Radio & Music Services

Name: Radio & Music Services API
Brand: BBC Radio & Music Services
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentMediaAudio Processingnone75 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Browse BBC Radio broadcasts, schedules, and music collections, plus manage a user's follows, favourites, and music exports. Useful for media catalogue agents and personalised radio assistants.

Quickstart

Get started with Radio & Music Services in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"fetch latest bbc radio broadcasts"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Radio & Music Services API.

Fetch the latest broadcasts or a specific broadcast by PID with /broadcasts and /broadcasts/{pid}

Browse music categories and category members via /categories and /collections/{pid}/members

Pull popular artists, playlists, and tracks from /music/popular/* endpoints

Manage a user's category follows with GET, POST, and DELETE /my/categories/follows

GET STARTED

Start building with Radio & Music Services API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI document for Radio & Music Services, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

The BBC Radio and Music Services (RMS) API encapsulates the metadata and personalisation logic that powers iPlayer Radio and BBC Music across web, mobile, and connected devices. It surfaces broadcasts and schedules, music categories and collections, popular artists, playlists and tracks, and a per-user 'my' namespace for follows, favourites, and music export jobs. With 75 endpoints, the API is the canonical source of broadcast metadata for any client integrating BBC Radio listings, station experiences, or personalised music recommendations.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Radio & Music Services API for, with concrete tasks.

★ BBC Radio Listings Client

A connected radio device or Alexa skill needs to display 'what's on now' across BBC Radio stations. The RMS API provides GET /broadcasts/latest for currently airing programmes and GET /broadcasts/{pid} for full programme metadata. The client can render the schedule, jump to live audio, and surface programme art using a single backend call per station.

Call GET /broadcasts/latest, render the current programme on each station, and refresh on a 60-second interval

Personalised Music Discovery

BBC Music's recommendation surfaces are powered by category follows and popular-content endpoints. Apps can call GET /my/categories/follows to read the user's followed genres, then GET /music/popular/tracks and /music/popular/artists to suggest new content. Adding a follow is a POST /my/categories/follows away.

GET /my/categories/follows, then for each followed category call GET /music/popular/tracks?category={id} and surface the top three tracks

Music Export Job Tracking

Listeners exporting their BBC Music history (favourites, plays) trigger an export job via POST /my/music/exports/jobs. The client polls GET /my/music/exports/jobs to track progress, then fetches the resulting tracks with GET /my/music/exports/tracks once the job completes. This flow is suitable for data-portability automations and account-cleanup agents.

POST /my/music/exports/jobs, poll GET /my/music/exports/jobs every 30 seconds, and call GET /my/music/exports/tracks when status is complete

Catalogue and Collection Browser

Editorial tooling that surfaces BBC Music collections (curated playlists, themed groupings) can use GET /collections/{pid}/members to enumerate the items in a collection and GET /categories/{id} for category metadata. The endpoints support pagination so even large collections can be walked predictably.

Call GET /categories, then for each category fetch GET /collections/{pid}/members to build a faceted browse experience

Agent-Driven Music Lookup via Jentic

A voice-assistant agent answering 'what was playing on Radio 1 at 8pm' can use the BBC Radio & Music API through Jentic to query broadcasts and collections without managing client code. Jentic exposes the 75 RMS operations as discoverable tools indexed by natural-language intent.

Search Jentic for 'fetch latest bbc radio broadcasts', load the GET /broadcasts/latest schema, and execute to return current on-air programmes

Key Endpoints

75 endpoints — the bbc radio and music services (rms) api encapsulates the metadata and personalisation logic that powers iplayer radio and bbc music across web, mobile, and connected devices.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/broadcasts/latest

Get the latest broadcasts across BBC Radio stations

GET

/broadcasts/{pid}

Fetch metadata for a specific broadcast

GET

/categories

List music categories

GET

/music/popular/tracks

Get popular tracks on BBC Music

GET

/my/categories/follows

List categories the current user follows

POST

/my/categories/follows

Follow a music category

POST

/my/music/exports/jobs

Trigger a music export job

GET

/experience/homepage

Get the BBC Music homepage experience payload

GET

/broadcasts/latest

Get the latest broadcasts across BBC Radio stations

GET

/broadcasts/{pid}

Fetch metadata for a specific broadcast

GET

/categories

List music categories

GET

/music/popular/tracks

Get popular tracks on BBC Music

GET

/my/categories/follows

List categories the current user follows

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Where /my/* endpoints require a BBC Account session, the session token is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Public endpoints (broadcasts, categories, popular music) need no credentials but are still routed through Jentic's discovery layer.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g. 'fetch latest bbc radio broadcasts' or 'list popular bbc music tracks') and Jentic returns matching RMS operations with their input schemas across the 75 available endpoints.

Time to first call

Direct integration: 2-3 days to map the 75 RMS endpoints, handle BBC Account auth for /my/* paths, and build pagination logic. Through Jentic: under an hour for the most common queries — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

BBC Nitro API

BBC Programmes Metadata API — covers the underlying programmes/episodes data referenced by Radio & Music broadcasts

Use Nitro for raw programme metadata; use Radio & Music for the personalised iPlayer Radio and BBC Music client surface.

Complementary

BBC iPlayer Business Layer

iPlayer's TV-side metadata API — pair with Radio & Music for a full BBC playback client

Use iPlayer Business Layer for TV programmes; Radio & Music for radio and music.

Alternative

StarCraft 2 API

Different media domain; included as a media-API peer in the absence of another broadcast-metadata API in the corpus

Not a real alternative — listed only because the corpus does not include a competing radio-metadata API.

FAQs

Specific to using Radio & Music Services API through Jentic.

What authentication does the BBC Radio & Music Services API use?

The OpenAPI spec does not declare a security scheme — most read endpoints (broadcasts, categories, popular music) are public. The /my/* endpoints (follows, exports) imply a BBC Account session, which the client must establish via the standard BBC iD flow. Through Jentic, any session credentials are stored in the vault.

Can I get the BBC Radio schedule with this API?

Yes. GET /broadcasts/latest returns currently airing programmes across stations and GET /broadcasts/{pid} fetches a specific broadcast's metadata. For station-by-station listings, walk /broadcasts with the appropriate filters.

How do I fetch popular BBC Music tracks through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'popular bbc music tracks', which surfaces GET /music/popular/tracks. Load the schema and execute. Jentic returns the current popular tracks payload, which you can filter by category or artist client-side.

What are the rate limits for the BBC Radio & Music API?

The OpenAPI spec does not declare explicit rate limits. The RMS API is intended for BBC's own clients, so apply conservative polling (no faster than once per minute for broadcast endpoints) and back off on any 429 or 5xx response.

Can I follow a music category for a user?

Yes, the API exposes a /my namespace: GET /my/categories/follows lists current follows, POST /my/categories/follows adds one, and DELETE /my/categories/follows removes one. These endpoints require the user to be authenticated against their BBC Account.

Does the BBC Radio & Music API support exporting a user's music data?

Yes. POST /my/music/exports/jobs triggers an export job, GET /my/music/exports/jobs returns job status, and GET /my/music/exports/tracks fetches the exported tracks. The flow is asynchronous — poll for completion before pulling results.