Manifest decoding has suddenly broken

[blacklight]

This is something that literally happened in the past couple of hours - playback was working fine until 2-3 hours ago:

INFO     2026-01-15 17:06:26,971 [1036280:TidalBackend-12] mopidy_tidal.playback
  TIDAL uri: tidal:track:3509189:1381853:1381859
ERROR    2026-01-15 17:06:27,274 [1036280:Core-14] mopidy.core.playback
  TidalBackend backend caused an exception.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/tidalapi/media.py", line 770, in from_mpd
    return DashInfo(mpd_manifest)
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/tidalapi/media.py", line 775, in __init__
    mpd = MPEGDASHParser.parse(
        mpd_xml.split("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>")[1]
    )
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/parser.py", line 26, in parse
    return parse_child_nodes(xml_root_node, 'MPD', MPEGDASH)[0]
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/utils.py", line 25, in parse_child_nodes
    node.parse(elem)
    ~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/nodes.py", line 782, in parse
    self.periods = parse_child_nodes(xmlnode, 'Period', Period)
                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/utils.py", line 25, in parse_child_nodes
    node.parse(elem)
    ~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/nodes.py", line 718, in parse
    self.adaptation_sets = parse_child_nodes(xmlnode, 'AdaptationSet', AdaptationSet)
                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/utils.py", line 25, in parse_child_nodes
    node.parse(elem)
    ~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/nodes.py", line 602, in parse
    self.group = parse_attr_value(xmlnode, 'group', int)
                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mpegdash/utils.py", line 47, in parse_attr_value
    return value_type(attr_val)
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'main'
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mopidy/core/playback.py", line 352, in _change
    if not backend.playback.change_track(pending_tl_track.track).get():
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pykka/_threading.py", line 80, in get
    raise exc_value
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pykka/_actor.py", line 260, in _actor_loop_running
    response = self._handle_receive(envelope.message)
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pykka/_actor.py", line 377, in _handle_receive
    return callee(*message.args, **message.kwargs)
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mopidy/backend.py", line 331, in change_track
    uri = self.translate_uri(track.uri)
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mopidy_tidal/login_hack.py", line 306, in wrapper
    return fn(obj, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/mopidy_tidal/playback.py", line 41, in translate_uri
    manifest = stream.get_stream_manifest()
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/tidalapi/media.py", line 606, in get_stream_manifest
    return StreamManifest(self)
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/tidalapi/media.py", line 644, in __init__
    self.dash_info = DashInfo.from_mpd(stream.get_manifest_data())
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/blacklight/.local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/tidalapi/media.py", line 772, in from_mpd
    raise ManifestDecodeError
tidalapi.exceptions.ManifestDecodeError
WARNING  2026-01-15 17:06:27,277 [1036280:Core-14] mopidy.core.tracklist
  Track is not playable: tidal:track:3509189:1381853:1381859

I can start taking a look if it's something new - just wanted to double check if this is also broken for other users.

[ChrisIossa]

I can start taking a look if it's something new - just wanted to double check if this is also broken for other users.

I am also experiencing this issue, via Mopidy-Tidal, and can also confirm that it came on suddenly. Playback worked around 13:30 UTC and I first noticed it was broken around 16:00 UTC

[blacklight]

Ok I've found the root cause. It was quite a ride because python-tidal swallows all media manifest errors, so I had to manually place breakpoints around to understand what was going on. This should be amended here.

The main fix has been applied to mopidy-tidal instead: EbbLabs/mopidy-tidal#216

Long story short, the TIDAL API has started sending non-numeric group IDs (like main) in the media manifest inside the MPD wrapper.

That breaks mpegdash, because it expects groups to be numeric.

IMHO this is quite a big fluke on the TIDAL side. The MPEG-DASH (ISO/IEC 23009-1) specification says (page 32) that AdaptationSet@group should be numeric, so mpegdash is right to expect it to be numeric.

So the "fix" consists in simply skipping the MPD manifest parsing, since mopidy-tidal simply writes it to disk and passes it to the playback layer anyway.

TL;DR

Temporarily fix while the PRs are reviewed:

pip install -U "git+https://github.com/blacklight/python-tidal.git@fix/updated-handling-of-media-manifest#egg=Mopidy-Tidal"
# Optional but advised, to ensure that any further manifest errors
# are easy to debug
pip install -U "git+https://github.com/blacklight/python-tidal.git@396/handle-manifest-decode-errors#egg=tidalapi"

(cc @tehkillerbee)

[tehkillerbee]

Oh dear... Good detective work!

For now the only real solution is to avoid using the MPD manifest parsing. For mopidy-tidal this is no problem of course. But for other 3rdparty libraries relying on tidalapi, this will be an issue.

[blacklight]

@tehkillerbee

For mopidy-tidal this is no problem of course. But for other 3rdparty libraries relying on tidalapi, this will be an issue.

Yesterday I almost thought of opening a PR on mpegdash to be a bit more liberal on how AdaptationSet@group is parsed (it currently does a direct int() because it expects it to always be a number). Perhaps even printing a warning rather than failing hard.

But of course I'd expect some push back along the lines of "the MPEG-DASH specification has been around for more than two decaes, we won't change our implementation just because some creative dev at Tidal decided to break it".