How to Cite a Song or Album in MLA & APA | Spotify, CD & Vinyl

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated July 7, 2026

Music citations fail on details print sources never raise. Is the author the performer, the band, or the composer? Does the song title take quotation marks or italics? Do you name Spotify — and does the answer change between styles? (It does: MLA italicizes the platform as a container; APA says not to mention it at all for anything you could stream elsewhere.) Even the official guidance is scattered: the MLA Style Center’s song posts date from 2017 and now carry an eighth-edition banner, while the current Handbook prints a Spotify example most guides never quote. This page gives the MLA-9-current and APA 7 answers, one real song formatted in all seven styles, and the official punctuation detail nearly everyone gets wrong.

The shortest answer: in MLA, the performer is the author, the song title goes in quotation marks, the album is the italicized container, then the label and year: Beatles. “Revolution 1.” The Beatles, EMI Records, 1968. CD. Streaming adds the platform as a second container — Spotify, plus the URL — with a period, not a comma, after the album title. In-text, cite the first element: (Beatles). APA writes the title in sentence case with a [Song] label and skips the platform and URL entirely for anything on a major service.

What counts as a song or album

For citation purposes, a song is one recorded track and an album is one release — streamed, downloaded, on CD, or on vinyl. The formats on this page cover both, and the same patterns handle an EP or a standalone single.

Some music sources are better cited as something else:

• An official music video, live session, or visualizer on YouTube is a YouTube video: the container is YouTube, not the album.
• A song inside a film or TV episode — a needle drop, a musical number — cites as the movie or episode, with a timestamp pointing at the scene.
• Music heard on a podcast, or an episode discussing a song, is a podcast.
• Lyrics you read as text — on Genius, in liner notes, in a songbook — cite as the thing you read, not the recording. MLA has a specific transcribed-lyrics format, covered under edge cases below.
• A live concert you attended is a performance in MLA, cited with venue, city, and date rather than label and platform.

If you pressed play on a recording, this page applies.

Information to collect before you cite

Open the album page on your streaming service, or pick up the physical sleeve, and copy:

• Performer or band, as credited on the release. For classical music, APA puts the composer here instead, with performers in a bracketed description.
• Song title and album title, exactly as released — including edition designations like (Deluxe) or (Taylor’s Version), which are part of the title.
• Record label or labels. On Spotify or Apple Music, scroll to the copyright line at the bottom of the album page. Collaborations sometimes carry two labels; APA joins them with semicolons.
• Year of the release you used. A re-recorded or remastered release takes its own year, not the original’s.
• Format or platform. For physical media, the format (CD, vinyl EP); for streaming, the platform name and — for MLA — the canonical URL from the share button (an open.spotify.com link, not an app deep link).
• A timestamp, if you plan to quote a lyric in APA.
• Access date — Harvard, Vancouver, IEEE, and AMA want one for streamed audio; MLA and APA do not.

The generator at / extracts the artist, track, album, label, and year from a pasted streaming URL and formats all seven styles at once.

One song, formatted in all seven styles

The song below is the one the MLA Style Center uses in its own lyrics-citation guidance, so the MLA row is authoritative rather than constructed — reproduced with the official punctuation, which is not what most people expect.

The source: “Perfect Illusion,” recorded by Lady Gaga for the album Joanne (Deluxe), Interscope Records, 2016. Streamed on the Spotify website at https://open.spotify.com/album/2ZUwFxlWo0gwTsvZ6L4Meh. Accessed July 4, 2026.

Two decisions split the styles. The first is where the platform goes. MLA treats Spotify as a second container: italicized, followed by the URL without https:// — or, if you listened in the app, the final element Spotify app. APA goes the opposite way: no platform name and no URL for music on major services, because the reference should be platform-agnostic — APA adds a URL only when that location is the only means of retrieval. Chicago is permissive: CMOS 18 (section 14.163) says the streaming service or file format may be noted if relevant but is not required, and recordings often go in a separate discography rather than the bibliography. Harvard follows Cite Them Right, the de facto authority for streamed music, with a URL and access date. IEEE’s official reference guide has no dedicated music-recording example and AMA 11 has no music template either — those rows, like Vancouver’s, are adapted from each style’s general online-media rules, which is why they carry access dates.

The second is how the titles are styled. MLA and Chicago put the track in quotation marks and the album in italics. APA sets the track in plain sentence case — no quotation marks, no italics — adds the bracketed designator [Song], then “On” plus the italicized album title.

And one detail worth staring at: in MLA’s official streaming examples, a period, not a comma, follows the album title — Joanne (Deluxe). Interscope Records, 2016. — because the platform opens a second container. Compare the CD and vinyl entries in the MLA section below, where the label follows the album after a comma, inside a single container.

The in-text citation for the same source:

• MLA: (Lady Gaga) — the first element of the entry, no page numbers
• APA: (Lady Gaga, 2016) or narrative Lady Gaga (2016); quoting a lyric, add a timestamp: (Lady Gaga, 2016, 0:45)
• Chicago author–date: (Lady Gaga 2016) — no comma between author and year
• Harvard: (Lady Gaga, 2016)
• Vancouver, AMA: (1) or superscript ¹
• IEEE: [1]

How to cite a song or album in MLA

The MLA 9 works-cited template for a track:

Performer or Band. “Title of Song.” Title of Album, Record Label, Year.

What fills the last slots depends on how you listened.

On CD or vinyl. Name the physical format in the optional-element slot at the end. MLA’s official examples:

Snail Mail. “Thinning.” Habit, Sister Polygon Records, 2016. Vinyl EP.

Beatles. “Revolution 1.” The Beatles, EMI Records, 1968. CD.

Note “Beatles,” not “The Beatles” — MLA’s examples drop the initial article from the band name, matching how the entry alphabetizes.

On a streaming service. The platform becomes a second container. If you used the website, give the platform’s name in italics and the song’s URL; if you used the app, end with the app’s name as a supplemental element:

Lady Gaga. “Perfect Illusion.” Joanne (Deluxe). Interscope Records, 2016. Spotify, open.spotify.com/album/2ZUwFxlWo0gwTsvZ6L4Meh.

Lady Gaga. “Perfect Illusion.” Joanne (Deluxe). Interscope Records, 2016. Spotify app.

Both are verbatim from the MLA Style Center, and both show the period after the album title. The MLA Handbook’s ninth edition prints the same pattern for a single with no album — label, year, then the app:

Lopez, Jennifer. “Vivir mi vida.” Sony Music Latin, 2017. Spotify app.

A whole album. Italicize the title; no quotation marks anywhere:

Swift, Taylor. Midnights. Republic Records, 2022.

The in-text citation is whatever begins the entry, with no page number: (Snail Mail), (Lady Gaga), (Swift). Quoting lyrics changes nothing — MLA has no line-number requirement for songs.

How to cite a song or album in APA

The APA 7 reference template, from Section 10.13 of the Publication Manual:

Artist, A. A. (Year). Title of song [Song]. On Title of album. Label.

The official example, verbatim from APA’s Common Reference Examples Guide:

Nirvana. (1991). Smells like teen spirit [Song]. On Nevermind. DGC.

The rules behind it: the recording artist is the author (the composer, for classical works); the song title is sentence case, not italicized, with the bracketed description [Song]; the album title is italic sentence case after “On”; the label closes the entry. No Spotify, no Apple Music, no URL — APA includes a URL only if that location is the only means of retrieval, such as a track that lives solely on SoundCloud or an artist’s own website.

A collaboration. Join the artists with an ampersand, and multiple labels with semicolons:

Coldplay & BTS. (2021). My universe [Song]. On Music of the spheres. Parlophone; Atlantic.

A single with no album. Omit the “On” element entirely and end with the label.

A whole album. The template is Artist, A. A. (Year). Title of album [Album]. Label. APA’s official example:

BTS. (2014). Dark & wild [Album]. BigHit Entertainment; LOEN Entertainment; Pony Canyon.

In-text: parenthetical (Nirvana, 1991) or narrative Nirvana (1991). Quoting a lyric, APA (Section 8.28) replaces the page number with a timestamp for where the quoted line begins: (Nirvana, 1991, 0:37).

Edge cases

A featured artist. In APA, put the featured artist in parentheses after the main artist, preceded by “featuring”: BTS (featuring Megan Thee Stallion). (2021). Butter (Remix) [Song]. BigHit Music. True collaborators, by contrast, are joined with an ampersand — Coldplay & BTS — and their labels with semicolons. Chicago-aligned discographies put the guest after the track title: “Umbrella,” featuring Jay-Z, track 1 on Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad, Island Def Jam, 2007, Spotify. In MLA, open the entry with the lead artist as the release lists them, and name the guest in your prose if the feature matters to your argument.

A remix, remaster, or cover. APA puts the version in parentheses after the title, before the brackets: My universe (Remix) [Song]. A remaster works the same way with (Remastered). A cover is its own recording in every style — the cover artist is the author and the cover’s release year is the date.

Classical music. APA moves the composer into the author slot and credits the performers in a bracketed description of the form [Album recorded by …]. A reissue of an older recording ends with (Original work published YYYY), and the in-text citation pairs both years: (Composer, YYYY/YYYY).

Re-recordings and “(Taylor’s Version).” Cite the release you actually listened to. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is a 2021 recording, not a 2008 one, and the parenthetical is part of the album title, not a note you add. The same goes for deluxe and anniversary editions: the edition name stays in the title, and the year is that edition’s.

Lyrics you read as text. If your source is a lyrics page rather than the recording, cite the page. MLA’s official format for transcribed lyrics:

Beatles. Lyrics to “Revolution 1.” Genius, 2017, genius.com/The-beatles-revolution-i-lyrics.

Working the quoted line into your sentence follows the same mechanics as any quotation.

Platforms that no longer exist. Music citation guidance ages badly. MLA’s own song posts date from October 2017 and carry an eighth-edition disclaimer; one still says “iTunes,” which no longer exists as a music store app on modern devices — write Apple Music for the app you actually used. Older guides circulate play.spotify.com URLs (dead; the canonical host is open.spotify.com) and Google Play Music examples (shut down in 2020). Cite the platform as it exists today, and click your URL before you submit.

Cite the recording you actually played — its performer as credited, its release year, its label — and mention the platform only when your style asks for it. Everything else in song citation is machinery for that one commitment.

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