My app has been using the iTunes Search API (itunes.apple.com/search) for a few years now, but at some point over the last week or so (late Sept. 2025) it is no longer returning track results with explicit content, regardless of whether I provide "explicit=Yes" (which is the default anyway, according to the API documentation - https://performance-partners.apple.com/search-api). Has anyone else experienced this with this API and have you figured out a workaround? FYI, I do also use the more robust Apple Music API in another part of my app, which isn't going through this issue, so I know it's technically an alternative. I just need to stick with iTunes Search API in this particular case. Thanks.

Heyy, I'm building a music tracking app that logs a user's Apple Music plays to build a personal weekly chart. The core mechanic depends on accurately counting how many times a user plays each track. My current implementation uses MPMusicPlayerController.systemMusicPlayer with beginGeneratingPlaybackNotifications() and observes MPMusicPlayerControllerNowPlayingItemDidChange. This works well when the app is in the foreground or recently backgrounded, but notifications stop firing once iOS suspends the app. To get around this I've implemented: applicationDidBecomeActive - restarts the monitor and logs the currently playing track on every foreground Background fetch (performFetchWithCompletionHandler) - periodically wakes the app to log what's playing. This gives some coverage but misses plays that happen between background fetch intervals or when the user hasn't opened the app in a while. The result is an inaccurate play count which undermines the core feature. My questions: Is there a supported entitlement or capability that would allow an app to receive MPMusicPlayerController playback notifications while suspended? Is MusicKit or MediaPlayer the recommended framework for this use case, or is there a better API I'm not aware of? Are there any supported background modes that would keep playback notification delivery alive without requiring the app to be a full audio player? I've looked at MusicRecentlyPlayedRequest but it only returns the last 25 items with no play counts, so it can't tell me a track was played 10 times vs once. Any guidance on the right approach here would be really appreciated.

Hello everyone, I'm working on a project where having the BPM or tempo for a song is a business requirement. I can't seem to find this data on the Song object in the Apple Music API. Is this information available via the API and I'm just not finding it in the documentation? If it isn't available, how would I go about requesting it to be added? Thanks!

My MusicKit developer token returns 401 (empty body) on every Apple Music API catalog endpoint. I've tried two different keys — both fail identically. Setup: Team ID: K79RSBVM9G Key ID: URNQV5UDGB (MusicKit enabled, associated with Media ID media.audio.explore.musickit) Apple Developer Program License Agreement accepted April 14, 2026 Token format (matches docs exactly): Header: {"alg":"ES256","kid":"URNQV5UDGB"} Payload: {"iss":"K79RSBVM9G","iat":,"exp":<now+15777000>} What works: /v1/storefronts/us returns 200 What fails: Every catalog endpoint returns 401 with empty body: /v1/catalog/us/search?types=artists&term=test /v1/catalog/us/artists/5920832 /v1/catalog/us/genres /v1/test The token self-verifies (signature is valid). I've tried with and without typ:"JWT", with the origin claim, and with a manually signed JWT bypassing the jsonwebtoken library. Same 401 every time. What am I missing?

Hi everyone, I wonder if I can get apple music replay monthly data for my personal project? just mine. Just want to show it on my personal website

Hi, So I want to use Apple Music API to get the top musics from Apple music. My question would be: Can I place ads between 2 apple music? Use case: User can listen 30 sec previews which I got from the API (link and stuff included of course). Then he/she swipes (like on tiktok) and see a banner or video ad. Then he/she swipe to the next 30 sec preview. (The ad itself is skippable, so it's not necessary to stay just to listen the music) Is this valid, or I shouldn't use ads this way?

I am trying to create keys for my personal project with MusicKit and other resources, but MusicKit specifically for now. I want to gather my recent music history and log the time in my system to measure with my other life data to do analysis on. I have created an Identifier with an appropriate Description and Bundle ID and have MusicKit checked in AppServices. I have saved and reset cash and waited all day and the keys have still not update and show "There are no identifiers available that can be associated with the key" in this field. Please help!

I'm using MusicKit for DRM track playback in my iOS app and a third party library to play local user-owned music on the file system and from the music library. This app is also supporting accessory devices that offer Bluetooth remote media control. The wish is to achieve parity between how the remote interacts with user owned music and the DRM / cloud / Apple Music tracks in my application music player. Track navigation, app volume (rather than system volume), and scrubbing need to work consistently on a mix of tracks which could alternate DRM and cloud status within one album or playlist. Apple Music queue and track pickers are not useful tools in my app. How can I support playing DRM and Apple Music tracks while not surrendering the remote control features to the system?

I'm trying to enable Music Kit for my key however I keep seeing this message "There are no identifiers available that can be associated with the key" even though my identifier has music kit enabled. Can someone help out with this?

Hello everyone, I’m reaching out from the music publishing side and would appreciate guidance from developers or anyone familiar with TestFlight governance. We’ve identified an app that has been distributed via TestFlight for an extended period (regular renewals, updates, and new TestFlight builds). The app’s core functionality involves publishing copyrighted musical works (sheet music), without authorization from the authors or rightsholders. We have attempted to contact the developer using the contact details available through the TestFlight listing and associated project information. To date, we have received no response, and the TestFlight distribution continues. From our perspective, the developer appears to rely on TestFlight to keep the app off the App Store, where standard copyright enforcement mechanisms would normally apply. My questions are: Does Apple consider long-term, continuously renewed TestFlight distribution to be a form of public distribution? Is there a mechanism within the Apple ecosystem to address repeated copyright infringement occurring specifically via TestFlight? From a developer-policy perspective, how does Apple Inc. typically handle cases where TestFlight is used to bypass compliance obligations rather than for genuine beta testing? I’m not looking for legal advice here — just insight into how Apple and the developer community view and handle this type of situation. Thanks in advance for any guidance or experience you can share.

I’m calling the Apple Music API server-to-server using a developer token (ES256) created under my Developer account. Storefront probe succeeds: GET /v1/storefronts/us -> HTTP 200 All catalog endpoints return 500 (search, artists, charts) across multiple storefronts: GET /v1/catalog/us/search?term=rema&types=artists&limit=1 -> HTTP 500 GET /v1/catalog/us/artists/1359441424 -> HTTP 500 GET /v1/catalog/us/charts?types=songs&chart=most-played&genre=0&limit=5 -> HTTP 500 GET /v1/catalog/gb/... same results (500) I created the Media Services key ~48–72 hours ago. Media Services is enabled and associated with my Media ID. Developer token uses alg ES256, kid=<KEY_ID>, iss=<TEAM_ID>, exp ~6 months. Clock is NTP-synced. Sample request (curl) and recent response headers: curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer " "https://api.music.apple.com/v1/catalog/us/search?term=rema&types=artists&limit=1" Response (truncated): HTTP/2 500 x-apple-jingle-correlation-key: NBZFUP7RVJBZOWVPIBVGUFMBLI x-apple-application-site: st x-daiquiri-instance: daiquiri:42282005:st53p00it-... Date: 2025-10-13T16:54:22Z This occurs consistently from different networks and with different storefronts. The same token returns 200 for /v1/storefronts/us. Please advise or route to engineering. Happy to provide full JWT header/payload (minus signature) and full response logs.

I’ve been using Apple Music API for quite a while now and a recent change must have happened which is quite disruptive. On many occasions, artists release singles from an album as part of promoting this album. For recent examples, Harry Styles released “Aperture” (a single) to promote his upcoming album “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally“. Similarly, Bruno Mars released “I Just Might”, a single from the upcoming album “The Romantic”. Previously, those would return at the endpoint ”artists/{artist_id}/albums” with a “- Single” suffix. But it seems a recent change happens where they only appear as playable tracks inside the album. This behavior is also evident in the Apple Music app itself. Those singles no longer appear under “Singles & EPs”. Instead, they would only be visible if the single becomes popular enough to be shown on “Top Songs“. Otherwise one would have to know to tap on the (future) album to discover if there are released singles. Meanwhile Spotify’s API returns those as singles properly, just like Apple Music API used to. This change must be recent but the question is if it’s intentional, and if so, how can the API be used from here on out to “extract” those singles and represent them?

Hello, I am wondering how one can play music videos (with the actual video playing) with the ApplicationMusicPlayer using MusicKit for Swift? There is not much documentation on this, so any help would be appreciated.

I’m trying to build a playlist editor on macOS. I can create playlists via the Apple Music HTTP API, but DELETE always returns 401 even immediately after creation with the same tokens. Minimal repro: #!/usr/bin/env bash set -euo pipefail BASE_URL="https://api.music.apple.com/v1" PLAYLIST_NAME="${PLAYLIST_NAME:-blah}" : "${APPLE_MUSIC_DEV_TOKEN:?}" : "${APPLE_MUSIC_USER_TOKEN:?}" create_body="$(mktemp)" delete_body="$(mktemp)" trap 'rm -f "$create_body" "$delete_body"' EXIT curl -sS --compressed -o "$create_body" -w "Create status: %{http_code}\n" \ -X POST "${BASE_URL}/me/library/playlists" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APPLE_MUSIC_DEV_TOKEN}" \ -H "Music-User-Token: ${APPLE_MUSIC_USER_TOKEN}" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d "{\"attributes\":{\"name\":\"${PLAYLIST_NAME}\"}}" playlist_id="$(python3 - "$create_body" <<'PY' import json, sys with open(sys.argv[1], "r", encoding="utf-8") as f: data = json.load(f) print(data["data"][0]["id"]) PY )" curl -sS --compressed -o "$delete_body" -w "Delete status: %{http_code}\n" \ -X DELETE "${BASE_URL}/me/library/playlists/${playlist_id}" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APPLE_MUSIC_DEV_TOKEN}" \ -H "Music-User-Token: ${APPLE_MUSIC_USER_TOKEN}" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" I capture the response bodies like this: cat "$create_body" cat "$delete_body" Result: Create: 201 Delete: 401 I also checked the latest macOS SDK’s MusicKit interfaces and MusicLibrary.createPlaylist/edit/add(to:) are marked @available(macOS, unavailable), so I can’t create/ delete via MusicKit on macOS either. Question: How can I implement a playlist editor on macOS (create/delete/modify) if: MusicKit write APIs are unavailable on macOS, and The HTTP API can create but DELETE returns 401? Any guidance or official workaround would be hugely appreciated.

Has anyone seen this issue? We have a user who changed their Apple ID password about 5 days ago. Now when they authenticate via MusicKit JS: authorize() succeeds and returns a user token Immediately calling any /me/ endpoint returns 403 "Invalid authentication" (code 40300) Developer token works fine on catalog endpoints User has active Apple Music subscription Other users work fine through the same flow App doesn't appear in user's "Apps Using Your Apple ID" We've tried: Calling unauthorize() before authorize() Clearing localStorage/sessionStorage/cookies Multiple re-auth attempts over several days The token is freshly issued but Apple's API immediately rejects it. Anyone encountered this after a password change? Any workarounds?

Hi all, I've been working on some personal programming projects and have gotten into using the Apple Music API. I'm currently looking to get a list of recent songs using the /v1/me/recent/played/tracks endpoint and it's working well. However, I know there are some songs I've listened to multiple times in a row, and those are not showing up as unique tracks when querying this endpoint. I'm only seeing a list of the different songs I've listened to lately, not a true list of the most recent plays on my account. Is this intended behavior or am I going about something incorrectly here? My query is using that endpoint & specifying the types to be only [songs]. Thanks in advance for any ideas or insight.

Hi team, In the Apple Music Feed datasets, we've noticed some unexpected values in the song and album tables. The primaryartists column from either song or album may contain a "non-default" artist name such as the katakana name shown in the example below: select id, name, namedefault, primaryartists from amf_song where id = '1698723329' id | name | namedefault | primaryartists ---------------------------------------- 1698723329 | {default=California} | California | [{id=1264818718, name=チャペル・ローン}] select * from amf_artist where id = '1264818718' id | name | namedefault | namepronunciation | ---------------------------------------------- 1264818718 | {default=Chappell Roan, ja=チャペル・ローン} | Chappell Roan | {ja=チャペルローン} | Shouldn't the primaryartists column be showing the namedefault instead of the Japanese language version? When can we expect this bug to resolved? Thanks,

I am developing a SWIFITUI app that transfers playlists between Apple Music and Spotify but I am not directly create my requests to those companies APIs. I have my own backend. But when fetching users playlists due to "https://api.music.apple.com/v1/me/library/playlists" the response is 403 all the time. I tried many ways including creating new DevToken and UserToken when user login and sending those tokens in headers with Authorization and Music-User-Token. What else can be the problem? Note: My team ids in Xcode and apple developer portal seems different. Maybe this is the problem.

Hi there, I recently launched a dj app to the mac app store, and was wondering how I could access songs for mixing purposes via Apple Music just like how serato, rekordbox, djay, and other DJ apps do? Thanks, Gunek

Hi everyone, We’re currently developing a music-based app using MusicKit, and we recently noticed that iOS 26 beta introduces a new “Automix” feature in the Apple Music app. This enables seamless DJ-style transitions between songs—beyond the standard crossfade functionality. We’re trying to understand: Will this Automix feature be accessible to third-party apps that use MusicKit? If not available in the initial iOS 26 release, is there a plan to expose it through public APIs in a future update? Is there any technical documentation, WWDC session, or roadmap info regarding Automix support via MusicKit? This functionality would be a significant enhancement for our app, especially for intelligent audio transitions and curated playlists. Thanks.