I’m exploring some new project ideas and was wondering if anyone knew where to get an API for music, as in I’d like to know about artists, albums, songs, etc. Kind of like an IMDB for music with an open API? And free? I haven’t found anything yet. Seems like that could be a project in of itself, but not quite what I’m looking to do.

There are a couple sites like allmusic and discogs that have pretty extensive databases but no open api. How do sites like last.fm, mystrands, Mercora, and Audiri get their data? From Muze? That looks spendy.

Update

The MusicBrainz database looks like a good place to start. I’d still like to see if there are others that I’m missing though.

Update 2

Rhapsody has some web services, these might be helpful.

Update 3

Thanks to the power of del.icio.us (which is becoming a very effective search tool), I found this list of music related web services.