🎵 TheAudioDB Music Scraper

🚀 Pull rich artist and album metadata from TheAudioDB in one run. Search Radiohead and you get the full profile plus 43 albums, each with cover art, release year, genre, and label.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-04 · 📊 21 fields per record · Artist profiles and full discographies · Global music catalog

TheAudioDB is a community maintained open database of music metadata covering hundreds of thousands of artists and albums. This Actor turns any list of artist names into clean, structured records. For every name you provide it returns the artist profile (genre, country, formed year, biography, social links, official artwork) and the complete album discography (title, year, genre, label, cover thumbnail, review score).

Coverage spans every major and independent artist catalogued on TheAudioDB, from chart toppers to niche acts, with high resolution thumbnails, logos, and banners attached to most records. Because the data comes from the public TheAudioDB API, there is no login and no proxy needed.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Music app and bot developers	Enrich a catalog with artist and album metadata
Data analysts and researchers	Build music trend and genre datasets
Playlist and content curators	Populate artist pages with art and bios
Media and entertainment teams	Cross reference releases by year, genre, and label

📋 What the TheAudioDB Scraper does

This Actor accepts one or more artist names and queries TheAudioDB for each. It returns two kinds of records, both flagged with a recordType field so you can split them easily:

• Artist records with name, genre, style, mood, country, formed year, member count, label, biography, website, social handles, and official thumbnail, logo, and banner images.
• Album records with title, parent artist, release year, genre, style, label, description, review score, and cover art.

You can toggle artist profiles and albums independently, cap the number of records, and supply your own TheAudioDB key for higher rate limits. The public test key works out of the box.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
searchArtists	array	One or more artist names to look up. Required.
includeArtist	boolean	Return the artist profile record for each name. Default true.
includeAlbums	boolean	Return the album discography for each name. Default true.
maxItems	integer	Cap on total records. Free plan is limited to 10.
apiKey	string	TheAudioDB key. Defaults to the public test key.

Example, artist profiles plus albums for two bands:

{
  "searchArtists": ["Radiohead", "Coldplay"],
  "includeArtist": true,
  "includeAlbums": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example, albums only for a single artist:

{
  "searchArtists": ["Daft Punk"],
  "includeArtist": false,
  "includeAlbums": true,
  "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: TheAudioDB is community maintained, so optional fields such as website, facebook, biography, logoUrl, and album score are present for many records but not all. Records always include imageUrl, title, genre, and id. Empty values are normalized to null.

📊 Output

Each record follows this shape. Artist and album records share the leading fields and differ in a few type specific ones.

Field	Description
🖼 imageUrl	Primary thumbnail (artist photo or album cover)
🏷 recordType	artist or album
📌 title	Artist name or album title
🆔 id	TheAudioDB record ID
🎵 genre	Genre label
🎸 style	Broader style descriptor
🌍 country	Artist origin (artist records)
📆 formedYear	Year the artist formed (artist records)
🎤 artist	Parent artist name (album records)
📅 yearReleased	Album release year (album records)
🏢 label	Record label
📝 biography / description	Long form text
🌐 website, facebook, twitter	Social and web links (artist records)
🖼 logoUrl, bannerUrl	Extra artwork (artist records)
⭐ score	Album review score (album records)
🧬 musicBrainzId	MusicBrainz cross reference ID
🔗 sourceUrl	TheAudioDB page for the record
🕒 scrapedAt	Collection timestamp
❌ error	Null on success

Real sample, artist record:

{
  "imageUrl": "https://r2.theaudiodb.com/images/media/artist/thumb/35poth1668098458.jpg",
  "recordType": "artist",
  "title": "Radiohead",
  "id": "111418",
  "genre": "Alternative Rock",
  "style": "Rock/Pop",
  "mood": "Sad",
  "country": "Abingdon, England",
  "formedYear": 1991,
  "members": 5,
  "label": "XL Recordings",
  "website": "radiohead.com",
  "facebook": "www.facebook.com/radiohead",
  "logoUrl": "https://r2.theaudiodb.com/images/media/artist/logo/7ss5y81669340618.png",
  "bannerUrl": "https://r2.theaudiodb.com/images/media/artist/banner/qxpvqr1346162754.jpg",
  "musicBrainzId": "a74b1b7f-71a5-4011-9441-d0b5e4122711",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.theaudiodb.com/artist/111418",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-04T19:33:07.396Z",
  "error": null
}

Real sample, album record:

{
  "imageUrl": "https://r2.theaudiodb.com/images/media/album/thumb/s6zjn11612966472.jpg",
  "recordType": "album",
  "title": "Hail to the Thief",
  "id": "2112020",
  "artist": "Radiohead",
  "genre": "Alternative Rock",
  "style": "Rock/Pop",
  "yearReleased": 2003,
  "label": "Parlophone",
  "score": 9,
  "musicBrainzId": "5c14fd50-a2f1-3672-9537-b0dad91bea2f",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.theaudiodb.com/album/2112020",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-04T19:33:07.603Z",
  "error": null
}

Real sample, second album record:

{
  "imageUrl": "https://r2.theaudiodb.com/images/media/album/thumb/xy30ox1761246299.jpg",
  "recordType": "album",
  "title": "The King of Limbs",
  "id": "2112022",
  "artist": "Radiohead",
  "genre": "Alternative Rock",
  "style": "Rock/Pop",
  "yearReleased": 2011,
  "label": "XL Recordings",
  "score": 7.7,
  "musicBrainzId": "899b6d09-807e-4c18-a6d4-3642e00d6a3d",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.theaudiodb.com/album/2112022",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-04T19:33:07.679Z",
  "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Two record types in one run. Artist profiles and full discographies come back together, each clearly tagged.
• Art included. Most records carry a real thumbnail, and artists often add a logo and banner.
• No login, no proxy. The Actor uses the public TheAudioDB API with the built in test key.
• MusicBrainz IDs attached. Join your results to MusicBrainz, Discogs, or your own catalog with a stable ID.
• Honest nulls. Optional fields that a record lacks come back as null rather than guesses.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Artist plus albums	Cover art	Setup
This Actor	Both in one run	Yes	None, public key built in
Manual API calls	You wire each endpoint	Yes	Code per endpoint
Generic HTML scraper	Fragile, breaks on redesign	Hit or miss	High maintenance

🚀 How to use

1. Sign up for a free Apify account using this link.
2. Open the TheAudioDB Music Scraper in the Apify Console.
3. Enter one or more artist names in searchArtists and choose whether to include artist profiles, albums, or both.
4. Click Start and watch records stream into the dataset.
5. Browse the results table or pull them through the Apify API into your own app.

💼 Business use cases

Catalog enrichment

Goal	How this helps
Fill missing metadata	Attach genre, label, year, and art to your existing track list
Standardize artist data	Use MusicBrainz IDs to dedupe and link records

Content and editorial

Goal	How this helps
Build artist pages	Pull bio, country, formed year, and banner art in one call
Curate by era or genre	Filter albums by release year and genre

Analytics and research

Goal	How this helps
Study label rosters	Group albums and artists by label
Track genre distribution	Aggregate genre and style across many artists

Product and apps

Goal	How this helps
Power a music discovery app	Feed structured artist and album data into your UI
Seed a recommendation engine	Use genre, mood, and style as features

🔌 Automating TheAudioDB Scraper

Connect the dataset to the tools you already use:

• Make and Zapier to trigger downstream workflows on each new run.
• Slack to post a digest of new artist or album records.
• Airbyte to sync results into your warehouse.
• GitHub Actions to schedule periodic catalog refreshes.
• Google Drive to archive snapshots of each run.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research. Build a dataset of bands by country and formation decade.
• Personal. Generate a richly illustrated history of your favorite artists.
• Non-profit. Compile open music metadata for community archives.
• Experimentation. Train models on genre, mood, and style labels.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant

Drop the dataset into your favorite assistant and ask it to summarize or analyze:

• ChatGPT
• Claude
• Perplexity
• Microsoft Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a TheAudioDB account or API key? No. The Actor ships with the public test key, so it works with no setup. You can supply your own Patreon key in apiKey for higher rate limits.

Q: What do I provide as input? A list of artist names in searchArtists. Everything else is optional.

Q: How many records can I get per artist? The artist profile is one record, and a discography can run from a handful to several dozen albums. Radiohead returns 43 albums, Coldplay returns 51.

Q: Can I get albums without the artist profile? Yes. Set includeArtist to false and includeAlbums to true.

Q: Why are some fields null? TheAudioDB is community maintained, so optional fields such as website, biography, and album score are filled in for many but not all records. Missing values come back as null.

Q: Are images included? Yes. The imageUrl field holds a thumbnail for both artists and albums, and artist records often add a logo and banner.

Q: Can I match results to other music databases? Yes. Each record includes a musicBrainzId where TheAudioDB has one on file.

Q: What is the free plan limit? Free users receive up to 10 records per run. Paid plans raise the cap up to 1,000,000.

Q: Does this work for any artist? It works for any artist catalogued on TheAudioDB. If a name is not found, the Actor logs a notice and moves on.

Q: Is a proxy required? No. The public API responds without a proxy or login.

Q: How fresh is the data? Each run queries TheAudioDB live, so you always get the current state of the database.

Q: Is this affiliated with TheAudioDB? No. This is an independent tool that reads only publicly available data from the TheAudioDB API.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Every run writes to an Apify dataset you can read through the Apify API, webhooks, or scheduled exports, so the data flows straight into your own systems.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• MusicBrainz Scraper
• Discogs Scraper
• Last.fm Scraper
• Genius Lyrics Scraper
• Deezer Music Catalog Scraper

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: This is an independent tool, not affiliated with TheAudioDB. Only publicly available data is collected.