mcpbeat

Musicbrainz MCP Server

io.github.cyanheads/musicbrainz-mcp-server
answering

Musicbrainz MCP Server is answering right now. Last checked 12 min ago. 68 installs a week from npm. It exposes 10 tools. Last commit 30 Jul 2026.

Search MusicBrainz artists, releases, works, labels; resolve ISRC/ISWC/barcode; fetch cover art.

Installs per day peak 40 · avg 12 · -4% w/w
a month agotoday
Uptime history 41 hours of history · worst hour 75%
41 hours agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
91 of 91 checks
10
Tools
read from the server
373 ms
Response time
average over 24h
68
Installs / week
npm and PyPI

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 12 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add musicbrainz-mcp-server --transport http https://musicbrainz.caseyjhand.com/mcp
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "musicbrainz-mcp-server": {
      "url": "https://musicbrainz.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.musicbrainz-mcp-server]
url = "https://musicbrainz.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "musicbrainz-mcp-server": {
      "url": "https://musicbrainz.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "musicbrainz-mcp-server": {
      "url": "https://musicbrainz.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 10

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

musicbrainz
musicbrainz_browse_entities
Paginate the COMPLETE set of entities linked to a parent MBID — every release-group by an artist, every release on a label, every recording of a work, every release in a release-group. This is the only complete-enumeration path: the get_* tools embed at most one page (25) of any linked list, so use this tool whenever a linked set may exceed a page (a prolific artist, a major label with thousands of releases, a heavily-covered work). Provide exactly ONE link MBID matching a valid parent→child relationship for the target_type. Pages arbitrarily deep via offset; totalCount is the true upstream total.
musicbrainz_get_artist
Artist profile by MBID: type (person/group/…), country, life span, gender, area, aliases, tags/genres, plus the discography (release-groups) and band-membership / collaboration relationships and external links (Wikidata QID, Discogs, official site — surfaced as url-rels chainable to those servers). The 80% artist-detail call. Discography and relationships are capped at one page (25); for a prolific artist's complete release-group list, call musicbrainz_browse_entities with target_type=release-group and the artist link.
musicbrainz_get_cover_art
Cover Art Archive images for a release or release-group MBID: front/back flags, image types, full-resolution URLs, and 250/500/1200px thumbnail URLs. Returns an empty image set (NOT an error) when the entity has no art — absence of art is information. Art is served at the release level; a release-group MBID resolves to a representative release's art automatically. URLs are linked, never rehosted — image copyright stays with the rights holders (only MusicBrainz core metadata is CC0).
musicbrainz_get_label
Label by MBID: type (Original Production, Reissue, Imprint, …), country, life span, label code (the LC number), area, aliases, tags, and external links (url-rels — Wikidata, Discogs, official site). A label's releases are a potentially huge linked set (a major label can have tens of thousands), so they are NOT embedded here — enumerate them with musicbrainz_browse_entities (target_type=release, link.label).
musicbrainz_get_recording
Recording (a specific performance/track, distinct from the abstract work) by MBID: length, artist credits, ISRCs, the releases it appears on, the work(s) it performs (work-rels — chain to musicbrainz_get_work), and performance/production relationships (who played, produced, engineered, conducted — each with the role and the credited artist MBID). Relationships are capped at one page; for a heavily-covered recording call musicbrainz_browse_entities with target_type=recording and link.work.
musicbrainz_get_release
One edition's full detail by MBID: the tracklist (media → tracks → recordings with lengths and recording MBIDs), label + catalog number, barcode, country, release date, format, packaging, text representation (language/script), and a cover-art availability stub. Track lengths are rendered m:ss (stored as milliseconds upstream). For the actual cover image URLs, call musicbrainz_get_cover_art with this release MBID.
musicbrainz_get_release_group
Release-group ("the album" above specific pressings) by MBID: primary type (Album/Single/EP) and secondary types (Live/Compilation), first-release date, artist credit, the list of releases (editions), tags/genres, and a cover-art availability flag from the WS/2 payload (use musicbrainz_get_cover_art for actual image URLs). The embedded releases list is capped at one page (25); for the complete set of editions, call musicbrainz_browse_entities with target_type=release and link.release-group. For a specific edition's tracklist, take a release MBID from the releases list and call musicbrainz_get_release.
musicbrainz_get_work
Work (a composition — the song as written, distinct from any specific recording) by MBID: type, language(s), ISWCs (the work-level standard identifier), writer/composer/lyricist relationships (with the credited artist MBID), aliases, tags, and the recordings that perform it. The recording relationships are returned in full (the work lookup does not page them).
musicbrainz_lookup_identifier
Resolve a standard identifier to MusicBrainz entities without a name search — the deterministic path when you already hold an ID. id_type=isrc → recordings (a recording-level code, often shared by several recordings); id_type=iswc → works (a composition-level code); id_type=barcode → releases (UPC/EAN). ISRC and ISWC hit dedicated exact endpoints; barcode is a Lucene search filter so results are ranked (exact match scores 100). The output kind field tells you which entity type came back.
musicbrainz_search_entities
Full-text search across a MusicBrainz entity type (artist, release-group, release, recording, work, label) using a Lucene query string. Returns ranked matches with MBID, name/title, disambiguation, type, and a 0–100 relevance score (100 = exact). Starting point when resolving a name to an MBID — chain the returned MBID into the matching musicbrainz_get_* tool. Results are in MusicBrainz score-descending order. Supports field-scoped Lucene syntax (e.g. `artist:radiohead AND country:GB`).

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://musicbrainz.caseyjhand.com/mcp streamable-http answering 434 ms 12 min ago

Musicbrainz MCP Server — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Musicbrainz MCP Server do?
It exposes 10 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: musicbrainz_browse_entities, musicbrainz_get_artist, musicbrainz_get_cover_art, musicbrainz_get_label, musicbrainz_get_recording, musicbrainz_get_release and 4 more. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Musicbrainz MCP Server working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 373 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect Musicbrainz MCP Server?
Copy the ready config from this page — we generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each with the file path that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Musicbrainz MCP Server need an API key?
No. Musicbrainz MCP Server completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 10 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is Musicbrainz MCP Server?
It answers our handshake in 373 ms on average, which is faster than 37% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.
How many people use Musicbrainz MCP Server?
The npm package @cyanheads/musicbrainz-mcp-server was installed 68 times in the last week. Week over week that is -4%. We show installs rather than GitHub stars on purpose: a star is a bookmark, an install is someone actually running it.
Is Musicbrainz MCP Server open source?
Yes — it is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, written in TypeScript, 1 stars on GitHub and 4 open issues. The source link is on this page, so you can read exactly what it does with your data before you connect it.