The music analysis API for AI video. One call returns the beat grid, sections, best moments, every sung word, what the song is about, and a shot plan that cuts on the beat, with a ready prompt for every scene.
$0.50 per song after the free ones · no subscription · Docs · OpenAPI · MCP
$ curl https://api.songbrain.ai/v1/examples/old-truck-home/shot-plan
{
"story": {
"meaning": "The song is about the deep connection
and comfort found in a familiar, aging truck …",
"element": { "thing": "an old truck",
"before": "dusty and worn, with one headlight low",
"event": "navigates familiar roads",
"after": "bathed in warm light, bringing life" }
},
"shot_plan": { "clip": {
"window_sec": [94.83, 109.621],
"scenes": [ …
{ "index": 8, "kind": "burst", "act": "turn",
"start_sec": 102.965, "end_sec": 103.282,
"transition_in": "hard cut on the beat",
"sung": "name. Same",
"prompt": "tight detail shot: The truck's grille,
showing rust, illuminated by the faint glow
of the low headlight … 9:16 vertical" },
… 16 scenes, every cut on a beat
] } }
}Pick a song and tap a scene. Everything below comes straight from the API: the sections, the best moment, the cuts on the beat, the story and the prompts. Your own songs come back in exactly the same format.
Letters repeat when the music repeats. Brighter means louder. The white frame is the best moment: 2:14.5–2:29.5.
wide establishing shot of the empty space: A weathered stone marker, a moss-covered, half-buried stone, showing age and neglect, a wide, barren field under a vast, pale silver sky, in the ancient stone circle, A desolate, ancient battlefield at twilight, palette: deep grey, muted olive, pale silver, cinematic film still, 9:16 vertical composition, shot on 35mm, no text, no letters, no logos, no watermark
The song is about the enduring weight of past sacrifices and the responsibility to live a meaningful life in their honor. It speaks to the quiet strength found in remembering those who gave everything.
A desolate, ancient battlefield at twilight, bathed in the faint glow of a rising moon, with scattered, moss-covered stones and old fortifications.
a weathered stone marker
Audio APIs give you numbers and video models want prompts. The hard part is in between: deciding what to show at which second, so the video means what the song means.
Genre and subgenre, tempo, key and key changes, mood, vocal style, instruments, energy, loudness and streaming-loudness checks.
Every beat and downbeat across the whole song, plus structure sections. Repeated parts share a letter, so the chorus shows up as the chorus.
Ranked windows with start, peak and end, the reason each one works, how well it fits each platform, and the words sung inside it.
Sentence lines with every word's start and end. Enough for karaoke captions, lyric videos and cutting on a line.
What the song is about, why these visuals, a world, three colours and the one element that carries the video: before, event, after.
A full edit of the best moment. Every scene has exact seconds, an act, framing, motion, the lyric under it and a prompt ready for any image or video model. A section plan covers the whole song.
curl -X POST https://api.songbrain.ai/v1/songs \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sb_live_YOUR_KEY" \
-F "file=@song.mp3"
# → { "id": "…", "status": "processing", "eta_sec": 75 }curl https://api.songbrain.ai/v1/songs/SONG_ID \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sb_live_YOUR_KEY"curl https://api.songbrain.ai/v1/songs/SONG_ID/shot-plan \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sb_live_YOUR_KEY"Webhooks are signed (HMAC-SHA256). Add ?view=summary for a smaller document, or ?include=song_dna,shot_plan for only those sections. Full reference →
Songbrain runs an MCP server. Add it once and your assistant can pull a real shot plan into the chat, or analyse your own song from a link. The example tools work without a key.
Try: “Show me a Songbrain shot plan for a country song and turn the first three scenes into Kling prompts.”
claude mcp add --transport http songbrain https://api.songbrain.ai/mcp{ "mcpServers": { "songbrain": {
"url": "https://api.songbrain.ai/mcp",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer sb_live_YOUR_KEY" } } } }Your account comes with a console at app.songbrain.ai/developers. It works with the same login and the same credits as the app.
Requests, songs, credits, error rate and latency per day, compared with the period before.
Every call with time, endpoint, status, latency and key. Filter by errors, keys or MCP.
Drop a song in the browser and read the full analysis and shot plan, without writing a line of code.
Every analysed song with its status and processing time, plus the full JSON. Delete with one click.
Every delivery with its status and attempts, and a button to send it again.
Create and revoke keys, see free songs left and spend per month, and top up credits.
5 songs every month
25 credits per song · 500 credits = $10
More than 1,000 songs a month
Limits: files up to 100 MB, songs 30 seconds to 10 minutes. MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, OGG or AIFF. 120 requests a minute.
| Songbrain API | Spotify Audio Features / Analysis | Video models alone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tempo, key, energy, loudness | ✓ | ✓ (closed to new apps since 11/2024) | partly |
| Beat grid, downbeats, sections | ✓ | ✓ (closed to new apps) | — |
| Best moment, with the reason | ✓ | — | — |
| Every sung word with its timing | ✓ | — | — |
| What the song is about, world, palette | ✓ | — | — |
| Scenes with exact seconds and prompts | ✓ | — | you write them |
| Works on unreleased songs | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| MCP server for AI assistants | ✓ | — | — |
Spotify closed Audio Features and Audio Analysis to new apps in November 2024, and AcousticBrainz stopped accepting new data in 2022. Songbrain runs this analysis every day for its own AI music videos. The API gives you the same reading of the song, and the rendering is up to you.
Used for the analysis only, never to train models. The upload is deleted within 24 hours; a compressed preview is kept 30 days.
DELETE /v1/songs/{id} removes the audio and the analysis immediately.
Every response carries schema "songbrain.song/1". New fields are added without breaking existing ones.
Songbrain is built for exactly that. Most audio APIs stop at tags and numbers. Songbrain also returns what a video needs: the best moment and why it works, every sung word with its time, what the song is about, a world and palette, and a shot plan whose scenes start and end on the song's beats, each with a ready prompt. It is the same analysis behind Songbrain's own music videos.
Yes. Spotify stopped giving new apps access to Audio Features and Audio Analysis in November 2024. Songbrain returns tempo, key, mode, energy and loudness, plus a beat grid, downbeats and sections (the parts of Audio Analysis people used). It works on any audio file you own, released or not.
POST the audio to https://api.songbrain.ai/v1/songs. When it is done, GET /v1/songs/{id}/shot-plan. Every scene has start and end seconds on the beat, its act (setup, turn or payoff), framing, camera motion, the lyric sung under it and a prompt you can send straight to an image or video model.
Yes. Songbrain runs an MCP server at https://api.songbrain.ai/mcp. In Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http songbrain https://api.songbrain.ai/mcp. The example tools work without a key, so an assistant can show a real shot plan right away. Any agent can also call the REST API, or read the OpenAPI spec at https://api.songbrain.ai/v1/openapi.json.
Every account gets 5 free songs a month. After that a song costs 25 credits, which is $0.50 with the 500-credit pack ($10). There's no subscription and no minimum, and everything (analysis, story and shot plan) is included in that price. If you analyse more than 1,000 songs a month, write to us about volume pricing.
It's used for the analysis only and never to train models. The uploaded file is deleted within 24 hours, and a compressed preview is kept for 30 days. You can delete the audio and the analysis at any time with DELETE /v1/songs/{id}.
Yes. Terms §17.4 explicitly allow using the API inside your own paid product, including products that generate images or videos for your customers. You may pass results to your end users, white-label them (no attribution required), store them indefinitely and use them to train or tune your own models. Not allowed without written consent: reselling raw API access, or redistributing results in bulk as a competing analysis API or dataset.
You do. For the songs you submit, Songbrain assigns any rights it may have in the results to you and claims none (Terms §17.4). Songbrain keeps its rights in the service, models and example data, and rights in the song itself stay with its rightsholders.
No. One call covers what usually needs four services: signal analysis (tempo, key, beat grid, sections), lyrics transcription with word timings, the best-moment ranking, and an LLM director for the story and shot prompts. It's one bill at about $0.50 per song, and you only add the video model of your choice.
Keys are self-serve. For volume pricing, an invoice, a DPA, an SLA or a custom output schema, write to us here.