Get Artist endpoint returns different artist than requested

[nikolaspikolas]

My Question or Issue

I've noticed that certain artist IDs (ex 2uW79XE0HEkPb56HqZJnNx) exhibit a weird behavior when using the Get Artist endpoint. The request succeeds, but the returned artist has a different ID than requested. This is quite difficult to keep track of. Why would this opaque redirecting be happening?

[Ximzend]

Hi @nikolaspikolas 

Thanks for posting in the Spotify Community, and welcome!

This behaviour may occur because Spotify occasionally consolidates or updates artist profiles, redirecting old IDs to a new primary ID. This can happen due to profile merges, regional variations, or database corrections.

I hope this answers your question.

Cheers!

[Ximzend]

Additionally, you can experience the same behaviour when going to https://open.spotify.com/artist/2uW79XE0HEkPb56HqZJnNx

[nikolaspikolas]

Is there a way to tell that this redirect is happening or disable it entirely? It's easy enough to handle on the Get Artist endpoint, but is impossible on Get Multiple Artists. As far as I can tell, there's no way to reliably match the requested IDs to the returned artists.

[Ximzend]

There's no way to prevent this happening. Sadly, the only way to know a redirect has happened is not matching artist IDs.