Indexed Search Syntax

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This page describes the syntax for MusicBrainz indexed searches which use the Lucene text search engine. The search indexes for these types of searches are updated once a day, and thus may not reflect up to the minute changes. The direct search searches the database directly, but it can only carry out simple keyword searches with no boolean logic, but it is always up-to-date.

Overview

Lucene offers much flexibility in defining search queries for all needs imaginable. To make it easier to understand, this page was divided into subpages. While this one offers an introduction to the most commonly used features, the others explain more advanced search operators and constructs.

First some words on the the terminology used in these pages:

Query
A query is the complete expression you put in one of the search fields.
Term
A term is the smallest unit inside a query. In the default case each single word inside a query is a term of its own, except for ...
Phrases
A phrase is a groups of words surrounded by quotation marks. Even though it's containing more than one word, a phrase is handled like a term.
Operators
or search operators are special characters and words that define either how single terms are processed by the search system (e.g. in -house the - tells the search system, not to return anything with the word house) or how to terms are to be combined in the search (e.g. one AND love means search for anything that has both words one and love).

The sections below Query Syntax describe simple and commonly used operators, in /AdvancedSyntax you'll find the more complicated and seldomly needed features of the search interface.

But first take a look at a few simple examples which might show everything necessary for the majority of your searches.

Example searches

Artists

  • tori amos * search artist, sortname and alias fields comment:electronic * search for the word electronic in artist disambiguation (comment) fields begin:1984 AND type:group * search for all groups formed in 1984

Releases

  • café del mar * search for all Café del Mar albums "the understanding" AND artist:royksopp * search for the album The Understanding by the artist Röyksopp date:1999 AND country:de AND rock * search for releases from Germany in 1999 with the word rock in them

Tracks

  • type:album AND amadeus * search for tracks with the title amadeus from albums day life * will retrieve A Day In The Life * will retrieve Life In A Day * will retrieve This Day * will retrieve That's Life day AND life * will retrieve A Day In The Life * will retrieve Life In A Day * will not retrieve This Day * will not retrieve That's Life "day in the life" * will retrieve A Day In The Life * will not retrieve Life In A Day * will not retrieve This Day * will not retrieve That's Life "voodoo people" AND artist:"the prodigy" * search for all tracks with the title Voodoo People by the artist The Prodigy

Query syntax

Wildcards

To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol. To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search te?t, to search for "test", "tests" or "tester", you can use the search test*.

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy searches

To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a single word term. Optionally can specify the required similarity, a value is between 0 and 1. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search roam~ or roam~0.8

MusicBrainz specific search fields

Artists

The artist index contains the following fields you can search:

field Description
arid artist id
artist artist name
sortname artist sortname
type artist type (person or group)
begin artist birth date/band founding date
end artist death date/band dissolution date
comment artist comment to differentiate similar artists
alias the aliases/misspellings for this artist

Artist search terms with no fields specified search the artist, sortname and alias fields.

Releases

The release index contains these fields:

field Description
reid release id
release release name
arid artist id
artist artist name
type release type (album, single, ep, compilation, soundtrack, spokenword, interview, audiobook, live, remix, other)
status release status (official, promotion, bootleg, pseudo-release)
tracks number of tracks in the release
discids number of cd ids for the release
date earliest release date for the release
asin the Amazon ASIN for
lang The language for this release. Use the three character ISO 639 codes to search for a specific language. (e.g. lang:eng)
script The 4 character script code (e.g. latn) used for this release
country The two letter country code for the release country
date The release date
label The name of the label for this release
catno The catalog number for this release
barcode The barcode in a release event attached to a release

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Release search terms with no fields search the release field only.

Tracks

And track searches can contain:

field Description
trid track id
track track name
arid artist id
artist artist name
reid release id
release release name
type release type (album, single, ep, compilation, soundtrack, spokenword, interview, audiobook, live, remix, other)
tracks number of tracks in the release
dur duration of track in milliseconds
qdur quantized duration (duration / 2000)
tnum track number

Track search terms with no fields search the track field only.

Labels

The label index contains the following fields you can search:

field Description
laid label id
label label name
sortname label sortname
type label type
code label code (only the figures part, i.e. without "LC")
country The two letter country code of the label country
begin label founding date
end label dissolution date
comment label comment to differentiate similar labels
alias the aliases/misspellings for this label

FreeDB Releases

The FreeDB index contains the following fields you can search:

field Description
artist artist name
title release name
discid FreeDB id
cat FreeDB category
year year
tracks number of tracks in the release

Questions

If you know the answer to these, please remove the question and integrate the answer into the docs above.

  • Is there a way to search for an album based on its length? I'm currently grabbing all results and filtering them by summing their track durations. Is the value computed on the fly from the tracks for each release page? --ChrisColvard
    • No, that is not possible. You can search for the total number of tracks. --RobertKaye
  • Is there also a searchable field for the media type, not just the date? ie "media:1" where 1=CD? -- BrianSchweitzer 12:44, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

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