How MTShare Works: A Technical Deep Dive

Creating a universal music link sounds simple: take a song from one platform and find it on others. In practice, it's a fascinating technical challenge involving metadata parsing, fuzzy matching, and API orchestration.

The Challenge

Each music streaming platform has its own database, its own way of organizing music, and its own quirks. The same song might be titled differently, have different artist credits, or be part of different albums across platforms.

Step 1: URL Parsing

When you share a link to MTShare (via the mobile app or web), we first need to understand what platform it's from and extract the track identifier.

Each platform has its own URL structure. We use pattern matching to identify the platform and extract the relevant IDs. Some platforms (like Apple Music) encode multiple pieces of information in the URL.

Step 2: Metadata Retrieval

Once we know the platform and track ID, we fetch the song's metadata using that platform's API. The key fields we extract are:

• •Title - The song name
• •Artist(s) - Primary and featured artists
• •Album - The album or single name
• •Album Art - Cover image URL

Step 3: Cross-Platform Search

With the metadata in hand, we search for the song on other platforms. We query all platforms simultaneously using parallel requests for speed.

Step 4: Link Generation

Once we have matches across platforms, we generate a short, unique code for the universal link. This code maps to a database record containing:

{
  "short_code": "tUBizh8",
  "title": "Don't Start Now",
  "artist": "Dua Lipa",
  "album": "Future Nostalgia",
  "album_art_url": "https://...",
  "platforms": {
    "spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/track/...",
    "apple_music": "https://music.apple.com/...",
    "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...",
    "amazon_music": "https://music.amazon.com/..."
  },
  "created_at": "2026-01-19T12:00:00Z"
}

The Landing Page Experience

When someone clicks a universal link, they see a landing page with:

• •Album artwork and song information
• •Buttons for each available platform
• •Links to lyrics (via Genius integration)
• •Social sharing options

Handling Edge Cases

Real-world music data is messy. Here are some challenges we handle:

Performance

Creating a universal link involves multiple API calls to different platforms. To keep things fast:

• ⚡Parallel requests - We query all platforms simultaneously rather than sequentially using async/await.
• 💾Caching - Previously created links are cached to avoid repeated API calls.

Currently Supported Platforms

MTShare currently supports these platforms for both input (parsing links) and output (finding matches):

• ✓Spotify
• ✓Apple Music
• ✓YouTube (music videos)
• ✓Amazon Music

Coming soon: Deezer, Tidal, SoundCloud, YouTube Music

Conclusion

What seems like a simple feature - "find this song on other platforms" - involves a surprising amount of complexity. From URL parsing to fuzzy matching to handling edge cases, there's a lot happening behind that simple universal link.

We're constantly improving our matching algorithms and adding support for more platforms. If you ever notice a mismatch or missing platform, let us know - your feedback helps us get better.