Artist/Release Videos for Mobile

Today we rolled out artist and release videos for mobile! Go to your favorite artist or release page and click "Videos" to see a list of the most recently added YouTube videos.

Bonus: If you own an iPhone+Airport, you can also stream the videos via AirPlay to your speakers.

API v2.0 Improvements

Hey developers! Remember when we launched the Discogs API and you were like "this is really great, now I can programmatically read data from the Discogs database!"

Yes, those were good times. And, sure, reading is great -- but writing is even better. Today, we're proud to announce the second half of the API.

Your applications can now authenticate on behalf of a Discogs user with OAuth -- a way of securely allowing users to give applications access to their account without giving up their password. Using the new endpoints and HTTP methods like POST, PUT, and DELETE, you can:

• read user profiles
• manage your collections and wantlists, including folders and notes
• rate releases
• manage your seller inventory
• and even create new listings on the marketplace.

We've also reworked our existing endpoints:

• URLs use plural nouns and IDs rather than names where possible
• Responses contain URLs to other related API endpoints
• Many collections of objects (e.g. artist's releases) now support pagination
• New database search endpoint supports more powerful filtering and returns more structured data (instead of "hey, here's a huge blob of text!")

But don't feel overwhelmed: we're also releasing some comprehensive new documentation, and we'll keep answering your questions in the API Forums.

We'll also be at Music Hack Day in Boston, a weekend-long hackathon focused on music-themed projects. We'll be giving a workshop and offering a $500 prize for best use of the Discogs API.

Finally, a reminder: the old API v1 methods are due to be shut off on December 15th, so if you've got an application that still uses them, you should switch over as soon as you can. Plus, look at all the enticing new stuff in v2.

Discogs Marketplace Quick Lister

Today we're announcing a new listing interface for selling items in the Discogs Marketplace, that we've been calling the "quick lister". It allows you to search for an item you want to sell, find the correct item, view sales history, see how many people want and have the item, then complete the listing all on a single page. This means you can spend less time clicking around and more time getting your inventory in front of buyers. 
 
We're also planning on adding a file upload option to the Quick Lister in the coming weeks, that will offer sellers with large inventories an easy way of creating exact matches between their items and releases in the Discogs database.
 
Try it out and let us know what you think!
http://www.discogs.com/sell

New Filtering Options Added to Discogs Marketplace

We're delighted to announce the addition of new filtering options within the Marketplace.

New options include:

* Year of Release
* Ships From Country
* Make an Offer (show items where seller accepts offers)
* Format Descriptions (e.g., 7", 10", 12", Picture Disc, Album, etc…)
* Select multiple filters within some categories (e.g., Style: House + Techno)

Now go find yourself some 7" picture discs from sellers in Germany.

Label And Companies Update - August 2011

It is with pleasure that we announce an update to the way Discogs catalogs companies. Previously, we had jammed companies into the 'Label' field as an interim solution. We have now developed the 'Label' field into a full 'Label and Company' field, using a drop-down to select the type of company. This includes series, record companies, copyright holders, publishers, studios, manufacturers etc - you can see the full list, with definitions, here.

This system has been created after some discussion (ok, lots...) about the way to correctly catalog all the various entities involved in the release. It is intended that this will make submitting easier, as you don't have to worry about whether or not it is permitted to enter a certain entity - you can enter them all. It also means that we can start properly cataloging things like recordings that were made at Abbey Road Studios - another way to find music you may like.

In terms of voting, we'd like to request that voters take a 'soft' approach to the use of the tags, especially in problematic or difficult examples. The most important thing is the link goes to the correct page. Only vote "Needs Minor Changes" at the most if an entity should be a series instead of a label, a record company instead of a licensee, etc. Sometimes, these things are not explicitly defined on the release, and we can't expect all submitters to be experts on such matters, or to spend a lot of time researching things.

At the moment, these new tags will still point to pages with the URL http://www.discogs.com/label/ , and there will be references to 'Label'. We plan to continue to update things as we start to see data getting entered with the new tags.

More discussion on this update available here.

Thanks Open Source Bridge

Today marks the end of Open Source Bridge 2011. This year Discogs chose to be one of the sponsors of the event, as a way of giving back to the open source community and supporting the awesome Portland tech scene.

We attended the various sessions this week and enjoyed learning and hanging out with other developers and systems people.

Thanks to the organizers for putting together a great conference! We're looking forward to another Open Source Bridge in 2012!

API v2.0

Today we are rolling out an updated version of the Discogs API! Our original API was released in 2007 and we've seen many interesting applications come out of it. This new version lays the foundation for more enhancements like user login, managing your collection/wantlist/sales inventory, and other cool things we'll be working on this year.

Some of the major changes:

• The API uses a new url: api.discogs.com
  
  
• An API key is no longer required
  
  
• We have removed the 5,000 requests per day limit*


• We are offering an official Python API client. Check it out on github. Feel free to fork it and submit pull requests. You can help us improve it!
  
  
• Responses are returned in JSON format now. You can still request XML if you prefer that.


• JSONP support

NOTE
We are phasing out the old API and it will be shut down on Dec 15, 2011. We will email all users with an API key asking them to migrate to the new version.

* API requests are still throttled, but if you are interested in unrestricted access, we are developing a premium API, please get in touch.