# API - Artist begin area

**URL:** <https://community.metabrainz.org/t/api-artist-begin-area/705390>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** areas, webservice, artist\
**Created:** [July 19, 2024, 12:50am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/api-artist-begin-area/705390 "2024-07-19T00:50:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MMMDI](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@MMMDI](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/MMMDI)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2024, 12:50am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/api-artist-begin-area/705390/1 "2024-07-19T00:50:01Z")

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Is it possible to get an artist’s begin / end area through the API?

Example, Nirvana:

[https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da](https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/5b11f4ce-a62d-471e-81fc-a69a8278c7da)

Returns:

(begin-area id=“a640b45c-c173-49b1-8030-973603e895b5”)  
(name)Aberdeen(/name)  
(sort-name)Aberdeen(/sort-name)  
(/begin-area)

I know I can follow the area ID as such…

[https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/area/a640b45c-c173-49b1-8030-973603e895b5?inc=area-rels](https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/area/a640b45c-c173-49b1-8030-973603e895b5?inc=area-rels)

…but that goes to county, which needs to be followed, etc etc. And then there’s non-US countries, which gets even more confusing.

Is there a simpler way to pull out the entire location, preferably with area ID’s? ie,

Founded in: Aberdeen, Washington, United States

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![yvanzo](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/yvanzo/32/2864_2.png) [@yvanzo](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/yvanzo)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2024, 7:44am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/api-artist-begin-area/705390/2 "2024-07-19T07:44:05Z")

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Hi, it isn’t possible at the moment.

Please see (and vote for) the two tickets below for follow-up:

> <https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-6741>

> <https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/SEARCH-359>

These are long overdue improvements indeed. To be positive, their implementation should be more feasible since we added a table for area containment in 2022:

> <https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-12249>

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MMMDI](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@MMMDI](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/MMMDI)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2024, 1:01am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/api-artist-begin-area/705390/3 "2024-07-20T01:01:36Z")

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Thanks for the info! I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with this code, but I was stumped on this, thinking there had to be an obvious way to get this info that I was missing.