Issue with API Usage for Managing a Large Spotify Account

[aummusic]

Plan:
Premium

Device:
PC

Operating System:
Windows 10

My Question or Issue:
I’m encountering an issue with the Spotify API while managing my account, where I follow over 2,400 artists. My project involves running a weekly script to check all these artists for new releases over the past week. This script has been functioning well for the past six months, but recently, I’ve encountered a recurring problem.

After fetching data for a few hundred artists—sometimes 200, 300, or even 600—the script suddenly stops and returns a 403 error. This issue is particularly puzzling because the script can still make some requests, but it stops prematurely, preventing me from completing my task.

Steps I’ve Taken:

1. Spacing out requests by adding delays to avoid rate limiting.
2. Implementing retry logic to handle 403 errors, including waiting longer between retries.
3. Ensuring requests are always authenticated with a valid token.
4. Switching API keys from other applications in my dashboard.
5. Changing network environment by switching to a different network.

Despite these efforts, the issue persists. I’m seeking guidance on how to resolve this problem and avoid similar issues in the future.

[blackarcanis]

Hi!

We had the same issue for a couple of days only and also for a smaller "follow" list. There seems to be a global outage on this endpoint 😕

Wait and see for a fix...

[glenn_mcdonald]

I'm seeing this, too. Maybe it's a rate-limit issue being mis-returned as 403 instead of 429? If I treat it like a 429 and do a retry with exponential backoff (try^2 seconds), I can get through my entire list of 5554 followed artists. Doing this just now I got 31 403s along the way, but in only one case did it take more than 1 retry to get a given page successfully.

[shlkm]

Oh wow, glad to know I'm not alone here. I've been using the Spotify API for over 5 years now, usually 429s are returned as 429s. Here's the thread I posted at the developer forums:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/v1-me-following-getting-403s-all-of-a-sudden...

[shlkm]

I doubt it's the case. I've never gotten a 429 on this endpoint specifically, and for all of its pitfalls - the Spotify API usually *does* tell when you're doing too many requests with a proper status code.

[glenn_mcdonald]

Except for this other recent issue where it does give 429s, but doesn't include the Retry-After header:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/Error-429-retry-after-missing/m-p/6234182#M1...

Might be unrelated. But both things just started happening, so...

[SI0810]

I have same issue. I follow close to 1000 artists and my app, which was able to get all the followed artists a week ago with pagination, now receives 403 errors. When I turned off pagination and just request 50 followed artists, the app works fine. I initially thought it could be related to rate limit but error is 403 not 429. Appreciate any insight on this issue.