Discogs API

Beginner's Pick Music / OAuth Advanced HTTPS
47 D
Measured Score 0 50 100 Speed 3/30 Consistency 1/20 Security 20/20 Browser access 15/15 Transparency 8/15 TESTED 2026-08-10

Overview

Discogs is the world's largest music database and marketplace API, covering vinyl records, CDs, and tapes with detailed release data, artist biographies, and pricing. You can search the catalog and read artist or release data without authentication; user collection management and marketplace actions require OAuth. It is ideal for building record collection apps, price guides, or music history tools.

Beginner Tip

Anonymous requests are rate-limited to 25 per minute, but authenticating with a personal access token (from your Discogs Settings > Developers page) raises the limit to 60 per minute — always use a token even for read-only use. Include a descriptive User-Agent header (e.g., MyApp/1.0) to avoid 403 errors from their bot filter.

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request
GET https://api.discogs.com/releases/1
Result
HTTP 200 · application/json · 12,488 bytes · compressed
Response time
771 ms (median of 3) · fastest 192 ms
Transport
TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 · certificate issued by Google Trust Services
Browser CORS
Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Served by
cloudflare
Recorded
2026-08-10

Available Data

The kind of data this API exposes, based on its documentation. We could not call the endpoint to confirm the exact field names.

track name and artist
album metadata
audio preview URLs
popularity score
genre classification
Use case: Integrate music data into web and mobile applications

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://api.discogs.com/releases/1 on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

JSON Response · Captured
{
  "id": 1,
  "status": "Accepted",
  "year": 1999,
  "resource_url": "https://api.discogs.com/releases/1",
  "uri": "https://www.discogs.com/release/1-The-Persuader-Stockholm",
  "artists": [
    {
      "name": "The Persuader",
      "anv": "",
      "join": "",
      "role": "",
      "tracks": "",
      "id": 1,
      "resource_url": "https://api.discogs.com/artists/1",
      "thumbnail_url": "https://i.discogs.com/0J9_1DFJtRnLxb1DnY0NYlnlDCBo1QmAka3s6eAcyJw/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:466/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9BLTEtMTU0/MzY1OTcyMS0…"
    }
  ],
  "artists_sort": "Persuader, The",
  "labels": [
    {
      "name": "Svek",
      "catno": "SK032",
      "entity_type": "1",
      "entity_type_name": "Label",
      "id": 5,
      "resource_url": "https://api.discogs.com/labels/5",
      "thumbnail_url": "https://i.discogs.com/XIJdm6dtIU2Z2eX6GP5COk7UrHgh3n17F4ItrLq7pw8/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:337/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9MLTUtMTEz/NjY2MjUxNy5…"
    }
  ],
  "series": [],
  "companies": [
    {
      "name": "The Globe Studios",
      "catno": "",
      "entity_type": "23",
      "entity_type_name": "Recorded At",
      "id": 271046,
      "resource_url": "https://api.discogs.com/labels/271046"
    }
  ],
  "formats": [
    {
      "name": "Vinyl",
      "qty": "2",
      "descriptions": [
        "12\""
      ]
    }
  ],
  "data_quality": "Cor
…

Field Reference

id Unique Discogs release ID.
artists List of artists credited on this release.
year Original release year of the record.

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

Request
const url = "https://api.discogs.com/releases/1";
// Replace headers or query params with the values required by this API.
const response = await fetch(url, {
  headers: {
  "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
  }
});
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

What Can You Build?

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

HTTP 404 Requesting a path that does not exist application/json
{
  "message": "The requested resource was not found."
}

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.

429 Too Many Requests Exceeded the rate limit (25 req/min unauthenticated, 60 req/min authenticated).
Authenticate with a personal access token to raise the rate limit and add 1-second delays between bulk requests.
403 Forbidden Missing or generic User-Agent header triggered bot protection.
Set a custom User-Agent like MyApp/1.0 [email protected] in every request.
Invalid token Personal access token or OAuth token is incorrect.
Generate a new personal access token from Discogs Settings → Developers and include it as: Authorization: Discogs token=YOUR_TOKEN.

Measured Score Breakdown

Live HTTP request to the API endpoint

Speed 3/30
Consistency 1/20
Security 20/20
Browser access 15/15
Transparency 8/15
Endpoint Response Time 771ms

Fully tested on Aug 10, 2026

Technical Specifications

Auth OAuth
HTTPS REQUIRED
CORS UNKNOWN
Category Music
Difficulty Advanced
Endpoint last called: 2026-08-10

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