Album of the Year Scraper

Scrape album ratings, reviews, and tracklists from albumoftheyear.org — the leading music aggregation site with critic and user scores for thousands of albums.

Features

• Search albums — find any album or artist by name
• Browse by year — highest-rated albums for any year (1950-2030)
• Filter by genre — narrow results to specific genres (alternative rock, synthpop, jazz, etc.)
• Multiple list types — critic highest rated, user highest rated, most popular, most anticipated
• Album details — optionally scrape full detail pages for tracklists, labels, producers, and review snippets
• Pagination — handles multi-page result sets automatically
• PPE monetization — pay-per-event billing for each result

Output Example

{
    "rank": 1,
    "albumTitle": "OK Computer",
    "artist": "Radiohead",
    "criticScore": 94,
    "userScore": 93,
    "criticReviewCount": 14,
    "userRatingCount": 36426,
    "releaseDate": "May 21, 1997",
    "format": "LP",
    "genres": "Alternative Rock, Art Rock, Space Rock Revival, Post-Britpop",
    "label": "Parlophone, Capitol, EMI",
    "producer": "Nigel Godrich",
    "trackCount": 12,
    "tracks": [
        {
            "number": 1,
            "name": "Airbag",
            "length": "4:47",
            "rating": 93,
            "ratingCount": 6427
        }
    ],
    "reviewSnippets": [
        {
            "publication": "Pitchfork",
            "score": 100,
            "text": "The record is brimming with genuine emotion..."
        }
    ],
    "coverUrl": "https://cdn2.albumoftheyear.org/375x0/album/ok-computer-1.jpg",
    "url": "https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/362-radiohead-ok-computer.php",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQuery	string		Album or artist name to search for
year	integer	current year	Filter albums by release year
listType	string	critic-highest	List type: critic-highest, user-highest, most-popular, most-anticipated
genre	string		Genre slug filter (e.g. 2-alternative-rock, 38-synthpop)
scrapeDetails	boolean	false	Fetch album detail pages for full tracklists, labels, and review snippets
maxResults	integer	50	Maximum number of albums to return (1-1000)
maxPages	integer	0	Maximum listing pages to scrape (0 = auto from maxResults)
proxyConfiguration	object		Optional proxy configuration

Usage

Browse top-rated albums of 2024

{
    "year": 2024,
    "listType": "critic-highest",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Search for an artist with full details

{
    "searchQuery": "Radiohead",
    "scrapeDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 10
}

Browse user-rated hip-hop albums

{
    "year": 2024,
    "listType": "user-highest",
    "genre": "8-hip-hop",
    "maxResults": 25
}

Quick list without detail pages (faster)

{
    "year": 2023,
    "listType": "critic-highest",
    "scrapeDetails": false,
    "maxResults": 100
}

Rate Limiting

The scraper is configured to be respectful:

• Maximum 3 concurrent requests
• Maximum 20 requests per minute
• Proper User-Agent and Referer headers

Cost

This actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing. You are charged per album result returned to the dataset.