MTVN Content API Developer Blog

Today we published the latest revision to the MTVN Content API code. With this new release, we're happy to announce a number of new features and a few squashed bugs.

1. All video and artist returns now include genre information.

2. We've created three new genre methods to explore, too.

• Genre Alias Method
• Genre Videos Method
• Genre Artists Method

3. Additional Generic Parameters have been added to modify API returns. You can now limit videos to specific date ranges, for example.

4. We're now fully Open Search compliant, which means any search queries and most list returns now include the three key OpenSearch tags needed for effective pagination:
<opensearch:totalResults>15</opensearch:totalResults>
<opensearch:startIndex>1</opensearch:startIndex>
<opensearch:itemsPerPage>25</opensearch:itemsPerPage>

5. Requests for invalid methods, artist aliases or video IDs will now return error specific messagin

• Invalid Artist
• Invalid Method
• Invalid Video ID
  

6. Videos should now show a corrected published date. Many early videos don't have month and day information, but the year should be accurate.

As always, feel free to ping me with questions comments or suggestions. Feel free to visit our forums on

We've pushed another new code release to the MTVN Content API today. This release was primarily focused on squashing some bugs.

Here are some of the bugs we took care of:
- Images from CMT.com no longer prompt users for a password.
- Non-flash videos have been filtered from the returns - so all video embed codes should function properly.
- The Artist and Related Artist methods will only link to the Artist Videos method if that artist actually has videos.

We've also made two enhancements:
- The Artist method now includes artist images (if available) in a <media:thumbnail> node.
- We've upgraded to our latest player which has some small UI changes, including a full-screen button.

Again, thank you to everyone who submitted a bug or sent in a feature request.

I'd also like to point to a quick success story for the MTVN Content API. The folks at http://www.popstar.com have done a full API integration for their site, and are now using the MTVN Content API to power most of their music videos. They've posted some sample PHP code to our developer portal, too. We look forward to adding more sites (large and small) to our growing list of API users!

http://developer.mtvnservices.com/forum/read/27289

Feel free to ping me with any additional question, comments or concerns.

Jt.
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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com

Today we’re opening the doors to the outside development world. We’d like to thank everyone who participated in our private beta period by submitting questions, comments, feedback and bugs.

To the new visitors today please feel free to dive into our documentation and post a few messages in our developer forum.

We’re excited to see the applications and mash-ups you folks create. Send us links and demos and we’ll post them here for the world to see.

Of course, we invite your comments and feedback on the API, too. Please feel free to reach out to me directly or post in the message board for the larger community.

Jt.
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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com

We’re happy to announce Release 4 of our Private Beta on the MTVN Content API today. We’re glad to say that none of the returns have changed, nor have any of the methods. Instead you should be seeing far greater search performance. You may also notice that many more artist and video returns have been added to our search index.

Thank you to everyone who sent in feature requests and bug fixes. As always, feel free to reach out to me with any comments, questions or feature requests.

Jt.
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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com

We published Release 3 on the MTVN Content API this week. The documentation on our developer portal has been updated to reflect the return changes - http://developer.mtvnservices.com/docs ...

Private Beta Release 3 Notes:
New Video Player

• We've now got a shiny new AS3 Flash video player in the API. It'll let us do some really cool new tricks in the coming weeks and months.
  

Bug Fixes

• MRSS Compliance: We're no longer using the <media:group> element, unless we have more than one <media:content> node. This should make all of the returns MRSS compliant. Your parsers may thank us...
  
• More thumbnails! Less 404's. We fixed how we pull video thumbnails from our database, so you should be seeing many more thumbnails associated to videos and they should all work, too.
  
• Better search results. Our search index is a little better now, so you should also see more videos in your search returns. Or course, if you know you want Justin Timberlake videos why not just use the Artist Videos Method?
  

As always, feel free to hit me with any questions or comments.

Jt.
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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com

We've got Release 3 of our Content API lined up and ready to go in the next few days. I'll post here when it goes live.

But, before that happens I wanted to give you all a heads-up. There are a few changes that might affect your existing applications.

1. We're correcting our use of the <media:group> tag. A few of you pointed out that we were outside the MRSS spec on our usage of this tag. We'll now be fully MRSS compliant - we hope!

2. New Video Player. With this release we'll be rolling out our new AS3 video player. This might affect folks embedding the player into flash objects or applications.

3. Improved Search Results. This shouldn't affect any of your code, but I thought I'd throw it out there... A few folks have pointed out some unusual search results. We think we've got most of the worked out in this release.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any comments, questions or suggestions.

And thank you all for your support.
Jt.

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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com

We’re happy to announce Release 2 of our Private Beta on the MTVN Content API today. Release 2 includes a number of bug fixes and enhancements, as well as some new content discovery methods. Please see our release notes below and feel free to hit me with any questions or comments.

The documentation on our developer portal has been updated to reflect the new methods and return changes - http://developer.mtvnservices.com/docs ...

Thank you to everyone who sent in feature requests and bug fixes. We appreciate your feedback and are working hard to iron out all of the open issues.

We’re not updating the version number on the API, yet. So your methods should continue to function properly. However, please be sure to double check your applications.

Private Beta Release 2 Notes:
New Methods

• Artist Alias Method - Retrieves a list of artists sorted alphabetically.
• Artist Search Method - Returns a list of artists for a specific search term.
• Artist Browse Method - Returns content associated to a specific artist.
• Related Artist Method - Returns a list of artists related to the specified artist.

Bug Fixes

• International rights for video player. Our player now allows international users to play videos, if we have the rights to play that video within their territory. The <media:restriction> node contains the allowable regions for a particular video. If there are no regions listed, then the video can be played worldwide.
• Additional video thumbnails available.
  

Jt.
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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com

We're in "Private Beta"... and we're glad you're here. The MTVN Content API is designed for developers, application builders and mash-up makers in search of high quality, premium and occasionally exclusive content from MTV, VH1, CMT and LOGO. (We'll be adding more MTV Networks' brands in the future).

Content? What content? For now we've got a bunch of music videos from your favorite artists ready and waiting. That number is growing all the time.

Don't want to read a bunch of documentation? Jump right in with these samples:

Metallica Music Videos Example
http://api.mtvnservices.com/1/artist/metallica/videos/

50 Cent Music Videos Example
http://api.mtvnservices.com/1/artist/50_cent/videos/

Weezer Music Videos Example
http://api.mtvnservices.com/1/artist/weezer/videos/

We'll post news and announcements to this blog, so check back occasionally.

Jt.
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justin.tormey@mtvstaff.com