Launching the Metadata API

Today, we are very proud to announce the birth of the Metadata API. Even though it’s completely new and still in testing stages, you should be able to use the Metadata API to search for tracks, albums and artists, much like you search in the client, but you get the result in XML format. A typical search request would be http://ws.spotify.com/search/1/track?q=bat+for+lashes. There is also the lookup service, which takes a Spotify URI and returns XML describing the entity that the URI points to. As with search, you can use it for tracks, albums and artists. So what should you use this for? Well, just about anything. Perhaps you could create a GreaseMonkey script that replaces Spotify track links with their corresponding track names. Or make a website that checks for new albums by your favorite bands. Or just use the API directly through a browser to lookup track URIs you get from friends, to prevent you from being rickrolled. All you need to do is to go to the API documentation, accept the Terms and Conditions and then try it out! In order to make sure that everyone gets to use the service, there is a limit of ten requests per second and IP address. This the very first version of the Metadata API so please treat it as such, and feel free to post your feedback in the comments. The API team (Jon, Per, Richard, Vikram, Örjan, and myself) wishes you happy hacking!