Getting simple data

The Echo Nest has a large amount of data on millions of artists. We provide a number of methods to retrieve this data. For most types of artist data, we provide a method that will retrieve that data. For instance, to retrieve the hotttnesss for the artist Lady Gaga you can make a call like so:

Example

Response

{
    "response": {
        "artist": {
            "hotttnesss": 0.92560534619585655, 
            "id": "ARX6TAQ11C8A415850", 
            "name": "Lady Gaga"
        }, 
        "status": {
            "code": 0, 
            "message": "Success", 
            "version": "4.2"
        }
    }
}

The response includes the hotttnesss value (a value between 0 and 1) for Lady Gaga.

Getting more complex data

Certain data such as audio, blogs, news and reviews is more complex. For these types of items, we provide methods that will let you page through the set of data.

Example

For example, to get the 3 most recent news articles for the band Weezer, you can call the artist/news method like so:

Response

{
    "response": {
        "news": [
            {
                "date_found": "2011-06-03T10:42:37", 
                "date_posted": "2011-06-03T00:00:00", 
                "id": "f1f2c7642c668bbc834a78e9d394f319", 
                "name": "Weezer, Jane's Addication and Big Boi Headline DeLuna Festival", 
                "summary": "Weezer, Jane's Addication and Big Boi ...", 
                "url": "http://www.mxdwn.com/2011/06/03/news/weezer-janes-addication-and-big-boi-headline-deluna-festival/"
            }, 
            {
                "date_found": "2011-06-01T11:43:53", 
                "date_posted": "2011-06-01T00:00:00", 
                "id": "7ac668e1a74957e957736cc4fc99ddd8", 
                "name": "Charity Picks From Paul Weller, Ronnie Wood, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Weezer and more", 
                "summary": "Charity Picks From Paul Weller, Ronnie Wood, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Weezer and more ... ", 
                "url": "http://www.antimusic.com/news/11/june/01Charity_Picks_From_Paul_Weller,_Ronnie_Wood,_Coldplay,_Depeche_Mode,_Weezer_and_more.shtml"
            }, 
            {
                "date_found": "2011-06-01T20:43:27", 
                "date_posted": "2011-06-01T00:00:00", 
                "id": "8cf7c1fa5c09909d95eede9863772060", 
                "name": "Chairman of Disney Music Group Announces Retirement", 
                "summary": "today distributes original music and motion picture soundtracks ...",
                "url": "http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chairman-disney-music-group-announces-193904"
            }
        ], 
        "start": 0, 
        "status": {
            "code": 0, 
            "message": "Success", 
            "version": "4.2"
        }, 
        "total": 1175
    }
}

The method returns information about the total number of news articles available for the artist (in this case 1175), along with info on each of the first 3 articles. We can use this method to page through all of the articles by advancing the 'start' parameter. To get the next 3 news articles we can make the call like so:

Example

Response

{
    "response": {
        "news": [
            {
                "date_found": "2011-06-01T04:43:17", 
                "date_posted": "2011-05-31T23:43:00", 
                "id": "b645ae7d333f54f4653b0099df81dbcb", 
                "name": "DeLuna Fest Announces 2011 Lineup", 
                "summary": "DeLuna Fest has announced its lineup for the 2011 season ...", 
                "url": "http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/05/deluna-fest-announces-2011-lineup.html"
            }, 
            {
                "date_found": "2011-05-31T16:44:08", 
                "date_posted": "2011-05-31T12:00:00", 
                "id": "15e369fc7b29d97edfd1b02301d60c93", 
                "name": "Videos: Weezer: \"Paranoid Android\" (Radiohead cover)", 
                "summary": "Videos: Weezer: \"Paranoid Android\" (Radiohead cover) ... Weezer has completed a studio recording of Radiohead's 'Paranoid Android'. The band played the cover live for the first time at Atlantic City's Borgata Events Center on Friday, May 27.Tweet", 
                "url": "http://www.punknews.org/article/42832"
            }, 
            {
                "date_found": "2011-05-31T16:43:34", 
                "date_posted": "2011-05-31T09:50:00", 
                "id": "d8abb3c23422fbcef59f922bf9888d48", 
                "name": "New Green Day Music, Weezer Does Radiohead", 
                "summary": "New Green Day Music, Weezer Does Radiohead ... ", 
                "url": "http://www.spin.com/articles/new-green-day-music-weezer-does-radiohead"
            }
        ], 
        "start": 3, 
        "status": {
            "code": 0, 
            "message": "Success", 
            "version": "4.2"
        }, 
        "total": 1175
    }
}

Getting multiple data elements at once

You may want to retrieve multiple data items about an artist. Naturally, this is possible by making multiple separate calls to retrieve each data element. However, since each API call has a certain amount of overhead, making multiple calls can slow down your application. To reduce the overhead, you can retrieve multiple data elements with a single call by using the bucket parameter. See Improving performance with buckets for more information about how to use buckets.