musicbrainz-exercise.md

MusicBrainz exercise

Use the MusicBrainz Search API to display information about artists.

Part 1

Write a program to display the number of artists by gender. Only count artists who are a 'person' (rather than a 'group').

Hint: use the artist API. Use urllib.request to access the API (see examples). Note that the API returns an XML file with a default namespace.

Example output:

> python get_artists.py
There are 459399 male artists.
There are 122552 female artists.
There are 402 other artists.

Part 2

Make an interactive command line program that allows the user to search for artists.

Example:

> python artist_search.py
Hey there! Use this program to search for artists.
Type Ctrl+C at any time to quit.

Type an artist's name:
    > Queen
    There are 369 artists with 'Queen' in their name.

Type another artist's name:
    > asfhhklasjhf
    No artists with this name.

Type another artist's name:
    > <Ctrl+C>

Goodbye :)

Part 3

Add some useful information about the artist and their tags. Exclude tags with a score of zero or below.

Example usage:

Type an artist's name:
    > Queen
    There are 369 artists with 'Queen' in their name.
    The first one is Queen (UK rock group).
    Queen has 9 tags. The first 5 are:
        rock, british, hard rock, glam rock, art rock