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Ratings and Explicitness

Ratings and explicit metadata are how we help you ensure that your music content strategy is both on brand and audience-appropriate. These two fields are distinct, but related by the same goal. Explicitness is classified based on the presence of specific words in lyrics, and Rating is generally determined by larger themes in the lyrics. We strongly recommend that you surface this metadata in your browsing and playback UX to prevent exposing your users to inappropriate content.

Ratings​

The Feed.fm ratings system is a MPAA-style rating scale that offers a more detailed level of classification based on words and themes (ie. sex, drugs, and/or violence) that you might be used to seeing in movies. Our curation team categorizes Collections with a rating of G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17. Here's how it breaks down:

  • G: For everyone: family-friendly, everyday language, no explicit themes.
  • PG: Parental guidance is suggested. Censored PG-13/R songs allowed; may contain mild violence and sex, no drugs; damn, hell or crap allowed.
  • PG-13: Parents strongly suggested. Censored R songs allowed; some strong language, violence, sexual content or drug use.
  • R: Adult required under 17. Censored NC-17 songs allowed; strong profanity, intense violence, graphic sexual content or strong drug use.
  • NC-17: No one under 17. Censored R songs allowed; may include excessive violence, graphic sexual content, aberrational behavior, and drug abuse.

Rating is returned as metadata in the response for /collection and /collections requests.

"success": true,
    "data": {
        "collectionId": 217,
        "collectionName": "Collection Name",
        "description": "Quippy Description",
        "publishedOn": "2025-08-11T21:01:51.000Z",
        "rating": "PG-13",
        "explicit": true,
        "clips": [...]
    }

Explicitness Metadata​

Explicitness is metadata that we receive directly from rights holders, which indicates whether or not a song contains profane lyrics, or if profanity has been edited out of a song. We store and provide to customers via the Feed Clips API as clean, explicit, censored, or unknown.

Explicitness metadata is served in the explicitness property of the /collections, /collection, /music-fetch, and /track-fetch endpoints.

The explicitness property is returned as part of the metadata for tracks, clips. At the collection level, we provide a boolean explicit property -- this will be true if there is at least one explicit song included in the Collection, otherwise will return false. These values can be used by clients to display to end users during the browsing or playback experience.

How Explicitness Appears in API Responses​

Here's how the explicitness property is structured in the response payloads for the mentioned endpoints.

/music-fetch​

explicitness property in the response with values: explicit, censored, clean, or unknown.

{
    "success": true,
    "data": [
        {
            "success": true,
            "data": {
                "preSignedUrl": "https://clippresignedurl",
                "artworkPreSignedUrl": "https://artworkpresignedurl",
                "expiresAt": "2025-11-26T01:12:04.717Z",
                "title": "Song Title",
                "artist": "Artist Name",
                "release": "Album Name",
                "bitrate": 128,
                "encoding": "mp3",
                "isrc": "ABC12345678",
                "explicitness": "clean"
            }
        }
    ]
}

/track-fetch​

explicitness property in the response with values: explicit, censored, clean, or unknown.

{
    "success": true,
    "data": {
        "trackUrl": "https://trackurl",
        "expiresAt": "2025-11-26T17:19:30.520Z",
        "title": "Song Title",
        "artist": "Artist Name",
        "release": "Album Name",
        "artworkPreSignedUrl": "https://artworkpresignedurl",
        "isrc": "ABC12345678",
        "feedAudioFileId": 1234567,
        "explicitness": "censored",
        "curatedClip": {
            "startMs": 16891,
            "stopMs": 57615,
            "id": 611754
        }
    }
}

/collections​

  1. A top level boolean explicitness property. Will return true if there is at least one explicit song included in the Collection, otherwise will return false.
  2. An explicitness property in the "clips" object with possible values of explicit, censored, clean, or unknown.
"success": true,
    "data": {
        "collectionId": 217,
        "collectionName": "Collection Name",
        "description": "Quippy Description",
        "publishedOn": "2025-08-11T21:01:51.000Z",
        "rating": "PG-13",
        "explicit": true,
        "clips": [
            {
                "clipId": 630727,
                "trackId": 255995,
                "artworkPreSignedUrl": "https://artworkpresignedurl",
                "title": "Song Title",
                "artist": "Artist Name",
                "album": "Album Name",
                "duration": 40724,
                "preSignedUrl": "https://curatedc",
                "preSignedUrlExpires": "2025-11-26T08:48:04.000Z",
                "encoding": "mp3",
                "bitrate": 128,
                "createDate": "2025-10-21T16:15:57.000Z",
                "isrc": "ABC12345678",
                "explicitness": "explicit"
            },

/collection​

Same as /collections, outlined above.