Music Machinery

Billboard, the venerable maintainer of the Billboard Hot 100 and a bevy of other music charts, is now making this data available via an API.  The API “puts the entire rich history of the Billboard charts at your fingertips to sample and mix into your web pages and applications.”.  The API is in public beta –  but already it is supplying some really good information.

The first service that they’ve rolled out is the ‘Chart’ service, which lets you search and retrieve Billboard chart information.

For example, to find all appearances of The Beatles  on any of the Billboard charts during the first week of June in 1964, you could make the call:

http://api.billboard.com/apisvc/chart/v1/list?artist=The+Beatles&sdate=1964-06-01&edate=1964-06-08&api_key=your_key

With results:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<searchResults firstPosition='1' totalReturned='6' totalRecords='6'>
    <chartItem id='8807769' rank='2' exrank='0'>
        <chart id='3070264'>
            <name>The Billboard Hot 100</name>
            <issueDate>1964-06-06</issueDate>
            <specId>379</specId>
            <specType>Singles</specType>
        </chart>
        <artist>The Beatles</artist>
        <writer />
        <song>Love Me Do</song>
        <producer />
        <catalogNo>9008</catalogNo>
        <promotion />
        <distribution>Tollie</distribution>
        <peak>1</peak>
        <weeksOn>14</weeksOn>
    </chartItem>
    <chartItem id='8715479' rank='4' exrank='0'>
        <chart id='3068613'>
            <name>The Billboard 200</name>
            <issueDate>1964-06-06</issueDate>
            <specId>305</specId>
            <specType>Albums</specType>
        </chart>
        <artist>The Beatles</artist>
        <writer />
        <song>The Beatles' Second Album</song>
        <producer />
        <catalogNo>2080</catalogNo>
        <promotion />
        <distribution>Capitol</distribution>
        <peak>1</peak>
        <weeksOn>55</weeksOn>
    </chartItem>
    <chartItem id='8715481' rank='6' exrank='0'>
        <chart id='3068613'>
            <name>The Billboard 200</name>
            <issueDate>1964-06-06</issueDate>
            <specId>305</specId>
            <specType>Albums</specType>
        </chart>
        <artist>The Beatles</artist>
        <writer />
        <song>Meet The Beatles!</song>
        <producer />
        <catalogNo>2047</catalogNo>
        <promotion />
        <distribution>Capitol</distribution>
        <peak>1</peak>
        <weeksOn>71</weeksOn>
    </chartItem>
    <chartItem id='8807803' rank='36' exrank='0'>
        <chart id='3070264'>
            <name>The Billboard Hot 100</name>
            <issueDate>1964-06-06</issueDate>
            <specId>379</specId>
            <specType>Singles</specType>
        </chart>
        <artist>The Beatles</artist>
        <writer />
        <song>Do You Want To Know A Secret</song>
        <producer />
        <catalogNo>587</catalogNo>
        <promotion />
        <distribution>Vee-Jay</distribution>
        <peak>2</peak>
        <weeksOn>11</weeksOn>
    </chartItem>
    <chartItem id='8715486' rank='11' exrank='0'>
        <chart id='3068613'>
            <name>The Billboard 200</name>
            <issueDate>1964-06-06</issueDate>
            <specId>305</specId>
            <specType>Albums</specType>
        </chart>
        <artist>The Beatles</artist>
        <writer />
        <song>Introducing...The Beatles</song>
        <producer />
        <catalogNo>1062</catalogNo>
        <promotion />
        <distribution>Vee-Jay</distribution>
        <peak>2</peak>
        <weeksOn>49</weeksOn>
    </chartItem>
    <chartItem id='8807777' rank='10' exrank='0'>
        <chart id='3070264'>
            <name>The Billboard Hot 100</name>
            <issueDate>1964-06-06</issueDate>
            <specId>379</specId>
            <specType>Singles</specType>
        </chart>
        <artist>The Beatles</artist>
        <writer />
        <song>P.S. I Love You</song>
        <producer />
        <catalogNo>9008</catalogNo>
        <promotion />
        <distribution>Tollie</distribution>
        <peak>10</peak>
        <weeksOn>8</weeksOn>
    </chartItem>
</searchResults>

You can restrict searches to various charts (Hot Country, Pop 100, Top Latin, etc.) , and you can search  by artist and/or song name over a range of dates.  (Unfortunately, but not too surprisingly, the data for the current month is not available in the searches).

The terms-of-service seem pretty reasonable- you are allowed to make 1,500 API calls per day at up to 2 queries per second.  Commercial use seems to be allowed (But I’m not a lawyer, so you should check for yourself).  However, according to the terms, you are not allowed to store any of the Billboard data. The services are well documented, support JSON as well as XML output and query times are fast.

I can think of all sorts of uses for this data  – to help create playlists for the 25 year high school reunion, tracking artist popularity over time, answering bar room music questions like “What was the highest charting instrumental-only single?” or “Did Ringo ever have a hit?”.  It is perfect data for the Music Alchemists that are trying to build  an automatic hit predictor.

The Billboard chart API is an excellent addition to the world of music web services.   It goes straight into my Top Ten Music APIs chart – with a bullet.