Suddenly stopping at 29 seconds

[Tepartive-Studios]

For some reason all tracks from all the endpoints I can find started stopping at 29 seconds, which didn't happen at all beforehand, and when I checked the API release notes there's nothing new, so I don't know what changed, and I didn't get an Email about a change either, so this was rather unexpected.
This happens for all tracks even ones uploaded by the signed in user

My question here is what changed and how do I fix this?

[m4nR3is]

We’re seeing the same issue.

All streaming endpoints that previously returned full tracks now consistently stop at ~29–30 seconds, across all tracks (including those owned by the authenticated user). This started very recently and without any documented API change.
From what we can tell, unauthenticated requests now silently fall back to preview_mp3_128, which explains the hard stop. This aligns with the recent internal changes around authenticated HLS streaming discussed in #441.
Can you please confirm:
• whether full-length playback now strictly requires an authenticated user context, and
• which streaming endpoints are officially supported going forward?

A short clarification would really help, as this change breaks existing integrations.

Thanks.

[dpreussler]

@Tepartive-Studios We announced in September that we will stop supporting Opus and Mp3 : #441
As part of that we asked everyone to move to /streams endpoint for those still using the undocumented old /stream endpoint.
As /stream cant be migrated to return a different format (AAC) we decided to expose snippets (MP3) so functionality only break partially for our partners. This endpoint is end of life!

@m4nR3is
Please refer to our Swagger doc: https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/explorer/
The only official streaming endpoint is /streams and has been for the last 5y
Indeed that urls returned now required authentication which was not documented in the past.
This should be either a token from client-flow (for anonymous or server side use cases)
https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/guide#client-creds
or or a user token if in user context (this is the preferred way)
https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/guide#auth-code

[dpreussler]

note: mp3 is still available as key at the /streams
mp3 will disappear there next 🙏
opus was already removed.

[dpreussler]

keeping this open for reference for a bit, in case other's run into this

[jasongrishkoff]

I see the MP3 endpoint is still available in the /streams response. Is that going away soon as well?

[alexweinstein]

Do I understand this correctly, that the /tracks endpoint no longer returns a usable stream URL?

{
 "kind": "track",
  "id": XXXXXXXXXX,
  "urn": "soundcloud:tracks:XXXXXXXXXX”,
  "streamable": true,
  "stream_url": "https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/soundcloud:tracks: XXXXXXXXXX/stream?secret_token=X-XXXXXXXXXX/stream”
}

/tracks returns a stream_url with /stream rather than /streams. Is this correct? So in order to use /streams have to build the url manually?

[dpreussler]

good callout.
We'll have to deprecate that field.

If it helps we can expose the /streams but you would still need to choose the transcoding to play
We'll discuss internally if its worth exposing a new direct stream url with AAC.
Your feedback is welcome, lets us know what's best.

You can definitely build it yourself:
/tracks/<track_urn/streams or
/tracks/<track_urn/streams?secret_token=XXXX for private tracks
as defined here: https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/explorer/#/tracks/get_tracks__track_urn__streams

[jasongrishkoff]

@dpreussler not sure if you saw my question about mp3s. Is that the field you were saying you'd deprecate, or were you responding to the other comment?

I just ask because I rolled out the AAC/HLS endpoints, only to realize that a number of my users were having issues with playback on Firefox. Looks like they don't natively support HLS. Is the MP3 endpoint going to stick around, or should I work on implementing a polyfill for those users?

[dpreussler]

@jasongrishkoff missed your messages
yes we're doing step by step approach here but that mp3 endpoint will be go away

[dpreussler]

Also feel free to send details on HLS issues on Firefox

[jasongrishkoff]

Firefox doesn't support HLS natively, so I've had to use hls.js: https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js
Got it done smoothly though, should work fine once it goes to production!