MusicKit UPCs changing and handling that

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Created Sep ’24

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I use Universal Product Codes (UPC) in my app to reliably identify albums after having used albumIDs for a time. AlbumIDs can change over time for no obvious reasons (see here for songIDs) so I switched to UPCs since I believed they cannot change. Well apparently they can.

A few days ago I populated a JSON with UPCs including 196871067713. Today trying to perform a MusicCatalogResourchRequest for the UPC does not return anything. When using that UPC and putting it into an Apple Music link like https://music.apple.com/de/album/folge-89-im-geistergarten/1683337782?l=en-GB redirects to https://music.apple.com/de/album/folge-89-im-geistergarten/1683337782?l=en-GB so I assume the UPC has changed from 196871067713 to 1683337782.

Apple Music can handle that and redirects to the new upc both in the app and as a website.

But a MusicCatalogResourceRequest cannot do that. I filed a suggestion for that (FB15167146) but I need a solution quicker. Can I somehow detect where the URL is redirecting to? Is there a way MusicCatalogResourceRequest can do this? Performing a MusicCatalogSearchRequest can be an option but seems unreliable when using the title as search term. Other ideas?

Thank you

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milesegan OP

1w

I'd like to hear what the recommended approach is here too. I've discovered that the id for an album is not a reliable handle for an Album because it can be different on two different devices even if referencing the same Album in the library. But a user's library might contain content they've added themselves so UPC also doesn't seem like a real solution.

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