iTunes Search Scraper

Scrape the iTunes Store catalog — Apple's index of music, podcasts, movies, TV, apps, ebooks and audiobooks. Search by keyword across any media type, or look up items directly by iTunes ID, and get names, artists, genres, release dates, prices in the storefront's own currency, durations, preview clips, podcast RSS feeds, and high-resolution artwork. Results can be pulled from any of 30 country storefronts. HTTP-only via the public iTunes Search API. No auth, no proxy.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (keyword) and byId (direct lookup, batched for many IDs at once)
• Every media type: music, podcasts, audiobooks, movies, short films, TV, apps, and ebooks, with entity-level narrowing (song vs album vs artist)
• 30 country storefronts — pricing, currency and availability follow the storefront you pick
• Upgraded artwork: thumbnails are rewritten to 600×600 rather than the API's default 100×100
• Empty fields are omitted

Output: per track, movie, or app

• trackId, trackName
• artistId, artistName
• collectionId, collectionName — the album / season the item belongs to
• genre — primary genre
• kind — item kind as reported by Apple, e.g. song, feature-movie
• trackNumber, trackCount, discCount — position within its collection
• durationMs, durationSec (tracks) / durationMinutes (movies)
• price, currency, country — storefront pricing
• releaseDate
• explicit — explicitness marker
• isStreamable
• contentAdvisoryRating — age rating (movies / TV)
• shortDescription, longDescription — synopsis (movies / TV)
• previewUrl — audio or video preview clip
• imageUrl — 600×600 artwork
• trackViewUrl, artistViewUrl, collectionViewUrl — Apple store pages
• entityType, recordType: "itunes_item", scrapedAt

Output: per album (entity = album)

• collectionId, collectionName
• artistId, artistName
• genre, releaseDate
• trackCount — songs on the album
• price, currency, country, explicit
• imageUrl, collectionViewUrl, artistViewUrl
• entityType, recordType: "itunes_item", scrapedAt

Output: per podcast (entity = podcast)

• collectionId, collectionName — the show
• artistId, artistName — the publisher
• genres, primaryGenre
• episodeCount — episodes in the feed
• feedUrl — the podcast's RSS feed
• releaseDate — most recent episode date
• country, explicit
• imageUrl, collectionViewUrl, artistViewUrl
• entityType, recordType: "itunes_item", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byId
searchQuery	string	the beatles	Artist, song, album, podcast, app, or movie name (mode=search)
media	string	music	music / podcast / audiobook / shortFilm / tvShow / movie / software / ebook / all
entity	string	musicTrack	Entity within the media type — musicTrack, musicArtist, album, musicVideo, podcast, podcastEpisode, movie, tvSeason, tvEpisode, software, ebook, audiobook
country	string	us	Two-letter storefront code — 30 supported
explicit	string	Yes	Yes to include explicit content, No for clean only
itunesId	int	–	Single iTunes ID (mode=byId)
itunesIds	array	–	Multiple iTunes IDs (mode=byId)
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap (1–200)

Example: songs by an artist

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "the beatles",
  "media": "music",
  "entity": "musicTrack",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: podcasts with RSS feeds

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "true crime",
  "media": "podcast",
  "entity": "podcast",
  "country": "gb",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: app store search in another storefront

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "meditation",
  "media": "software",
  "entity": "software",
  "country": "de"
}

Example: batch lookup by ID

{
  "mode": "byId",
  "itunesIds": [1440857781, 909253, 1200361736]
}

Use cases

• Podcast directories — harvest show metadata and RSS feed URLs to build or refresh a catalog
• Music apps — resolve artist, album, and track metadata with artwork and 30-second previews
• Price and availability monitoring — compare the same title across country storefronts
• App store research — survey competing apps by keyword and market
• Media catalogs — enrich film and TV libraries with synopses, ratings, and runtime
• Recommendation systems — build genre-labelled catalogs across music, podcasts, and video

FAQ

What is the iTunes Search API? Apple's public, key-free search endpoint over the iTunes Store, App Store, Apple Books and Podcasts catalogs.

Is this affiliated with Apple? No. This is a third-party actor using Apple's public search API.

Do I need an API key? No. The API is open, though Apple rate-limits heavy callers — the actor retries with backoff on 429.

Why is maxItems capped at 200? That's the iTunes API's own per-query result limit; it doesn't offer deeper pagination. To gather more, run several narrower queries.

How do media and entity interact? media is the broad category and entity is the specific record type inside it — media: "music" with entity: "album" returns albums, with entity: "musicTrack" returns individual songs. For movies and TV, Apple's search behaves inconsistently with an explicit entity, so the actor searches broadly and filters the results to the type you asked for.

Does the storefront change the results? Yes, substantially. Prices, currency, availability and even catalog membership are per-country — a title on the US store may be absent from jp.

Can I get a podcast's episodes? Use entity: "podcastEpisode" for episode records, or take the feedUrl from a show record and read the RSS feed directly for the complete back catalogue.

Are preview clips downloadable? previewUrl points at Apple's own CDN and is directly fetchable — typically a 30-second audio clip or a video trailer.

Why do some records have no price? Free items, streaming-only titles, and podcasts have no purchase price, so the field is dropped rather than reported as zero.

How fresh is the data? Live — every run queries Apple directly, so prices and new releases are current at run time.