Music Machinery

We’ve just released version 1.1 of the Echo Nest Java Client.  The Java Client makes it easy to access the Echo Nest APIs from a Java program.  This release fixes some bugs and improves caching support.   Here’s a snippet of Java code that shows how you can use the API to find similar artists for the band ‘Weezer’:

 ArtistAPI artistAPI = new ArtistAPI(MY_ECHO_NEST_API_KEY);
 List<Artist> artists = artistAPI.searchArtist("Weezer, false);
 if (artists.size() > 0) {
     for (Artist artist : artists) {
          List<Scored<Artist>> similars =
                artistAPI.getSimilarArtists(artist, 0, 10);
          for (Scored<Artist> simArtist : similars) {
               System.out.println("   " + simArtist.getItem());
          }
      }
  }

Also included in the release is a command line shell that lets you interact with the Echo Nest API.   You can start it up from the command line like so:

    java  -DDECHO_NEST_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY -jar EchoNestAPI.jar

Here’s an example session:

Welcome to The Echo Nest API Shell
 type 'help'
nest% help
0) alias - adds a pseudonym or shorthand term for a command
1) chain - execute multiple commands on a single line
2) delay - pauses for a given number of seconds
3) echo - display a line of text
4) enid - gets the ENID for an arist
5) gc - performs garbage collection
6) getMaxCacheTime - gets the cache time
7) get_audio - gets audio for an artist
8) get_blogs - gets blogs for an artist
9) get_fam - gets familiarity for an artist
10) get_hot - gets hotttnesss for an artist
11) get_news - gets news for an artist
12) get_reviews - gets Reviews for an artist
13) get_similar - finds similar artists
14) get_similars - finds similar artists to a set of artists
15) get_urls - gets Reviews for an artist
16) get_video - gets video for an artist

( .. commands omitted  ..)

53) trackTatums - gets the tatums of a track
54) trackTempo - gets the overall Tempo of a track
55) trackTimeSignature - gets the overall time signature of a track
56) trackUpload - uploads a track
57) trackUploadDir - uploads a directory of tracks
58) trackWait - waits for an analysis to be complete
59) version - displays version information
nest%

nest% get_similar weezer
Similarity for Weezer
 1.00 The Smashing Pumpkins
 0.50 Ozma
 0.33 Fountains of Wayne
 0.25 Jimmy Eat World
 0.20 Veruca Salt
 0.17 The Breeders
 0.14 Nerf Herder
 0.13 The Flaming Lips
 0.11 Death Cab for Cutie
 0.10 Rivers Cuomo
 0.09 The Rentals
 0.08 Size 14
 0.08 Nada Surf
 0.07 Third Eye Blind
 0.07 Chopper One
nest%

nest% get_fam Decemberists
Familiarity for The Decemberists 0.8834854
nest%
nest% trackUpload  "09 When I'm Sixty-Four.MP3"
ID: baad7cab21b853ea5ead4db0a12b1df8
nest% trackDuration
Duration: 157.96104
nest%
nest% trackTempo
140.571 (0.717)
nest%

If you are interested in playing around with the Echo Nest API but don’t want to code up your own application, typing in webservice URLs by hand gets pretty old, pretty quickly. The Echo Nest shell gives you a simpler way to try things out.