List of online music databases
Encyclopedia
This is a list of online music databases, as well as including a list of sites that currently provide free & paid-for on-demand music as a streaming media
. A primary unit of many of these two types of sites is the track
s which is often referred to in the marketplace simply as a song.
. Many of these sites have advertising and offer non-free options in the style of an online music store
. For a list of online music stores that provide a means of purchasing and downloading music as files of some sort, see comparison of online music stores
. Many of both types of sites offer browsing by song title, artist, etc. that amounts to a form of online music database.
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
. A primary unit of many of these two types of sites is the track
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s which is often referred to in the marketplace simply as a song.
Online music databases
Below is a table of online music databases that are largely free of charge. Note that many of the sites provide a specialized service or focus on a particular music genre. Some of these operate as an online music store or purchase referral service in some capacity. Among the sites that have information on the largest number of entities are those sites that focus on discographies of composing and performing artists.| Database | Services | No. of tracks | No. of releases | No. of artists | Notes | License | Full free access |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allmusic | Music information and reviews | ~20,000,000 | ~2,200,000 | Song samples only | |||
| BestEverAlbums.com BestEverAlbums.com Best Ever Albums is a website and database whose prime purpose is to establish and rank the greatest music albums of all time and surface these to site visitors. The rankings are aggregated together from around two thousand individual chart submissions to form the overall chart... |
Database and community | 180,000 | 15,000 | 7,000 | Song samples only | ||
| Choral Public Domain Library Choral Public Domain Library The Choral Public Domain Library is a sheet music archive which focuses on choral and vocal music in the public domain or otherwise freely available for printing and performing .-Description:... |
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| Decibel Decibel (company) Decibel Music Systems Ltd., usually called Decibel, is a company based in London that collects, organises, enhances and delivers data on physical and digital music products, recordings and performances.... |
Database and API of physical & digital products, venues, photos, artists, participants, composers, movements, labels, publishers and rights. | 12,000,000 | 301,000 | Multi-lingual, Global Coverage | |||
| Discogs Discogs Discogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are... |
User-generated database of physical/digital releases, artists, and labels. Marketplace. | 21,500,000 | 2,500,000 | 1,900,000 | |||
| Encyclopaedia Metallum Encyclopaedia Metallum Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives is a website which lists bands from various forms of heavy metal music... |
A heavy metal encyclopedia with information, complete discography, links, images, and reviews. | ~1,200,000 | ~74,000 | ~170,000 | |||
| freedb Freedb freedb is a database of compact disc track listings, where all the content is under the GNU General Public License. It was originally based on the now-proprietary CDDB . As of April 24, 2006, the database holds just under 2,000,000 CDs... |
Identification service for CDs | GPL | |||||
| The Freesound Project The Freesound Project The Freesound Project is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. Sounds uploaded to the website by its users cover a wide range of subjects, from field recordings to synthesized sound effects. All audio content in the repository is released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus... |
repository of Creative Commons Creative Commons Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons... -licensed audio samples Sampling (music) In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically... |
CC Sampling Plus | |||||
| Gracenote Gracenote Gracenote, Inc., formerly called CDDB , is a company that maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. It provides software and metadata to businesses that enable their customers to manage and search... |
Identification service for CDs and other media | ~100,000,000 | ~8,000,000 | 1 billion "submissions" | |||
| International Music Score Library Project International Music Score Library Project The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle... |
Music scores and parts, mostly scanned from publications now in the public domain; some recordings | 1,864 (88,066 scores) | 5,147 composers, 64 performers | PD Public domain Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all... /CC-BY-NC-SA |
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| Internet Archive Internet Archive The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive... |
Huge live music archive Live Music Archive The Live Music Archive , part of the Internet Archive, is a collection of over 60,000 concert recordings in lossless audio formats. The website is known for its extensive collection of Grateful Dead recordings.-History:... and host for hundreds of free music netlabels Netlabel A netlabel is a record label that distributes its music through digital audio formats over the Internet... |
~200,000 | CC Creative Commons Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons... /PD Public domain Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all... |
Yes | |||
| iLike ILike iLike is an online service that allows users to download and share music. The website makes use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The program and sidebar are not required in order to use the site but allow for ease in discovering new artists.... |
music download and sharing | ||||||
| Jamendo Jamendo Jamendo is a music website and a community of music authors. It bills itself as "the world's #1 platform for free and legal music downloads under Creative Commons licenses."... |
free full-length music download | CC Creative Commons Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons... /Free Art License Free Art license The Free Art License is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works without needing the author's explicit permission.The Free Art License recognizes and protects these rights... |
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| Jango Jango (website) Jango is an advertising-supported Internet radio and social networking service founded by Daniel Kaufman... |
advertising-supported Internet radio Internet radio Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet... and social networking |
Yes | |||||
| Last.fm Last.fm Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m .... |
Internet radio and music community website. | 12,000,000 | Automatically creates online library/collection of listened to music and generates recommendations | ||||
| LyricWiki LyricWiki LyricWiki is a lyrical database-oriented website. As of August 2011, it is the fourth largest MediaWiki installation with over 1,600,000 pages. Users on the site can view, edit, and discuss the lyrics of songs, which are also available for purchase from links on the site. The site is powered by... |
Lyrics wiki on Wikia Wikia Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki... |
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| MAQAM MAQAM MAQAM is a US based production company specializing in Arabic and Middle Eastern media. The company was established by a small group of Arabic music and culture lovers, later becoming a division of 3B Media Inc. "MAQAM" is an Arabic word meaning a position of high esteem... |
Largest Database of Arabic and Middle Eastern music artists, tracks, and albums. | 20,000 | 1,200 | ||||
| Metacritic Metacritic Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,... |
Album reviews | ||||||
| MetroLyrics MetroLyrics MetroLyrics is a lyrics-dedicated website, founded in 2002. It is the highest trafficked lyrics website in the world, with 48 million+ unique users per month and 125+ million page views per month, and is the 3rd largest music site in the US and Globally... |
Lyrics lookup | ||||||
| Moozone Moozone Moozone.com is a cloud-based online music storage service and digital music store. It is owned by Multimedia Online Services, Inc. The beta version of the web site was launched in September 2009... |
Online music storage and community service | 8,000,000 | 730,000 | 590,000 | |||
| MP3.com MP3.com MP3.com is a web site operated by CNET Networks providing information about digital music and artists, songs, services, community, and technologies. It is probably better known for its original incarnation, as a legal, free music-sharing service, popular with independent musicians for promoting... |
information about digital music and artists (formerly freely-licensed music download) | Does not play its own music | |||||
| MusicBrainz MusicBrainz MusicBrainz is a project that aims to create an open content music database. Similar to the freedb project, it was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the CDDB... |
Open content Open content Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software.... music database. |
10,000,000 | 948,000 | 608,000 | GPL/LGPL/PD Public domain Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all... /CC-BY-NC-SA |
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| MusicMight MusicMight MusicMight, formerly Rockdetector is a rock music website which provides artist and product information through a global website and an ongoing book series... |
Biographies and discographies | ||||||
| Musipedia Musipedia Musipedia is a search engine for identifying pieces of music. This can be done by whistling a theme, playing it on a virtual piano keyboard, tapping the rhythm on the computer keyboard, or entering the Parsons code... |
Search by melody (entering notes, Parsons code Parsons code The Parsons code, formally named the Parsons Code for Melodic Contours, is a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion—the motion of the pitch up and down. Denys Parsons developed this system for his 1975 book, The Directory of Tunes and Musical Themes... , whistling, or tapping rhythm) |
Yes, but via other sources | |||||
| Mutopia Project Mutopia project The Mutopia Project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of free content sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenberg's library of public domain books.The music is reproduced from old scores that are out of copyright... |
repository of free content Free content Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work... sheet music Sheet music Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens... |
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| MySpace MySpace Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors.... |
Artist bios and artist-uploaded music streaming | ||||||
| Nigerian Music Factory | Artist, DJ, Producer bios and artist-uploaded music streaming | ||||||
| Ovation Press | Online publisher of classical string music | ||||||
| Online Music DB | Music information, YouTube Videos and Lyrics | 200 | |||||
| Pandora | Music recommendation and Internet radio service. | USA-only | |||||
| Rainwave Rainwave Rainwave is an interactive radio website that allows users to request, rate, and vote for songs in real time. The site hosts three separate radio streams and focuses completely on video game music.-History:... |
Online music community featuring Video Game music. Users can request and rate music. Music is selected by election: During every song, users vote from a selection of three tracks to choose the next song to play. | ~11,000 | ~1,500 | ~1,800 | |||
| Radio Croquer | Social Network and music stations | Yes | |||||
| RadioPalmwine | Nigerian Radio Station, Online music community and Entertainment Portal | ||||||
| Rate Your Music Rate Your Music Rate Your Music is a metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos, bootlegs, and movies are rated and reviewed by users. This data is then used to generate recommendations for users and to create rated lists of albums... |
Catalog, rate, tag, and review your music. | ~1,900,000 | 580,000 | ||||
| Rolldabeats Rolldabeats rolldabeats is an online music database dedicated to drum and bass and its various stylistic origins. It was launched in February 2005 by the original webmaster Thijs Engels, and web designer Tom "Haste" Johnson... |
Drum N Bass music database, physical releases only. | ||||||
| ShareTheMusic ShareTheMusic ShareTheMusic is an Internet platform for legal and free music sharing, owned by Desh, ltd.It was launched worldwide on 26 October 2009. In December 2009 ShareTheMusic.com has been admitted to Microsoft BizSpark .The guiding idea of the service was to make it possible for all the Internet users,... |
Service for free and legally music sharing. | ||||||
| SparkTop10 | Free music sharing using YouTube API. | ||||||
| Werner Icking Music Archive Werner Icking Music Archive The Werner Icking Music Archive , is a web archive of liberally-licensed sheet music of public domain music. The scores are electronically typeset by volunteers and distributed in PDF, often accompanied by their typesetting files. WIMA continues the defunct GMD Music Archive and is named after... |
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| Wikifonia Wikifonia Wikifonia is an on-line publisher of sheet music, combining a MusicXML-based technology in a wiki system, with copyright clearance.-Development:... |
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| WhoSampled WhoSampled WhoSampled is a website and database of information about sample-based music founded in London, United Kingdom.WhoSampled is an online sample-based music databases of music that compares original songs with covered songs or songs that "borrowed" samples, it serves as a historical line of where... |
User-generated database of comparison between original songs and covers or songs that uses samples. | 48,000 | 18,000 | ||||
| WorldCat WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative... |
On-demand streaming music services
The following is a list of online music stores that currently offer some free on-demand music streaming of full-length content over the Internet as a part of their service without the listener necessarily purchasing a file for download. One might compare this type of service to internet radioInternet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
. Many of these sites have advertising and offer non-free options in the style of an online music store
Online music store
An online music store is an online business which sells audio files, usually music, on a per-song and/or subscription basis. It may be differentiated from music streaming services in that the music store offers the actual music file, while streaming services offer partial or full listening without...
. For a list of online music stores that provide a means of purchasing and downloading music as files of some sort, see comparison of online music stores
Comparison of online music stores
For streaming services, see list of online music databases.The following table lists online music stores that carry a selection of songs by many record labels and artists. The stores listed below access passive databases and require access through a computer or some allow access and downloads...
. Many of both types of sites offer browsing by song title, artist, etc. that amounts to a form of online music database.
| Database | # of tracks. | Available in | Pricing | PC | Android | iOS | BlackBerry | Windows Phone 7 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8tracks | 7 million | Everywhere | Free/Subscription | Web | Commercial free | ||||
| Deezer Deezer Deezer is a free music streaming service based in Paris, France. Deezer was launched on August 24, 2007. Deezer has negotiated rights to make 165,000 songs available for streaming legally via an agreement with Sony, as well as some of Universal's catalog... |
13 million | FR/UK | Free/Subscription | Web | Also available on Symbian. | ||||
| fizy Fizy fizy is an internationally available online music search engine based in Turkey. Containing both audio and video, fizy fetches files from other websites and immediately starts to stream them. Access to the website was banned in Turkey on 28 December 2010, due to alleged copyright violations. The... |
USA | Free | Web | ||||||
| Grooveshark Grooveshark Grooveshark is an international online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music that can be played immediately or added to a playlist... |
22 million | Everywhere? | Free/Subscription | Web/Desktop Application | |||||
| Last.fm Last.fm Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m .... |
12 million | USA/UK/Germany (free) - Everywhere? | Free/Subscription | Web/Desktop Application | Available on Xbox 360 | ||||
| Mflow Mflow mflow is an online social music streaming, recommendation and mp3-retailing service. It allows users to search for, stream and recommend music free of charge... |
5 million | UK | Free | Web | |||||
| MOG MOG (online music) MOG is a paid subscription online music service and blog network, where users can listen to, read about, and discover music. Users can play any song in MOG's catalog on their computer through their web browser; on their mobile device through MOG's applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and... |
11 million+ | USA | Subscription | Web | Available on Roku | ||||
| Pandora | 700,000 | USA | Free/Subscription | ||||||
| Qriocity Qriocity Sony Entertainment Network , formerly called Qriocity , is a trading name for Sony Corporation's streaming music, games, e-books and video on demand services. A video streaming service with the name has been available in the United States since April 2010... |
6 million+ | USA/UK/IR/FR/SP/IT/GE/JP | Subscription | Web | Available on PS3/PSP/Bravia TVs/BIVL | ||||
| Rdio Rdio Rdio is an ad-free music subscription service available in the United States, Canada and Brazil. It is available as a website and also has clients for the iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile devices, which can play streaming music or cache songs for offline... |
9 million | USA and Canada | Subscription | Web/Desktop Application | |||||
| Rhapsody Rhapsody (online music service) Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service, launched in December 2001, and available in the United States only. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody officially declared its independence from RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version... |
9 million | USA | |||||||
| Simfy Simfy simfy is a music subscription service available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and announced in Belgium. It is available as a website and also has clients for the iPhone and Android, which can play streaming music or cache songs for offline playback. The web-based service also offers a... |
13 million | Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium | Free/Subscription | Web/Desktop Application | |||||
| Slacker Slacker (music service) Slacker Radio is an interactive Internet radio service available in the US and Canada. Listeners can access the service on the web, through mobile apps on multiple smartphones as well as on Slacker Personal Radio Players and other devices. It allows users to create and share customized music stations... |
2.4 million | USA, Canada | |||||||
| Spotify Spotify Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had... |
15 million | Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA | Free/Subscription | Desktop Application | Requires a Facebook Facebook Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as... account. Available on Palm, Sonos, Symbian, Boxee BOXEE Boxee is a cross-platform freeware HTPC software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV... , Telia Digital-tv, webOS & Windows Phone 6.x. |
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| Thumbplay Thumbplay Thumbplay is a U.S.-based subscription service that allows users to download music, video and games to their cell phones. Users can manage, store and share their mobile content online and on their wireless devices... |
8 million | Subscription | |||||||
| we7 We7 we7 is a free, advertising supported, music streaming service, with over 6.8 million tracks available for streaming in the UK and Ireland, with content from all four major record labels, and most independent labels and distributors. Most tracks and albums are also available to purchase from the... |
6.8 million | UK, Ireland & Belgium | Free/Subscription | Web | Now a personal DJ service. Music on demand is still available to premium users. | ||||
| WiMP WiMP WiMP is a Norwegian proprietary music streaming service, similar to Spotify, that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums, with virtually no buffering delay. Music can be browsed by artist, by album or by created playlists as well as by direct searches... |
10 million | Norway, Sweden and Denmark | Subscription | Desktop Application | |||||
| Zune Zune Zune is a digital media brand owned by Microsoft which includes a line of portable media players, a digital media player software for Windows machines, a music subscription service known as a 'Zune Music Pass', music and video streaming for the Xbox 360 via the Zune Software, music, TV and movie... |
10 million | USA | Subscription | Desktop Application | Available on Xbox 360 | ||||