/marketplace/search?releaseId endpoint stopped working today

/marketplace/search?releaseId endpoint stopped working today. It returns an 404 not found error code.

I checked Discogs App and the list of marketplace listings for a release is available on the official app, though.

Which is the new endpoint? Or from now on only Discogs app is authorised to get data from the endpoint?

Thanks in advance.

Same problem here.

I added a ticket:

Hello,

our system has been using the http://api.discogs.sie.com/marketplace/search API to determine competitive pricing.

This API has been removed since about 12 hours ago and now returns error "Resource not found."

Is this a temporary status, or has this API been removed for good? If it's temporary, any idea when it will be back online?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

And got this reply:

Questions ing or accessing the Discogs API can be posted in our API Forum. Our developers routinely visit that forum to assist in troubleshooting issues, and many developers in our community of are happy to help with questions there too.

Information ing and accessing the API can be found in our API Guidelines.

Haven't seen a developer response here though.

Hi all,

The marketplace search endpoint has been an undocumented endpoint for a while now, and we have never advised using it (in fact, it's always been the opposite). We don't have any near-future plans of reinstating that endpoint.

Thanks,
Rodney

blindborges
The marketplace search endpoint has been an undocumented endpoint for a while now

Hi Rodney,

I know that the endpoint has been undocumented, but it has been working *for years*. What could we do now? I've been receiving about two hundreds emails from s these last 20 hours requesting a fix for this.

Do I have to told them that from now on only Discogs apps have access to Marketplace prices but third party apps are not allowed to display these data?

Every Discogs application I've tried used this endpoint. It wasn't documented, but it is widely used. IMHO prior notice and a deadline date would be a good thing.

Hi rodney,
here's the same problem as cappui {I think there are many other people with the same problem}

I perfectly understand that /marketpace/search?release_id=xxx wasn't a documented / ed endpoint, but is very common in third-party discogs-based apps (example is my app VinylPrice, I think the name says the purpose of the app, and I was introducing new price features in another app of mine).

I don't really understand why you have decided to shut down this endpoint without replacing it with another stronger, and, maybe, documented, endpoint.

With this post I just wanted to express my disappointment, that's all.

Hi guys,

If this were a documented, ed endpoint, we would have put up a deprecation notice in the API Announcements thread. However, since this and some other endpoints are not officially ed or documented within the API, we do not report changes to them, as they are and have been for Discogs' use only. We have always expressed concern with this endpoint as many developers have found it, and we have always noted that it is not to be used for production app purposes for this very reason.

A marketplace search endpoint may be added in the future, and we will be sure to announce it publicly in the API Announcements for public consumption.

Thanks,
Rodney

Hi Rodney,

I've noticed something that increases a little bit my (and all third-party developers) angriness...
Why official app (released yesterday on Google play store) has full access to vendors/marketplace?

That's not fair at all!

As a of Discographic, I think it is wrong for discogs to limit other app features in favour of the official app. Third party devastated are making your site more useful.

You out compete third party apps by making your app better, not by messing with developers and their s. Not cool.

Devastated = developers - damn autocorrect

Hi all,

We certainly aren't out to mess with third party developers; a TON of API changes have been a direct result from listening to our API developers (though some of these changes of course take time and effort). The marketplace search endpoint, however, was never made for public consumption. Discogs has quite a few other undocumented API endpoints that aren't for public consumption that we use on various pages of the Discogs website (www.discogs.sie.com) and on our apps (I'd list some of these endpoints, but then they might be abused).

This wasn't some attempt at sabotage; this was simply the disabling of an internal API endpoint, one that was noted to be for private use only and to not be used on production applications.

Again, I have always suggested to s who bring this endpoint up that if they are to use it, make sure it is not in a production application, as it is subject to change or removal. You can search the forum to find posts with my caution: https://www.discogs.sie.com/forum/search?topic=API&query=marketplace+search&name=rodneyfool&page=1

It is possible that we'll add an API endpoint for searching the marketplace in the future, but we currently do not have that on our roap.

Thanks,
Rodney

Uhm,
official app points exactly to the same endpoint that we cannot access... the undocumented one! (and also same json response too)
Endpoint is still here with us, but not accessible for "normal" developers, probably the only one that could access to it are official app's s.
But no, this isn't an attempt to sabotage...

I'm not a Dev, just a . I have to say though, this seems like a sneaky thing for Discogs to do to it's own community. If you want people to use your app, build a better app. Don't take your ball and go home.

Exactly mdtolic,
we have waited for such a long time for an official endpoint / API for marketplace, but nothing moves since few days ago with the suddently shutdown.
However I've readed all the threads linked by rodneyfool, and in this post https://www.discogs.sie.com/forum/thread/401070#3783285 he said that "It definitely will be official within the year." (obviously referred to marketplace API), on 21st January 2015... A year and half ago, still waiting for a very basic API...
*no comment*

Ditto

goodrope
As a of Discographic, I think it is wrong for discogs to limit other app features in favour of the official app. Third party devastated are making your site more useful.

You out compete third party apps by making your app better, not by messing with developers and their s. Not cool.

I totally agree with goodrope.

I'm the developer of Discography which had more than 50k s on Android. I'll clearly stop working on the app - will not add any new features/make it more ergonomic, and will not adapt it to the latest Discogs features, if you plan to restrict the API only to the official App.

Many developers have been ing you to add these features in this API, like cristianpinn was saying, Rodney answered that this would be added within a year. So we were all expecting to have a new official endpoint for that.

By the way the app Discographer that you chose for the official app, was also using "non official end point," for instance for reading your discogs Message. Why is this endpoint not accessible for everybody now ?
And this app was also using the non official End point for market place. So you cannot tell everyone else "don't use unofficial end point" and give an exception to Discographer just by arbitrarily calling "it the official app".

I'm very disappointed by the change, as I think many people will be. If you don't plan to change this, I'll have to notify my s to explain the situation and stop any further development of my app. That might not be a big loss for you, since you want to promote the official app, but might be a loss for the Discogs Community who preferred to have more diversity and more developers working around discogs.

Regards,
Antoine.

I'm getting first bad reviews on my app "VinylPrice".
Thank you very much.

Please,
bring back marketplace endpoint available for everyone.
Keep it undocumented, unstable, everything you want...
But don't keep it accessible only for certain apps, that's not correct for developers that helps discogs grow!
Thank you very much!

Hi,
As a "Discography" i don't understand your action.
You are forcing developers to stop doing their own app to avoid any competition and that's not right nor fair. If You want people to use your app just do a better app ! You are ruining hundred hours of Work and also my best Android experience to navigate into Discogs.
I don't want to use your ugly app.

Hi all. I don't have any conclusive news to share, but I wanted to at least let you all know we take this issue seriously and that this issue is being actively discussed by the Discogs leadership team and Discogs staff.

We appologize for the inconvenience in the meantime, but as stated before, the API endpoint that was changed was unofficial and never listed in our API documentation, and therefore subject to change at any point.

For anyone interested in our current API approach, last year the Discogs COO explained it as follows:

"On the database side, yeah [the API will remain open], that’s always going to be an open API. The marketplace is something that we’re looking at though – there are scenarios where it makes sense for it to be open and then there’s others where it doesn’t. We have to the marketplace so it’s hard to put it in a third party developers hands. But the data will always be open. We don’t own that, the community own that. They built it.
It’s almost like Discogs is two businesses if you think about it. You’ve got the database which is the open-source project which is where it started. And then the s asked for a marketplace so we added one on. They’re run differently and they have different goals. They just happen to work very well together."
http://www.thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-factory-releases/the-official-new-discogs-app/

Hi Weetzie,
I'm glad you have take care of this great problem.

Something I don't really understand is:
- This specific endpoint is read-only, in fact you can only use GET method to obtain vendors, consequently all sales are made directly into Discogs site. So, what's the point to make it hidden? (see below);
- Why only official discogs can access to marketplace-search API? Request is the same as usual and response is the same too, why my and other developers' apps can't access to it?

API isn't modyfied at all, now is only usable for the "official app", other apps can't access to the this endpoint giving error 404.

PS: In the meantime I was writing this post I've received another mail that alerts me that my app isn't working...

I really don't understand why 3rd party developers can't access marketplace listings.

Where is the problem? The public API allows to list an item, advance orders, get messages, retrieve inventories... But it seems that getting items for sale for an specific record could create a "glitch" of some kind, if I have read correctly on the press release Weetzie posted.

This is rather arbitrary.

Discogs is a community. First of all. Without s, Discogs would be nothing. 3rd party developers are helping to create and make this community grow.

Take care of them. They help you to sell records.

I agree with blindborges warned about its use several times.

I'll say it in short: blindborges: You're right. Nobody can argue that.

What is not said is that Discogs has eliminated this endpoint because he wants to limit the access to the Marketplace only and exclusively to their apps. The fact of saying again and again that the endpoint was unofficial is just an empty way to justify this first step towards this objective.

I have already said that Discogs was right. So why I keep writing in this post?

I keep writing because, for us, external developers, the key point here is confidence: The timing (the day the Android app was released) and the way that has been done (not removing but closing it to the public) has probably broken the trust that many developers have had with Discogs.

My app, Discographic, offered Discogs listings and pricing as a additional feature. It's not a problem for me to remove it or make a link to Discogs website. My app has not been really affected for it. I have had to manage some hundreds of requests by email but that's all. The damage has been very limited.

My problem with this issue is the same areveillon exposes on his post. I was planning to add full marketplace on my app starting this September. Do I dare after this issue? I'm not very sure, really.

How could I know that the official API endpoints will stay stable?. And a more important question: How could I be sure that Discogs won't implement better and more effective private endpoints for their apps? Currently the answer is "I can't be sure at all".

Trust is the key point here and I have lost most of it after this "Marketplacegate".

Discogs is half a community and half a company trying to protect their business. I respect that. But probably it must hire a Public Relations Manager to help Discogs to manage this kind of "issues".

Hi - I wanted to say I appreciate it very much that Discogs makes their data available, and even more so through an API.

I was working on a personal app that would allow me to optimally purchase all of my wantlist from various sellers. So actually the goal here is to spend money and hopefully Discogs will make a profit. Since there is no way to search the marketplace, the only "API" way to go seems to be digging through the thousands of pages of records these sellers offer. Surely not a good way to go if we have the well being of Discogs servers in mind.

So a search access point would be very much appreciated.

Dear Discogs team,
I'm a of the iOS App DISCOGRAPHIC and I miss the marketplace now. Discographic was the initial reason for me to use Discogs. Please make sure to bring back the feature to Discographic App!

very very sad about this since this was pretty much the only way to retreive a median price of a release if I'm not mistaken? Should at least provide price information in another (or even existing) endpoint.

sad.

No more update?
We are over 20 days without this endpoint...

Dear Discsogs, make an official 'get' endpoint available for the marketplace, so my favorite iOS-app can function fully again. Your action seems childish and your position is not really well defended in any of the above postings form the staff.

Back this endPoint please....

Just chiming in to add for a viable alternative to this endpoint, at the very least

We are going to the second month without any valid and "constructive" response...
I don't think creating a temporary "get" method to marketplace requires all this time.

Nothing new?
My app now has over 1k 1-star reviews.
Also thrird party apps are full of 1-star reviews caused by your choice.
Thank you very much discogs, thank you very very much...

Dear staff,
please respond to our questions.
I'd like to re-use my app because official app is buggy, laggy and doesn't give to me what I'm looking for.
Thank you.

Hi!
There's no updates about this endpoint?

Hi all, I realize this is an ongoing frustration for many of you, so I apologize for the delay.

I'm not directly involved, so I can't report on specifics, but I know that the hold-up involves drafting up an official API of Service / of Use. An API of Service is standard for public APIs, and we are long overdue. The API review is also ensuring our API follows all applicable privacy laws, and as with anything involving legal work - it's complicated and takes time. But these changes should help ensure the long-term viability of the Discogs API.

As I understand it, the hope is that once a more official API of Service is in place we can actually open up more data and add more API functionality - including official API of some new Marketplace endpoints.

Like I said, I'm not directly involved in drafting up the TOS, so I don't know all the details, but since I've been following this thread I wanted to at least provide an update as to what is taking so long.

Thanks for the update, it's much needed.

Looks like we should send your lawyers some cookies so they have a better time working on this late at night :)

blindborges
Discogs has quite a few other undocumented API endpoints that aren't for public consumption that we use on various pages of the Discogs website (www.discogs.sie.com) and on our apps (I'd list some of these endpoints, but then they might be abused).

Either you make these endpoint private by IP or other mechanisms, or other developers WILL use them or even abuse them!
But for those, who created constructive good apps for s and for discogs, its pain in the ass if you ('DISCOGS') do as you pleased.

and please keep your documentation up2date 'https://www.discogs.sie.com/developers/'

THX!

Timo

Hi, I seem to be in the same boat as everyone here. We are developing an app that would benefit hugely from being able to search the Discogs marketplace. Although it's not completely a make or break thing for us, it would make a big difference to our s to be able to use this data.

Would it be possible to get some sort of time-frame as to when it would be likely that this API endpoint (or equivalent) would be available again? I understand that it's not that simple, but any sort of idea would be great. We're at a point in the development now that just having a vague idea would make a big impact on how we proceed as we would much rather launch with this integration in place.

Thank you very much!

Ian

Hi, just wanted to weigh in. I was also halfway through developing an app when the marketplace endpoint went dark. Looks like this has affected a lot of other s too. Any update on when an official endpoint might come to fruition would be great.

I don't really understand why there are issues with this being part of the public API, the marketplace pages are public anyway no?

Thanks
Stephen

The endpoint is actually still active.
The ios app makes calls to it successfully, I setup a debugging proxy and could see the successful requests and responses.

It appears that discogs have restricted access to it for everyone else but their own app developers.

I am guessing this is due to dicogs not wanting sellers to be able to re-price their products against each other, which is absolutely ludicrous as they are losing out in fees and sellers with 10's of 1000's of items have no way of managing pricing and are losing out on revenue also.

We have only just started selling on discogs and I am in desperate need of having access to this feature to automatically sense check our staffs pricing decisions against other sellers items.

We currently sell vast amouts of CD product through other marketplaces but discogs seemed the sensible choice for our vinyl and 7" stocks (of which we have 10's of 1000's if not 100's of 1000's of mint new items (some stored for over 30 years) to catalogue

I think I will be changing my plans as to using discogs as a serious selling market place and concentrate on marketplaces that operate without these restrictions.

For anyone using javascript, I created a simple npm module to scrape the marketplace:
https://github.com/danbiwer/discogs-marketplace-js

Probably only good for toy projects.

Scraping the marketplace is not ed, please know that if you engage in doing that you'll likely be severely rate limited.

eknudtson
Scraping the marketplace is not ed, please know that if you engage in doing that you'll likely be severely rate limited.

Always there are some ways to solve an issue, some could follow the "rules", others no ;)

So, when you will release this (or similar) API endpoint for the community without restrictions?

eknudtson
Scraping the marketplace is not ed, please know that if you engage in doing that you'll likely be severely rate limited.

This is what happens when you create artificial access barriers to get data.

Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt that Discogs woud have actual control to limit applications that use scrapping to get data. As a matter of fact, Discogs own Android app use scrapping to get info from the web.

You can't always get what you want...

Can we get a clear answer from staff about when this or an equivalent endpoint will be available please?
And if it's not going to happen, then a clear and honest answer as to why not would be great.

In the meantime, I'm sure people are just going to carry on scraping, it's not hard.

Hi, is there an update on this from anyone at Discogs? When I opened a ticket about this 6 months ago, I was told that this is actively being looked at and the issue was purely down to the legal team needing to write the T&C's for this part of the API.

Any update would be appreciated, thanks!

Weetzie

"On the database side, yeah [the API will remain open], that’s always going to be an open API. The marketplace is something that we’re looking at though – there are scenarios where it makes sense for it to be open and then there’s others where it doesn’t. We have to the marketplace so it’s hard to put it in a third party developers hands. But the data will always be open. We don’t own that, the community own that. They built it.
It’s almost like Discogs is two businesses if you think about it. You’ve got the database which is the open-source project which is where it started. And then the s asked for a marketplace so we added one on. They’re run differently and they have different goals. They just happen to work very well together."
http://www.thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-factory-releases/the-official-new-discogs-app/

Ok, so the marketplace isn't the community? Is the staff selling all the records?
Open up the endpoint, Im feeling bad selling my records here now.

Could we please, PLEASE get some update on this?
All I want to be able to do is check the availability of a release on the marketplace - I don't even want specific information.

Anyone with an can do this via the web interface, so why wouldn't we be able to do so via the API?

Yeah, the marketplace data is free to be browsed on the website, but it can't be fetched via API. I don't know what Discogs thinks we are going to do with it. Maybe changing prices randomly and confusing buyers? This could also be done scrapping the website. They said that were studying how to open the marketplace to 3rd party developers... and they have done it quietly since mid 2016...

Hmm, sad to see this. My use case is even simpler: I want to try and get some kind of idea of valuation for insurance purposes of my record collection. I had high hopes for the discogs api, now I'm :'(

It's really disappointing. This topic or similar questions regarding the access of useful marketplace data have been coming up for about three or four years now. Sadly, other than a few vague comments there has been made no real official improvement on this matter.

I (and I am sure there are lots of others) have had ideas that would require this feature for a long long time now. In my case (since I am also a programmer), all that prevents things from happening is the API lacking endpoints for useful gathering of listing and price data. I refuse to do it "the dirty way" by scraping the website, it's just not what I'm looking for here.

I would also highly apperciate an official update on this. Can we get an ETA? Is it even still on the plan to be accessed by developers in the future? Please, give us some breadcrumbs at least!

fresh13
Hmm, sad to see this. My use case is even simpler: I want to try and get some kind of idea of valuation for insurance purposes of my record collection. I had high hopes for the discogs api, now I'm :'(

All you have to do is navigate to your collection on the website. There is a line below the search input that shows the Min/Med/Max value of you collection based on the marketplace history.

But yeah, it's pretty sad that we can't simply query the market place for a single release id.

bedhed3000 - interesting. That would require getting the whole of my 10-15k item collection on discogs...

[quote=fresh13] bedhed3000 - interesting. That would require getting the whole of my 10-15k item collection on discogs...[/quote]

That's the idea, yes. You should be able to do it programmatically.

Any update on this? I wanted to build my own python app for wantslist items in specific currencies, locations etc.
Because the current wantslist notifications are just useless with 95% of the content being the same ed on a daily basis.

You've fucked up my master degree project closing this endpoint. And jon tell the truth

jon.
Ok, so the marketplace isn't the community? Is the staff selling all the records?

I HATE YOU

This is beyond a joke.

Please sell on our platform and allow yourself to be ripped off or spend weeks of your life manually doing cost calculations by hand

Is that really the message here discogs?

At least offer a data export in csv format containing the med min and max values

So ... is there an update on when this endpoint will be back? Would be nice if I could get min / max / average prices again on the I have in my collection through an API. Would allow me to finish my personal app and print the labels I'm gonna be sticking on all the vinyl I'll be selling :-P

So ... is there an update on when this endpoint will be back? Would be nice if I could get min / max / average prices again on the I have in my collection through an API. Would allow me to finish my personal app and print the labels I'm gonna be sticking on all the vinyl I'll be selling :-P

Any updates on this? Are we getting a new marketplace endpoint?

news? news?

I have the feeling it won't be back anytime soon. What they don't understand is that shutting the marketplace search means shutting down an ecosystem around their product which can only increase sales and the discogs brand. I refuse to think that decision has been taken for the benefits of their official app, that would be too stupid. It's up to them, but losing trust of developers is not the best move I think.

This thread has me doing a dev-swerve... thought there was potential for some neat custom applications here, but I don't want to get involved in a spaghetti 'community' like this... peace.

I did find this, not perfect but you could grab and RSS feed per release: https://www.discogs.sie.com/sell/release/4922985?output=rss

wanted to start an application using the marketplace data via API, didnt find useful endpoints, then found this thread, shut down my plans. Now my use of Discogs at all will be re-thought. Thank you for nothing.

kind regards, a 7 years

update on this pls

Same here, any updates?

oronimbus
Any update on this? I wanted to build my own python app for wantslist items in specific currencies, locations etc.
Because the current wantslist notifications are just useless with 95% of the content being the same ed on a daily basis.

Also waiting for an update on this. Seems pretty arbitrary to close that particular api endpoint. I don't what discogs have to loose by opening it.

Pretty disappointing that Discogs hasn’t updated this issue in 3 (!!!) years...

any update on this?

Wait... Maybe the endpoint to this thread is down on theirs side and was not documented ?

Please! update this!!!!

Adding myself to the list of people who want this feature. I just want to write a script for my own personal use that lets me buy multiple items from as few (probably overseas) sellers as possible. I completely understand that this endpoint in particular was undocumented, but it was frustrating to read through several 5+ year old threads where staff kept promising that it was *definitely* coming soon.

At the very least it would be nice to hear a definitive statement of "We will not be implementing this feature, because ____", both here and as a FAQ item (because it is a notably absent feature compared to the website).

I'd also love for this endpoint to be public, for personal use. I'd like to monitor prices and get notifications when an item falls within my target budget.

To the Discogs staff, I think most people here are angry with:

a. the lack of an honest response to the question: "why was this API removed?"
b. the fact that the staff hints at the API coming back 5 years ago, and not following up with any news for 5 years

+1 interested in this endpoint.

InsideOutSupplies
The endpoint is actually still active.
The ios app makes calls to it successfully, I setup a debugging proxy and could see the successful requests and responses.

It appears that discogs have restricted access to it for everyone else but their own app developers.

I am guessing this is due to dicogs not wanting sellers to be able to re-price their products against each other, which is absolutely ludicrous as they are losing out in fees and sellers with 10's of 1000's of items have no way of managing pricing and are losing out on revenue also.

We have only just started selling on discogs and I am in desperate need of having access to this feature to automatically sense check our staffs pricing decisions against other sellers items.

We currently sell vast amouts of CD product through other marketplaces but discogs seemed the sensible choice for our vinyl and 7" stocks (of which we have 10's of 1000's if not 100's of 1000's of mint new items (some stored for over 30 years) to catalogue

I think I will be changing my plans as to using discogs as a serious selling market place and concentrate on marketplaces that operate without these restrictions.

Coming back to this thread 4 years later and finding that there is still no change is disappointing to say the least.

I fully understand that there are likely technical reasons why this api (which if you read my previous post you will see is/was actually still active but has been restricted) is not open to the general public, but....

As a major player in the new old stock market it has basically caused us not to list many items on discogs as we could not possibly manage the competitive pricing of our stock without it.

I may be speaking out of turn but I say this with the consumer in mind. Discogs is a fantastic resource for collectors and rare records but if businesses can not gain access to pricing data they have no way of competitively pricing their catalogues. This could of course lead to 2 different scenarios, 1) price inflation, 2) price deflation but... this is important for both business and consumer. If a price on a release is high as it is rare then sellers will match that price if the market becomes saturated with a release then the price will be driven down, this is just basic business and essentially the way every market works in the world. Businesses need to maximise their income in order to survive so they exist to supply the consumer for years to come but they also need to sell product so prices will and should follow the market trends. This, or a similar API is essential to enable this to happen for sellers with thousands of releases.
On the other hand discogs would likely need to invest heavily in server and bandwidth resources to enable them to open up such an api endpoint publicly as the number of requests per second would scale vastly as people copeted with each other on price. There are solutions to this and charging a nominal fee for api access to such an endpoint may be one of them.

I can unfortunately say that until a solution is found I can not see a way of being competitive for the 50,000-100,000+ releases of back catalogue we currently hold and as discogs is so time consuming to list a release for sale correctly it is unlikely we will be able to justify the labour costs if we can not programmatically reprice the catalogue as market trends change. This means that we will likely find other outlets or even list on our own site (but that is not going to happen fast either) but this also means that we will be harder to find and discogs will loose out on revenue from fees.

Let's hope discogs changes direction in relation to this policy sooner rather than later

Sad to end up here and realize my project is dead :(

It's a shame that 6 years after the removal, Discogs doesn't give any information about this endpoint.

Man I really thought scrolling to the end of this thread would result in some kind of update at least. Yikes, not cool.

+1

(not worth any more text, but "message must be at least 10 characters long")

+1

(not worth any more text, but "message must be at least 10 characters long")

+1

(not worth any more text, but "message must be at least 10 characters long")

Welp, there goes that idea ;-( Very disappointing thread to read.

+1 need the endpoint

+1 need the endpoint

+1 need endpoint

+1 need the endpoint.

+1 need the endpoint.

+1 need the endpoint

Would like this endpoint, please.