[SOLVED] Apple Music API getting 403 'Forbidden' when trying to fetch recent tracks

Apple Music API getting 403 'Forbidden' when trying to fetch recent tracks

Hey there people of the great world!

I am attempting to retrieve all the recent tracks from the Apple Music API using the following HTTP request: static let AMRecentTracks = "https://api.music.apple.com/v1/me/recent/played/tracks"

Shamefully I keep receiving an error 403 forbidden. This makes no sense as I am able to successfully do a search request using this: static let AMMusicURL = "https://api.music.apple.com/v1/catalog/"

Any help would be greatly appreciated. It seems there is little information about this specific case. I've checked.

I am making the request with a Bearer and a token. static let prefix = "Bearer " to it I am appending the developer token.

Below is my code:

func fetchRecentPlayedResources(_ complition: @escaping (Result<[Song], Error>)->Void) {
    let suffix = "?types=songs"
    
    guard let searchURL     = URL(string: Request.AMRecentTracks + suffix) else { return }
    var musicRequest        = URLRequest(url: searchURL)
    musicRequest.httpMethod = HTTPRequest.GET
    musicRequest.addValue(HTTPRequest.prefix + self.developerToken, forHTTPHeaderField: HTTPRequest.authorization)
    
    
    URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: musicRequest) { [weak self] (data, response, error) in
        guard let self = self else { return }
        if let error = error {
            complition(.failure(error))
        } else {
            if let data = data {
                self.parseSongs(with: data) { songs in
                    complition(.success(songs))
                }
            }
        }
    }.resume()
}

Solution

You need to add two tokens when sending personalised requests, the example from the iTunes API documentation shows this:

curl -v -H 'Music-User-Token: [music user token]' -H 'Authorization: Bearer [developer token]' "https://api.music.apple.com/v1/catalog/us/songs/203709340"

So maybe just adding the developer token as Authorisation isn't enough and this is why you are getting a 403 error. Again, as the documentation states - this is due to invalid or insufficient authorisation.