Developers: Use the new Xbox Music APIs in your apps and start earning revenue

You’re not a major player if you don’t have APIs for devs to tap into your product. Which is why Xbox Music just went from another streaming service to a bonafide platform. That’s right, Microsoft has done something a little unexpected today. They’ve introduced the Xbox Music API as a way for developers to connect their apps or websites to the Xbox Music service. Let’s check it out.

So what can you do with these APIs for Xbox Music from Microsoft? Quite a bit actually, including becoming an affiliate to generate revenue. You’re getting access to RESTful web services when you’re using the Xbox Music API. Using the API you can do these things:

• Get the details of an album, an artist, or a track if you know its ID.
• Search for any album, artist, or track details based on a string of keywords—for example, "Madonna hang out".
• Get the top tracks and newest albums of an artist.
• Get a deep link that redirects nicely to the Xbox Music applications, whether on the web, on Windows Phone, on Windows 8, on Windows 8.1, or from some other platform.
• Get album covers.
• Get artist images.
• Become an affiliate and start earning revenue from sales you generate on Xbox Music applications.

In order to get started you’ll want to read the documentation on the new APIs in Xbox Music, linked below. After that you’ll want to get your free API key from the Windows Azure Marketplace. To become an affiliate you’ll need to create a publisher account with Rakuten Linkshare and apply to the Xbox Music affiliate program. Once you’ve done that you can earn start earning revenue in your app or website when you use the Xbox Music API.

This is a pretty excited move from Microsoft and we can’t wait to see what developers do with Xbox Music in their apps. This is all brand new, so we’ll be on the lookout for the first handful of apps in the Windows Phone Store that use the Xbox Music API.

Developers thinking of using the APIs? Readers, how would you like to see Xbox Music used in new or your favorite existing applications? Sound off below.

Source: Xbox Music Developer, Xbox Music Service Documentation

Thanks Jay for the tip!