BUG: Search API doesn't return SimplifiedAlbumObject items as described in docs

[JohnGemstone]

Hey so I'm using the web-api search endpoint to query for albums, but the response I get omits any information about the album's genre/label. While in the docs and example response in the endpoint playground does show these parameters.

There seems to be a mismatch here, or a bug, because if you click Try it from the endpoint playground (shown as the right panel), the live response also omits the genre and label for each album.

The type in question is SimplifiedAlbumObject

https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/search

Any help with this would be great as I need this information for my searches, otherwise I will have to query each individual album for this info!

Thanks!

JG

[Gimeyochi]

Sorry wrong topic And I couldn't find a way to delete my comment..  Good luck with your search

[JohnGemstone]

Hey just bumping this! 

As you can see the following properties are missing from the response:

[JohnGemstone]

Oh I notice that these parameters havent got a "Required" tag. Not sure what a "Required" tag would mean in the context of a response object. Any ideas how to get these properties?

EDIT: Looks as though the required tag doesnt influence other endpoints (e.g. album), these work fine.

[dee-dee-ds]

Hey,

I have encountered the same problem. The genres are available for Albums and Artists endpoints, but not for Tracks.

Would be great if someone could comment on this.

Best,

Dee

[JohnGemstone]

Yeah I just tested and yes it's the same, I think the Tracks endpoint actually uses the same "SimplifiedAlbumObject" as the Search endpoint. Any response from the Spotify peeps would be great.

Cheers!

[JohnGemstone]

Hi! Just bumping again.

This is really simple to reproduce, all you need to do is go to:
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/search

Click "try it" on the query playground and try find any of the following properties in the results:

`albums.items[0].copyrights`

`albums.items[0].external_ids`

`albums.items[0].genres`

`albums.items[0].label`

`albums.items[0].popularity`

`albums.items[0].album_group`

Can anyone take a look into this or at least update the documentation to remove these properties from the schema?

[JohnGemstone]

Hello! Just bumping again. Would appreciate a response from someone at spotify. Cheers!

[aspleenic]

We are looking into this and will update the thread when we have more information.

[JohnGemstone]

Hi @aspleenic thanks for the message, have we had any updates?

[alexantenna]

This problem affects my app quite badly - any updates?

[Morganic1]

There are no genres available for albums, only for artists.

[JohnGemstone]

Yep this is the issue, genre and label info is meant to be available for albums, see the  SimplifiedAlbumObject definition in the documentation. 

[Morganic1]

It's not a bug, it's simply not a feature that's been developed. The information simply doesn't exist yet. 

The only "bug" is that the documentation is ahead of the feature.

[JohnGemstone]

In my original message i say "There seems to be a mismatch here, or a bug".

A mismatch in the documentation or a bug on spotify's backend. 

I'm looking for confirmation of either.
Id like part of the team to confirm.

[JohnGemstone]

Hello!

For a moment I thought this was fixed, I was getting `"genres": ["Egg punk", "Noise rock"]` from the endpoint tester, but it was just the static placeholder response 🙂
Getting the genre/label for an album has a lot of uses so it would be great to get this working.

Any updates are welcome, thank you.

[JohnGemstone · Accepted solution]

Docs have now been updated to reflect the actual shape of "SimplifiedAlbumObject" which unfortunately omits label and genre.

Hopefully the devs will add genre and label to search results in the future as the only way to check would be to query individual releases, which creates unnecessary load on the service.

Thanks