Music · 21 MCP tools · one Friday email

Never miss
a show you'd
actually
have gone to.

Music watches what you really play — Apple's heavy rotation plus your recents, not a follow list you have to maintain — and emails you one Friday digest when a new date near you turns up for a band you play. Nothing new that week? No email.

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Or yearly — $150, two months free · one subscription covers every Parsons app, unlimited projects
Parsons Music <noreply@parsons.ai>Fri · 9:00 am PT
Subject
Your music week: 2 shows near San Diego · 1 new release
SEP24
American Football
The Observatory · Santa Ana, CA
Because you play American Football
81 mi
OCT1
Metallica
Sphere · Las Vegas, NV
Because you play Metallica
261 mi
NEW
Wednesday
New single · out 6 days ago
In your heavy rotation · 14-day release window
no shows, no release — so no email.
that is the whole promise.
this week:
Deduped against every previous send. Don't want to wait until Friday? The app has a Send me one now button that runs the whole chain in five seconds.
Apple Music only Ticketmaster Discovery Encrypted at rest One-click revoke
02 · The situationyou found out from the recap clips

They played your city last month.

You didn't miss the show because there was no alert. You missed it because the alert depended on a list you were supposed to keep — and you last touched that list in 2023, two phones and about forty new favourite bands ago.

Tour announce, presale, on-sale and sold-out all happened while the follow list sat still. The alert system worked perfectly. It just wasn't pointed at what you actually listen to.

Mar 4
Tour announced
Mar 6
Artist presale
Mar 8
General on-sale
Mar 11
Sold out
Apr 19
Show night
Apr 22 · three days later
You found out here
someone's recap clip, on your phone
The list decays
Follow-based alerting only knows the artists you remembered to tap a button for. Your taste moved; the list didn't.
our input: heavy rotation + recents
Cities, not distance
Pick-your-cities alerting has no answer for living between two metros, or for a band worth a three-hour drive.
our input: a radius you set, not a city list
All or nothing
Either the firehose or silence. And a service funded by your attention can never choose to email you less.
our input: one send a week, or none
03 · The turntwo ways to be told about a show

Your rotation is the follow list.

Every rival keys off an explicit follow. We key off what you played. One of those is a chore that rots; the other is a by-product of using Apple Music at all.

Follow listartists you remembered to follow — last touched 2023
Arcade Fire
Vampire Weekend
Foals
alt-J
The National
Sylvan Esso
Bon Iver
Phoenix
Local Natives
Cut Copy
Chromeo
… 331 more
Your rotationrecomputed every Friday from what you actually played
American Footballheavy
Wednesdayheavy
Metallicarecent
MJ Lendermanrecent
Dusterrecent
Hovvdyrecent
You cannot forget to follow a band you play four times a week. There is no list to keep.
And the second half is the part that can't be copied: we charge a flat $15, so every email we send costs us money. A quiet week is a cheaper week for us. An ad-funded alerting service has the opposite incentive — it cannot ship an inbox that stays quiet, because quiet is the thing it sells.
04 · The mechanismcron: 0 16 * * 5 · Fridays 09:00 PT

What happens on Friday at 9am.

One scheduled sweep, five stages, and a dedupe step whose whole job is to stop the email from being sent. Watch the tray: the sweep runs, the dedupe strikes anything you have already been told about, and the terminal chip decides.

Shows come from Ticketmaster Discovery with performer verification and a real per-result distance. Releases come from Apple's latest-release feed for your own top artists, inside a 14-day window.

01 · input
Heavy rotation + recents
weighted → top artists
02 · fan-out
Shows near your home base
Ticketmaster Discovery
03 · fan-out
New from your own artists
Apple · 14-day window
04 · the gate
Dedupe against every prior send
already told you? drop it
05 · outcome
Send — or send nothing
no filler, ever
radius 100 mi by default · auto-widens to 350 mi when the tight sweep comes back with fewer than four
delivered by the platform notifications service · channel email · your opt-out is honoured
This week's sweeppass 1 · a week with news
American Football · Santa Anaseen Metallica · Las Vegasseen Duster · Pomonaseen Wednesday · new singleseen Hovvdy · new singleseen
send · 3 new two of the five were in last week's email, so they never make it to your inbox twice.
One thing first

Connect Apple Music, then open Shows near you once. That visit is how it learns where “near me” is — your home base is read from the edge and saved. After that the sweep runs on its own, and your own AI inherits the same home city when it calls find_concerts. That is the whole setup.

05 · Where50 / 100 / 200 / 300 mi · 5–500 from the tool

Set a radius. Not a list of cities.

Live between two metros and city-pickers make you choose. A radius doesn't. Click a ring — these are the four choices that ship in the app, wired to the same numbers.

San Diego
home base
find_concerts · city:"San Diego" · radiusMi:100 digest_settings · radiusMi:100
Shows within 100 mi of San Diegoverified performer
SEP
24
American FootballThe Observatory · Santa Ana, CA
81 miverified
OCT
12
DusterThe Glass House · Pomona, CA
97 miverified
Nothing close by, so we looked farther out — these are worth the drive.

Every row carries the real computed distance and a performer check against the artist name — not a fuzzy keyword match on a city, which is how people end up with a ticket to the wrong act.

Travel mode is a control, not a prompt trick. Switch the city in the app and the same sweep points somewhere else — or just say it to your AI, and find_concerts takes the city argument directly.

Weekly digest · the control roomon
ScheduleFridays, 9am PT
Goes toyour account email
Radius100 mi
Last sentFri, Aug 21
Send me one nowruns the real sweep and mails you immediately
06 · Day zerono Apple connection required

Useful before you connect anything.

Four of the tools run entirely on our own API keys. Sign in, ask a question, get a real answer — then connect Apple Music when you're ready for the digest and the player.

Concert search, similar-artist discovery and off-catalog video search need nothing from your library. The status pill below stays grey for all three.

Apple Music: not connected
Who's playing near me?
Duster97 mi
MJ Lenderman14 mi
American Football81 mi
find_concerts
More like American Football
OwenMineralThe Promise RingCap'n JazzSunny Day Real EstateBraid
similar_artists · similar_tracks
Find the live version
Live at Pitchforkvideo
2011 DJ setvideo
Acoustic, radio sessionvideo
search_youtube
Connect Apple Music and the rest of the surface switches on: your recents, your heavy rotation, Apple's own recommendations, catalog search, playlists, the in-tab player, and the Friday digest. Everything needs an active subscription — every tool checks entitlement on every call.
07 · Off-catalogYouTube Data API v3

The version that isn't on Apple Music.

The live take. The remix. The 2011 DJ set somebody uploaded once. Streaming catalogs are licensing artefacts — they simply do not contain most of what a fan actually wants to hear again.

search_catalog · "American Football live 2019"
Never Meantstudio
Never Meant (remastered)studio
American Football (LP3)album
search_youtube · "American Football live 2019"
Full set · live festival recordingvideo
Radio session, acousticvideo
Fan upload · soundboard audiovideo
Honest chrome: YouTube results come back as links. They open on YouTube, not in the player. The player only plays Apple Music.
This is one of the four tools that work with no Apple connection at all — it runs on our key, gated only by your subscription.
08 · Playbackstart_station · play · playback_control · now_playing

Put it on. It doesn't stop.

A play cues a list and ends. A station never ends — when the queue runs low the tab asks for the next batch, seeded by what is playing right now, so it drifts with the music instead of looping a static seed. Anything already heard this session is excluded, so it keeps moving forward.

The next batch comes from Last.fm's similar-tracks for the current song, resolved back to real Apple catalog ids. Apple's own recommendations are the fallback when the track is too obscure for Last.fm.

Station · late-night driveself-extending
1Duster — Inside Out
2Hovvdy — Runner
3MJ Lenderman — Wristwatch
4Wednesday — Chosen to Deserve
5Alex G — Runner
6Slow Pulp — Falling Apart
7American Football — Never Meant
8Owen — Bad Blood
9Mineral — Gloria
10Braid — A Dozen Roses
queue running low → refillPOST /api/console/station/next
runs while the Music tab is open — that is a real constraint, not a footnote we hid.

Two answers, and we tell you which one you're getting.

play and start_station check whether your Music tab is actually alive — a 180-second freshness window — before they answer. Open, and the AI drives the player. Closed, and they hand back tap-to-play links into your own Apple Music app, which is where background audio and lock-screen controls actually work. now_playing uses the same window and marks its answer stale past it.

tab:
tab open · in-tab player
Never Meant
American Football
◀◀❚❚▶▶
accent sampled from the album art
tab closed · the fallback
tap-to-play link
Opens the native Apple Music app. Background audio, lock-screen transport, your own subscription.
play · start_station → urls
We are not trying to be your player. We are trying to be the thing that knows what to put on.
09 · Your own AI21 tools · one endpoint · no install

21 tools. One endpoint. No install.

Sign in once and your account gets a single MCP connection that covers Music and every other Parsons app. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor. Tool calls are free and uncapped — driving Music from your own AI all day costs nothing beyond the subscription.

what's playing?
“Never Meant” by American Football, 1:42 in.
now_playing
pause that
Paused in your Music tab.
playback_control
what's in my Road Trip playlist?
31 tracks — heavy on Duster, Hovvdy and Alex G.
get_playlist
who's playing near me in September?
Two, both inside 100 miles. American Football on the 24th at 81 mi.
find_concerts
drop the digest to 50 miles
Radius set to 50 mi. Next send is Friday, 9am PT.
digest_settings
one connection · minted for you at sign-in covers Music and every other Parsons app — not a Music-only endpoint
Get yours →
Claude/ChatGPT/Cursor

The DIY Apple Music MCP servers on GitHub run locally — Python, AppleScript, the desktop Music app, a config file per client. This one is hosted. It works from your phone, and it does concerts, releases, the digest, off-catalog search and Last.fm discovery, which none of them do.

recently_playedfavoritessearch_catalogrecommendations listening_profilenew_releasesfind_concertssimilar_artists similar_trackssearch_youtubecreate_playlistadd_to_playlist list_playlistsget_playlistplaystart_station playback_controlnow_playingdigest_settingsconnect_apple disconnect_apple
21
product tools
uncapped
tool calls, always
180s
tab freshness window
240/240s
request rate limit
10 · Your libraryread and write — and what Apple won't allow

It can read your playlists, not just write them.

Most Apple Music integrations only build. Music also reads: ask what's in a playlist, what you've had on repeat, what Apple is recommending you and why. Then say “make me one like that, but calmer.”

Playlists are created in your own library, up to 100 songs at a time, and appended the same way. They are yours, in Apple Music, on every device you already use.

list_playlists → get_playlistyour library
Road Trip31 tracks
Late night drive48 tracks
Emo revival, sorted22 tracks
Sunday morning64 tracks
create_playlist · up to 100 songs add_to_playlist · append 100 more
What Apple's API does not allow — so neither do we
×Delete a playlist
×Remove a track from a playlist
×Reorder a playlist

Music can create and append. It cannot clean up. That limit is written into the tool description your AI reads, so it will tell you the same thing rather than pretending and failing. We would rather lose the sentence than the trust.

Reading side: recently_played, favorites (Apple's heavy rotation), recommendations grouped by reason, and listening_profile — a compact taste summary your AI can fetch before it searches the web, so the answer reflects what you actually listen to.

11 · Your connectionone tap to connect · one click to revoke

What we hold, and how you take it back.

Connecting Apple Music gives us one thing: a Music User Token scoped to your own account. Here is its whole life.

01
Music User Token
issued by Apple, in your browser
02
Verified before it is kept
checked against /me/storefront
03
AES-GCM encrypted at rest
never stored in the clear
04
Disconnect deletes it
disconnect_apple · one click
Delete your Parsons account and Music's /internal/purge endpoint is called by the platform's deletion orchestrator — the token, your home base, your digest history and your seen-list all go with it.
reversible, because the real one is reversible.
Not US-only. Your storefront is read from your own Apple account and used for every catalog call: United StatesUnited KingdomCanadaAustraliaGermany FranceJapanMexicoSpainItalyNetherlandsSweden
12 · Honest comparisonthe two losses animate in first

Where we win — and the two places we lose.

A table that only flatters us reads as a lie, so the losses go at the top.

Parsons MusicBandsintownSongkickApple Music ConcertsSpotify Live Events
Small independent & club-only nights We lose here. Ticketmaster Discovery only — if it isn't ticketed there, we don't see it. Much broader catalogueStrong on the indie circuit Bandsintown dataVaries by market
Native mobile app We lose here. None, and none planned. Web app plus your AI client. iOS + AndroidiOS + Android Built into Apple MusicBuilt into Spotify
What triggers an alert Artists you play — weighted heavy rotation + recents Artists you followArtists you track Artists you followRanked “just for you” subset
Email frequency One Friday send, deduped against every prior email, suppressed entirely on a quiet week Frequent, all-or-nothing settingsPer-artist alerts Push, per artistIn-app + weekly playlist
Radius control 50 / 100 / 200 / 300 mi chips, 5–500 from the tool, auto-widens to 350 and says so Pick citiesPick a metro Not user-controllableNot user-controllable
Point it at another city Yes — a control in the app and a tool argument Add the cityAdd the city NoNo
Drive it from your own AI 21 MCP tools, hosted, free and uncapped NoNoNoNo
Off-catalog search (live cuts, DJ sets) Yes — YouTube Data API v3 NoNoNoNo
Streaming service Apple Music only. Not Spotify. Not SoundCloud. SeveralSeveralApple MusicSpotify
Price $15/mo — we'd rather charge you than sell you, and the free columns here are funded by ads and affiliate ticket links. The same $15 opens every other Parsons product, in unlimited projects, with no per-seat charge. Free, ad/affiliate fundedFree Included with Apple MusicIncluded with Spotify
Apple Music only. Spotify and SoundCloud limit their APIs to apps far bigger than this one — we'd rather say so than promise a date we can't keep. There are no “coming soon” sources. Sonos is parked: the control-partner application was never approved.
13 · Pricingmonthly or yearly · no free tier · 14-day trial

One subscription. And Music is the smallest part of it.

The subscription is access to the whole platform, not to one app — and it is the same access whether you pay by the month or by the year. Here is what the line item actually looks like.

Parsons Base$15.00 / mo
Music — digest, 21 tools, player$0.00
Journal · Money · Fitness · Tracker$0.00
CRM · Domains · Storage · Email$0.00
Database · Deploy · Scheduler · Notifications$0.00
Auth — unlimited monthly active users$0.00
Projects — as many as you want$0.00
MCP tool calls — uncapped$0.00
TOTAL$15.00 / mo

every line stamps in — the total never moves. paid yearly it is $150.00 — the same receipt, two months off.

Monthly or yearly, your pick. $15/mo or $150/yr. Yearly is twelve months for the price of ten — two months free against $180, and you can check the arithmetic. Still no per-seat pricing, no enterprise tier and no free tier. The 14-day free trial is a real Stripe Checkout subscription, so it collects a card to start; cancel any time before it ends and you are not charged. First subscription only.
Access is the subscription. Consumption is separate and prepaid. AI chat inside the app draws on your AI wallet at provider cost × 1.5, with your own spend cap. Going past any other included allowance works the same way — it draws from prepaid credits at roughly cost-and-a-half, so building stays free and the bill starts when real usage does. That is why the $15 is access and nothing else — not a loss-leader with a metered bill hiding behind it.
No look-around mode, and we say so. Without an active subscription the front door returns a paywall and every one of the 21 MCP tools refuses. The trial is the look around.
Base
$15 / mo
or $150 / yr — two months free
  • All of Music — the Friday digest, all 21 tools, the in-tab player
  • Nothing in Music is metered. No cap on shows searched, releases checked, stations started or playlists built
  • Every other Parsons app included on the same subscription
  • Unlimited projects, each with its own data, members and spend caps
Uncapped, always: MCP tool calls, Auth monthly active users, apps deployed, databases created. No plan row exists for them because they are not cost drivers. We metered them and then left them alone.
14 · The objectionanswered with mechanism, not adjectives

Fifteen dollars buys one app nearly everywhere else.

So the honest question isn't whether there's a catch — it's whether it's worth it. Three checkable reasons the same $15 buys the whole catalogue here instead of one row of it.

One app's price. The whole catalogue.

A single specialist subscription lands in exactly this range — Copilot $13/mo for budgeting alone, Cronometer Gold $10.99/mo for a food log, Linear $8 a seat for issues. Per app we don't undercut them, and won't claim to. The difference: this $15 isn't one app — it is Music, Money, Fitness, Journal, Tracker, CRM and the whole platform underneath them, on one account and one bill.

one account · one bill · one login

One platform, not 22 apps

Music is a single edge worker sharing the same auth, billing, notifications and MCP hub as everything else. There is no per-app infrastructure, no per-app ops team and no per-app margin to fund.

one edge worker
shared auth · billing · notifications · MCP hub

The expensive part is metered separately

The things that genuinely cost money per use — AI tokens, voice minutes, phone numbers, domains — are prepaid, capped by you, and never ride the subscription. The $15 lane stays flat because it was never carrying them: nothing to true up, and no metered surprise at the end of the month.

access · flat$15.00
consumption · prepaid, cappedyou decide

Unlimited projects. No extra cost.

One for your life, one for the band, one for the label. Each project has its own data, its own members and its own spend caps — and none of them costs a cent more. Most software bills you per workspace, or per seat, or both, for exactly this shape. We charge once, for the account, and the second project is the same $15 as the first.

Personal · your rotationThe band · sharedSide project+ $0.00 each
15 · Honest answersthe questions everyone asks first

The questions everyone asks first.

“Apple Music already shows me concerts now.”
True, and we won't pretend otherwise. But it keys off artists you follow, and its coverage comes from a source that only carries artists who claimed an account there. We key off what you play, pull from Ticketmaster Discovery with performer verification and real per-result mileage, let you set the radius, widen it when it's thin, and point it at any city you're travelling to. Different input, different source, different failure mode.
“Another app that's going to spam me.”
One email, Friday, 9am PT. Deduped against everything already sent, and suppressed entirely on a quiet week. Radius and on/off are controls in the app and a tool your AI can call — digest_settings. There is also a “Send me one now” button, so you can see the whole chain work in five seconds instead of waiting until Friday.
“Do I need an Apple Music subscription?”
Yes. Music reads your own library and plays from your own subscription. Spotify and SoundCloud are not supported and are not coming — their APIs are gated to apps far larger than this one. Sonos is parked; the control-partner application was never approved.
“Is there a free plan?”
No. 14-day free trial, then $15/mo — or $150/yr, and Checkout takes a card to start the trial — we'd rather say that than surprise you. Cancel any time before day 14 and nothing is charged. The trial is first-subscription only. Without an active subscription the front door and every MCP tool refuse; there is no look-around mode.
“Is there an annual plan?”
Yes. $150/yr — twelve months for the price of ten, so two months free against the $180 you'd pay by the month. Pick the interval in Checkout; the allowances and every app you get are identical either way.
“Where does the music actually play?”
In the browser tab while it's open — a real MusicKit player with cover art, transport and scrub. Tab closed, and every track comes back as a tap-to-play link into your own Apple Music app, which is where background audio and lock-screen controls work. play and start_station check a 180-second freshness window and tell your AI which mode they answered in; now_playing marks its answer stale past the same window.
“Can it clean up my playlists?”
No. Apple's API lets us create playlists and add to them; it cannot delete a playlist, remove a track or reorder one. That limit is written into the tool description your AI reads, so it will decline rather than pretend.
“Does the AI cost extra?”
Driving Music from your own Claude or ChatGPT is free and uncapped — MCP tool calls have no plan allowance because they aren't a cost driver. Chat inside the app draws on your AI wallet at provider cost × 1.5, prepaid, under a spend cap you set.
“What happens to my Apple token?”
Verified against Apple before it's kept, AES-GCM encrypted at rest, revocable in one click with disconnect_apple, and fully purged when you delete your account — the platform's deletion orchestrator calls Music's own erasure endpoint.
“Is it US-only?”
No. Your Apple storefront is read from your own account and used for every catalog call — United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden all render by name.
“What if I only ever use it from Claude?”
Most of it works. But connect Apple Music and open Shows once in the web app — that visit is what saves your home base for “near me,” and the digest needs both. Skip it and find_concerts will tell you so rather than silently returning nothing.

Last call.

Connect Apple Music, open the app once so it knows where you are, and the next time a new date near you turns up for a band you actually play, you'll know that Friday.

Parsons Musicthis week
nothing new — so nothing sent.

14-day free trial · cancel any time · $15/mo — or $150 a year, two months free