Development/Seeding

Forms for creating new MusicBrainz entities can be “seeded” with values supplied via POST-ed multipart/form-data body parameters (for the Add Release page) or URL query parameters (for most other pages). Third-party tools that use seeding to make it easier to import data into MusicBrainz are listed at External Resources.

Add Release

You can seed a new release with a POST request. See the release editor seeding documentation for details.

Other pages (Add Artist, Add Label, Add Standalone Recording, etc.)

Most non-release forms can be seeded via URL query parameters sent via GET requests.

In almost all cases, a form input can be seeded by passing a parameter corresponding to input's name attribute. For example, the Add Artist page's “Name” field is defined in the page source as <input ... name="edit-artist.name" ...>, and a URL like https://musicbrainz.org/artist/create?edit-artist.name=My+Name will initialize the field to the text “My Name”.

To set a checkbox input, pass the value 1.

The following pages support seeding:

Add Artist

Inputs are seeded as described above, with the following notes:

• Type (edit-artist.type_id) corresponds to the artist_type table's id column.
• Gender (edit-artist.gender_id) corresponds to the gender table's id column.
• Area (edit-artist.area.name) contains text used to fill the field for searching.
• IPI codes (edit-artist.ipi_codes.0, .1, etc.) can be set using multiple parameters.
• ISNI codes (edit-artist.isni_codes.0, .1, etc.) can be set using multiple parameters.
• Began (edit-artist.period.begin_date.year, .month, .day) accepts integer values for each parameter.
• Ended (edit-artist.period.end_date.year, .month, .day) is similar to Began.
• Relationships are seeded using multiple parameters prefixed with rels.0. rather than the usual edit-artist. prefix. Multiple relationships can be seeded using prefixes like rels.1..
  • rels.0.target contains the target entity's MBID or name (for searching).
  • rels.0.type contains a value from the link_type table's id column.
  • rels.0.source_credit and rels.0.target_credit contain alternate “credited as” strings for the source and target entities.
  • rels.0.begin_date and rels.0.end_date accept a date as YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY-MM, or YYYY.
  • rels.0.ended is 1 if the relationship has ended.
  • rels.0.backward is 1 if the relationship's direction should be reversed.
  • Relationship attributes are seeded using parameters prefixed with rels.0.attributes.0.:
    • rels.0.attributes.0.type contains a value from the link_attribute_type table's id column.
    • rels.0.attributes.0.credited_as contains a string for the “credited as” field, e.g. describing how an instrument was credited.
    • rels.0.attributes.0.text_value holds additional text associated with some attribute types, e.g. the actual number when setting the “number” attribute on a recording-series part-of relationship.
• External Links (edit-artist.url.0.text, .0.link_type_id, etc.) accepts paired URL strings and values from the link_type table's id column.