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 it's 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 Röyksopp

• date:1999 AND country:de AND rock - search for releases from released in 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 and Life In A Day but also This Day and That's Life

• day AND life will retrieve A Day In The Life and Life In A Day but not This Day or That's Life

• "day in the life" will retrieve A Day In The Life but not Life In A Day or This Day or That's Life

• "voodoo people" AND artist:"the prodigy" - search for all tracks Voodoo People by 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:

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

Releases

The release index contains these fields:

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

Tracks

And track searches can contain:

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

Labels

The label index contains the following fields you can search:

FreeDB Releases

The FreeDB index contains the following fields you can search:

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 2007-10-28 12:44:36

  • No, that is also not available -- RobertKaye

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