Does the public user API endpoint now require user authentication?

[natalix]

I am currently building a server-side application using the Spotify API. Since I don't want to interact with any private user resources, I use client credentials for authentication.

While this works for all the music data endpoints, I am having issues with fetching an user's public profile with the (/v1/users/smedjan) endpoint.

The API returns the following error:

{"error": {"status": 401, "message": "Valid user authentication required" } }

Do I need to have a Spotify user logged in using the Authorization code flow for fetching public user data?

Fetching a user's public playlists (/v1/users/smedjan/playlists) works without any issues.

What is strange is that fetching a user profile without user auth had worked before (I tested it a few days ago) and the API docs don't show any authorization scopes for the endpoint.

I would like to know if there have been any changes on Spotify's side regarding that API endpoint.

[this_is_ridiculous]

I have a web app I've been using for over a year that has been calling that API with client credentials to get a user's profile picture and display name.  On the afternoon of 10/17 it started flaking out, where it would once in a while fail to return a user profile.  Then the morning of 10/18 it started failing every time.  I wonder if Spotify is just having some issues right now with that API endpoint and hopefully they are working on a fix.

[this_is_ridiculous]

Looks like the users endpoint is behaving normally again today for me.  I am able to get responses with client auth now.  I guess they fixed the issue.