YouTube Music Scraper — Plays, Monthly Audience & Charts

Scrape YouTube Music without an account. You get songs with play counts, artists with monthly audience, subscribers and total channel views, albums with full tracklists, playlists, charts for 70 countries with rank and trend, new releases, lyrics, song credits (writers, producers, label), similar artists and podcasts (popular shows and episodes by country, shows by category, weekly top podcast charts, every episode of a show). Every number comes back as the original text ("4.3B plays") and as a parsed number (4300000000), so it drops straight into a spreadsheet or dashboard.

No login, no cookies, no browser. Results start arriving in a few seconds.

What you can scrape

Source	What you get
Search (songs, videos, albums, artists, community & featured playlists, podcasts, episodes, profiles, or top results)	One row per result: title, artists, album, duration, plays / views, year, explicit flag, thumbnail, link. Songs searches go about 500 results deep.
Artist link	Monthly audience, subscribers, total views, description, top songs with plays, albums, singles & EPs, videos, live performances, playlists, featured-on, similar artists (with their monthly audience). Optionally every song the artist has (with plays) and the full discography with tracklists.
Album link	Album / single / EP, year, artists, track count, total length, total plays, description, and every track with plays and duration.
Playlist link	Title, author, views, track count, total length, plus one row per track.
Song link	Title, artists, album, year, duration, plays (or views and likes for music videos), track number.
Charts (70 countries + Global)	Top artists (rank, trend, subscribers), top albums (US), top 100 music videos, daily top music videos, trending, top live performances, genre charts (US: Jazz, Hip hop, Latin…) and language charts (India: Tamil, Punjabi, Telugu…) with up to 100 ranked entries each, and weekly top podcast shows (US, Canada, Mexico — 50 ranked shows).
New releases	The current New Releases albums and singles.
Podcasts	Popular shows (~180-200 per country, ranked) and popular episodes (200 per country, with views, publish date, length and full description), shows by category (Comedy, Sports, True crime, Business and 10 more), podcast show links (the show with its description plus its newest episodes, as many as you want) and episode links. Optional date filter for episodes.
Extras	Lyrics (with source), song credits (performed by, written by, produced by, label), related songs, similar artists — for any song.

Use cases

• Music analytics & A&R — track play counts and monthly audience over time; the scrapedAt timestamp on every row makes daily snapshots easy to chart.
• YouTube side of your streaming dashboard — pair it with your Spotify data: plays per track, monthly audience per artist, chart positions per country.
• Label & marketing reports — full discography with per-track plays, total album plays, top songs.
• Chart monitoring — daily top music videos, trending and top artists for any of 70 countries, with up / down / same trend.
• Playlist research — find community and featured playlists for a genre, then pull every track.
• Lyrics datasets — lyrics with source attribution for a list of songs or a whole catalog.
• Songwriter & label research — who wrote and produced each song, and which label delivered it, for a search, an album or an artist's whole catalog (album links and discographies need albumTracksAsRows on, so each track is its own song row).
• Podcast research — the most popular shows and episodes in any country, category lists, and a show's full episode history with views, dates and lengths.

Input examples

Songs for two artists, 100 each:

{
  "searchQueries": ["taylor swift", "arijit singh"],
  "searchType": "songs",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 100
}

An artist with every song and the full discography:

{
  "startUrls": ["https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCPC0L1d253x-KuMNwa05TpA"],
  "artistDepth": "full"
}

This week's charts for the US, India and Global:

{
  "chartCountries": ["US", "IN", "ZZ"],
  "chartTypes": ["topArtists", "topAlbums", "videoCharts"]
}

Songs from an album and a playlist, with lyrics:

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://music.youtube.com/browse/MPREb_PLKWyYmLQZS",
    "https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=RDCLAK5uy_ndSwBc3IHsPjjjVulAco5vFZOGL-Zuy0o"
  ],
  "albumTracksAsRows": true,
  "includeLyrics": true
}

Songs with their credits (writers, producers, label):

{
  "searchQueries": ["kendrick lamar"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 50,
  "includeCredits": true
}

Weekly top podcast shows in the US, Canada and Mexico:

{
  "chartCountries": ["US", "CA", "MX"],
  "chartTypes": ["podcasts"]
}

Popular podcast shows and episodes in India, plus the Comedy and True crime categories:

{
  "podcastLists": ["popularShows", "popularEpisodes", "categories"],
  "podcastCountries": ["IN"],
  "podcastCategories": ["Comedy", "True crime"]
}

A podcast with its last 200 episodes, only those from the last 90 days:

{
  "startUrls": ["https://music.youtube.com/browse/MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ"],
  "maxEpisodesPerShow": 200,
  "newerThan": "90 days"
}

Main input fields

Field	What it does
searchQueries	Terms to search. Each runs its own search.
searchType	songs (default), videos, albums, artists, community_playlists, featured_playlists, podcasts, episodes, profiles, or all (top results).
maxResultsPerQuery	Results per search term (default 50).
startUrls	Artist, album, playlist, song, podcast show (/browse/MPSP…) or episode (/browse/MPED…) links (music.youtube.com, youtube.com, youtu.be, or bare IDs).
artistDepth	summary, allSongs, discography or full.
chartCountries / chartTypes	Countries and chart sections to scrape (topArtists, topAlbums, videoCharts, genreCharts, podcasts).
expandChartPlaylists	Save every ranked chart entry (default on) or one row per chart.
includeNewReleases	Add the New Releases page.
podcastLists	popularShows, popularEpisodes, categories.
podcastCountries / podcastCategories	Countries for the podcast lists (default: country) and which categories (default: all).
podcastDepth	For podcast shows found in lists, charts or searches: summary (as listed), details (adds the show's description) or episodes (details + each show's newest episodes as rows).
maxEpisodesPerShow	Newest episodes per show (default 20; 0 = the show row only).
newerThan	Only podcast episodes published on or after this day (2026-09-01, 7 days).
fetchDetails	Open every album, artist and playlist found and add its full details.
includeLyrics / includeRelated	Lyrics / related songs and similar artists for every song.
includeCredits	Song credits for every audio song row: performers, writers, producers, label. Album tracks get them with albumTracksAsRows on.
albumTracksAsRows	Also save each album track as its own row.
country / language	Localize results (US, IN, …; en, es, …).
maxItems	Cap for the whole run.

Output

Every row has a type (song, video, artist, album, playlist, podcast, episode, profile), a url, a thumbnail, the source it came from and scrapedAt. Numbers are always given twice: the text as shown (playsText, monthlyAudienceText, subscribersText) and parsed (plays, monthlyAudience, subscribers).

A song from a search:

{
  "type": "song",
  "title": "Shake It Off",
  "videoId": "1nFxMuPYeKA",
  "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=1nFxMuPYeKA",
  "artists": [{ "name": "Taylor Swift", "channelId": "UCPC0L1d253x-KuMNwa05TpA" }],
  "artist": "Taylor Swift",
  "album": { "title": "1989", "browseId": "MPREb_K9GL6DCDUCq" },
  "duration": "3:40",
  "durationSeconds": 220,
  "playsText": "4.3B plays",
  "plays": 4300000000,
  "isExplicit": false,
  "videoType": "audio",
  "thumbnail": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/…=w544-h544-l90-rj",
  "position": 1,
  "query": "taylor swift",
  "source": { "type": "search", "input": "taylor swift", "searchType": "songs" },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-24T08:38:40.170Z"
}

An artist (lists shortened):

{
  "type": "artist",
  "name": "Taylor Swift",
  "channelId": "UCPC0L1d253x-KuMNwa05TpA",
  "url": "https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCPC0L1d253x-KuMNwa05TpA",
  "monthlyAudienceText": "445M monthly audience",
  "monthlyAudience": 445000000,
  "subscribersText": "63.4M subscribers",
  "subscribers": 63400000,
  "totalViewsText": "46,439,995,925 views",
  "totalViews": 46439995925,
  "topSongs": [{ "title": "The Fate of Ophelia", "videoId": "7nVctvQVz0U", "playsText": "800M plays", "plays": 800000000 }],
  "albums": [{ "title": "The Life of a Showgirl", "browseId": "MPREb_p6BGcsuOpGt", "year": 2025 }],
  "singles": ["…"],
  "videos": ["…"],
  "similarArtists": [{ "name": "Julia Michaels", "monthlyAudience": 5040000 }],
  "allSongsPlaylistId": "OLAK5uy_kRl6HdICkQpZF7zuHu_Yx-RDVHw-hboxo"
}

A chart entry:

{
  "type": "artist",
  "name": "Alka Yagnik",
  "subscribersText": "2.26M subscribers",
  "subscribers": 2260000,
  "rank": 1,
  "trend": "same",
  "chartCountry": "ZZ",
  "chartCountryName": "Global",
  "chartType": "topArtists",
  "chartName": "Top artists"
}

A song with credits (includeCredits):

{
  "type": "song",
  "title": "Not Like Us",
  "artist": "Kendrick Lamar",
  "credits": {
    "performers": ["Kendrick Lamar"],
    "writers": ["Kendrick Lamar", "Sean Momberger", "…"],
    "producers": ["Mustard"],
    "other": []
  },
  "label": "Kendrick Lamar, under exclusive license to Interscope Records"
}

A podcast show from the popular list (podcastDepth: "details" adds the description):

{
  "type": "podcast",
  "title": "Financial Audit",
  "showId": "MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "playlistId": "PLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "url": "https://music.youtube.com/browse/MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "youtubeUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ",
  "author": { "name": "Caleb Hammer", "channelId": "UCLe_q9axMaeTbjN0hy1Z9xA" },
  "channelId": "UCLe_q9axMaeTbjN0hy1Z9xA",
  "description": "…",
  "rank": 1,
  "country": "US",
  "category": null
}

A podcast episode:

{
  "type": "episode",
  "title": "The Most UNHINGED Woman In Financial Audit History",
  "videoId": "QhrjI7-Y788",
  "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrjI7-Y788",
  "youtubeUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrjI7-Y788",
  "show": { "title": "Financial Audit", "showId": "MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ", "url": "https://music.youtube.com/browse/MPSPPLzJVLNWKVr6ksDjycE7NpSptOlcaEP-jQ" },
  "viewsText": "674K views",
  "views": 674000,
  "publishedText": "10h ago",
  "publishedDate": "2026-10-09",
  "duration": "1 hr 33 min",
  "durationSeconds": 5580,
  "description": "…",
  "position": 1
}

The dataset has ready-made table views: Overview, Songs & plays, Artists, Charts, Podcasts and Song credits. Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or connect it to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or your own API client.

Reliability

• Runs never fail on data problems. A bad link, an artist that does not exist, a blocked request or a YouTube Music hiccup is reported in the run's status message; everything else is still delivered. Results are written as they come in, so a run that hits its time limit or your spending limit ends with the rows collected so far and a Partial — … / Stopped at … message.
• You pay only for delivered rows. Rows are billed in the same step that writes them to the dataset (result per row, lyrics only for rows where lyrics were found); error rows are never billed. Song credits, podcast details and episodes skipped by your date filter add no charge of their own.
• Blocked requests retry on fresh IPs with backoff, move to residential proxies automatically, and a run-wide block stops the run early with what was collected instead of burning your budget.
• Forgiving input. Common aliases are accepted (queries, limit, maxResults, hl/gl, lyrics, urls…), a single string works where a list is expected (one entry per line), searchType can be a list (["songs", "albums"] runs both), and invalid values are skipped with a warning instead of a failed run.
• A RUN_REPORT record in the run's key-value store summarizes requests, retries, failures and drift checks.

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube or Google account? No. Nothing to log in to and no cookies to supply.

How fast is it? About 20 songs per request and 100 tracks per playlist page. A 100-song search takes a few seconds; the full US charts (about 900 ranked entries) take under 10 seconds.

How deep does search go? Songs searches return about 500 unique results per term. Duplicates across pages are removed and only unique rows count toward your limit.

Why is plays empty on some rows? YouTube Music shows play counts on songs in search results, albums, artist song lists and artist pages. Chart lists and some curated playlists show no count; the row still has everything else. Very new or very small artists also have no monthly audience figure.

What's the difference between plays and views? Audio tracks show "plays", music videos show "views". Both land in plays (with the original text in playsText) so you can sort by one column; videoType tells you which kind the row is.

Can I get time-series data? Schedule the actor (daily or weekly) with the same input — each run's rows carry scrapedAt, so you can chart plays, monthly audience and chart rank over time.

Which countries have charts? Global plus 69 countries (Argentina to Zimbabwe). Top artists and music-video charts exist everywhere. Top albums are US-only. The weekly top podcast shows chart (50 shows) exists for the US, Canada and Mexico. Genre charts are US-only (choose genreCharts) and language charts India-only (same option).

Can I scrape YouTube Music podcasts? Yes. Pick podcastLists for the popular shows and episodes of any country or the category lists, add the weekly top podcast chart with chartTypes: ["podcasts"], search with searchType = podcasts or episodes, or paste podcast show links (music.youtube.com/browse/MPSP…) to get a show with its newest episodes (maxEpisodesPerShow, as many as the show has). Episodes from the popular lists, show links and episode links come with views, publish date, length and description. Episodes found by search come as listed (title, show, date in dateText) unless you set podcastDepth to details or episodes, which opens each one. Popular lists follow the country; category lists are the same everywhere.

How exact are podcast publish dates? YouTube Music shows recent episodes as "10h ago" or "3d ago" and older ones as "Sep 14" or "Dec 1, 2025". publishedText is that text; publishedDate turns it into a day (YYYY-MM-DD), accurate to about a day for recent episodes.

Where do song credits come from? From YouTube Music's own "View song credits" panel: performed by, written by, produced by, and "Music metadata provided by" (the label or distributor) as label. Most official audio tracks have them; music videos and user uploads do not (credits is then null).

Can I download audio? No. This actor collects public catalog data and statistics only.

Is it legal to scrape YouTube Music? This actor collects only publicly available data — the same catalog pages, play counts and charts anyone can see on music.youtube.com without signing in. Some rows can contain people's names: artist names, songwriter and producer credits, and the public channel names of profiles, playlist creators and podcast hosts. Personal data is protected by laws such as GDPR (EU), PIPEDA (Canada) and CCPA (California), so only collect it when you have a legitimate reason, and follow YouTube's terms for how you use the data. Lyrics are copyrighted by their songwriters and publishers: fine for analysis, but get a license before you republish them. If you're unsure whether your use case is legitimate, check with a lawyer. Background reading: Is web scraping legal?

Does it access any private data? No. It never signs in and uses no account, cookies or tokens, so it only sees what YouTube Music shows to a visitor who is not logged in. Private playlists, listening history, likes, library, uploads and any account data are out of reach — a private or deleted link is skipped, reported in the run's status message and never charged. No audio or video is downloaded.

Something missing or wrong? Open an issue on the actor page and include your input.