Questions about setting up server and API: cost and sorting/filtering capabilities

MusicBrainz Development
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Hey everyone. I’m building an app (basically Letterboxd for music atm) and want to change my data source from Discogs to MusicBrainz. I’m going to set up my own server and have some questions.

  1. What’s a rough estimate of the cost to host my own server and database through something like AWS? Does anyone have tips for lowering cost?
  2. This is more related to the API, but is it possible to sort and filter a set of entities? For example, current functionality I offer is sorting all of the albums a user has listened to by the release date. Another example is filtering the albums a user has listened to by genre.

Thanks in advance,
Ben

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Hi Ben,

No sorting is provided by the API itself. The API returns the first release date for release group, release, and recording. Your app can use this data to do the sorting.

The API provides some filtering through browse query and search query.

Out of curiosity, what is motivating this change?

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Hello yvanzo,

Thanks for the reply and sorry about the late response. I didn’t have email notifications turned on.

When you said “the API returns the first release date,” in what context did you mean that?

The main motivation is support for recordings which Discogs doesn’t have. Other motivations include a richer metadata setup (events, series which include lists, relationships, etc), open source nature, and the ability to get around rate limits by setting up one’s own server.

-Ben

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I figured out what you meant by first release date, so ignore that question.