legal? This Actor collects only publicly available catalogue data — the same product-list pages any visitor can browse. It does not log in, bypass paywalls, or collect private personal data. You are responsible for using the data in accordance with applicable laws and Diskunion's terms of service.

Can I call this Actor from my own app or API? Yes. Use the Apify API or the apify-client libraries shown above. Every run returns a dataset you can fetch as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Can AI agents use this Actor? Yes. It is exposed through the Apify MCP server, so agents can find and run it automatically. It is read-only and safe to call.

Disclaimer

This Actor collects publicly available catalogue data only. It does not collect personal data and uses no login credentials. Use responsibly and in accordance with applicable laws and Diskunion's terms.