TheAudioDB Music Scraper

TheAudioDB Music Scraper

Scrape artist profiles, discographies, and album metadata from TheAudioDB for any list of artists. Each record returns biography, genre, country, style, mood, and artwork URLs. No registration required, export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

TheAudioDB is a community-built, open music metadata database with millions of artist profiles, albums, and tracks. Pulling that data by hand or wiring up API calls for a long list of artists is slow and repetitive. This Actor reads the public TheAudioDB Music API directly, looks up every artist name you give it, and returns matched profiles and their full discographies in one flat, consistent schema.

Who uses it	What they scrape TheAudioDB for
Music data engineers	Building a clean, deduplicated artist metadata warehouse from TheAudioDB.
Playlist curators	Enriching a list of artists with genre, mood, and style tags for better recommendations.
Music bloggers and journalists	Gathering artist biographies, country of origin, and discography timelines for editorial research.
App developers	Seeding a music discovery app with artist artwork, descriptions, and album lists.

What it does

This Actor collects artist profiles and album discographies from TheAudioDB by artist name and returns each artist or album as a flat row.

• 🎤 Artist profiles: biography, country, genre, style, mood, and high-resolution artwork URLs.
• 💿 Full discographies: every album for each artist, returned as separate rows with album title, year, and cover art.
• 🔑 Keyless access: works with the default public test API key, no Patreon or registration needed to start.
• 📏 Rate-limit control: cap the maximum number of artists per run to stay within free-tier limits.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with TheAudioDB data

🎧 Enrich a playlist with artist metadata.

A curator pastes 200 artist names from a festival lineup and gets back each artist's genre, style, mood, and biography to tag the playlist.

🗂️ Build a local music metadata warehouse.

A data engineer runs a nightly job against a list of 50,000 artists, collecting profiles and discographies into a SQL database for an internal recommendation engine.

🖼️ Collect artist artwork for a music app.

A mobile developer scrapes high-resolution artist thumbnails, banners, and logos for every artist in their app's catalog to refresh the UI.

📝 Research artist backgrounds for editorial.

A music journalist looks up 30 obscure artists, pulling biographies, countries, and formed years to write accurate liner notes.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
Artist name lookup	Feed it a list of artist names and get back the matched TheAudioDB profile and discography.
Album discography	Optionally return every album for each artist as its own row, with title, year, and artwork.
Public API, no sign-up	Uses the free TheAudioDB test key by default. Bring your own Patreon key for higher limits.
Fixed flat schema	Every artist and album row follows the same structure, ready for databases and spreadsheets.

How it compares

Three scrapers target TheAudioDB on Apify. This Actor focuses on artist and album lookup by name with a simple on/off toggle for profiles and discographies, using the public API without sign-up.

Feature	ParseForge	AllMusic Scraper	TheAudioDB Scraper	Audiodb Scraper
Artist profile lookup by name	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Album discography per artist	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Track listing data	Not listed	Yes	Yes	Yes
Music video data	Not listed	Not listed	Yes	Not listed
Mood and style tags	Yes	Yes	Not listed	Yes
Works with free public test key	Yes	Not listed	Yes	Yes

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a list of artist names and toggle whether artist profiles, albums, or both are returned. The max items limit stops the run after a set number of artists. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "searchArtists": [
 "Coldplay"
 ],
 "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
 "searchArtists": [
 "Coldplay"
 ],
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.008 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$0.80
1,000 results	$8.00
10,000 results	$80.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the TheAudioDB Music Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to TheAudioDB through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/theaudiodb-music-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results for some artist names?

TheAudioDB may not have an entry for that artist, or the name spelling does not match the database. Try variations of the artist name or check the run log for which names returned empty.

The run stopped early and I did not get all my artists.

You likely hit the free API rate limit. Lower the 'Maximum artists' count, spread your list across multiple smaller runs, or enter a Patreon API key for higher limits.

Why are album rows missing the artist name?

Album rows are linked to the parent artist search. The artist name is included in each album row so you can always trace an album back to its artist.

I see duplicate artist rows in my dataset.

If you list the same artist name more than once in the input array, the Actor will look it up each time. Deduplicate your artist list before running.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a TheAudioDB API key?	No. The Actor ships with the public test key '2' pre-filled, which works for most use cases. If you hit rate limits, you can enter your own Patreon-supported key in the input.
What data does the artist profile include?	Each artist record returns the biography, country, genre, style, mood, formed year, and URLs for thumbnail, banner, fan art, and logo images.
Can I get albums for each artist?	Yes. Enable the 'Include Albums' checkbox and every album in the artist's discography is returned as a separate row with the album title, year of release, and cover art URL.
How many artists can I scrape in one run?	You set the maximum with the 'Maximum artists' field. The free public API has rate limits, so start with a small batch and scale up with a Patreon key if needed.
What output formats are supported?	Your dataset can be exported to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML directly from the Apify platform.
Does this Actor handle artist name variations or misspellings?	TheActorDB API does its own fuzzy matching. If an exact match is not found, the API may return a close match or an empty result. Check the run log for any names that returned no data.
Can I scrape tracks or music videos with this Actor?	This Actor focuses on artist profiles and album discographies. Tracks and music videos are not returned in the current schema.
Is the data returned in real time?	Yes. Every run calls TheAudioDB API live, so you get the latest community-contributed metadata for each artist.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by TheAudioDB. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.