I use the Apple Music API to poll my listening history at regular intervals.
Every morning between 5:30AM and 7:30AM, I observe a strange pattern in the API responses. During this window, one or more of the regular polling intervals returns a response that differs significantly from the prior history response, even though I had no listening activity at that time.
I'm using this endpoint: https://api.music.apple.com/v1/me/recent/played/tracks?types=songs,library-songs&include[library-songs]=catalog&include[songs]=albums,artists
Here’s a concrete example from this morning:
Time: 5:45AM Fetch 1 Tracks (subset): 1799261990, 1739657416, 1786317143, 1784288789, 1743250261, 1738681804, 1789325498, 1743036755, ...
Time: 5:50AM Fetch 2 Tracks (subset): 1799261990, 1739657416, 1786317143, 1623924746, 1635185172, 1574004238, 1198763630, 1621299055, ...
Time: 5:55AM Fetch 3 Tracks (subset): 1799261990, 1739657416, 1786317143, 1784288789, 1743250261, 1738681804, 1789325498, 1743036755, ...
At 5:50, a materially different history is returned, then it returns back to the prior history at the next poll. I've listened to all of the tracks in each set, but the 5:50 history drops some tracks and returns some from further back in history.
I've connected other accounts and the behavior is consistent and repeatable every day across them. It appears the API is temporarily returning a different (possibly outdated or cached?) view of the user's history during that early morning window.
Has anyone seen this behavior before?
Is this a known issue with the Apple Music API or MusicKit backend? I'd love any insights into what might cause this, or recommendations on how to work around it.