Cannot retrieve certain public tracks via SoundCloud API calls (403)

Question

Some tracks in my playlist are not being returned when accessed via the SoundCloud API.

For example, here are two tracks in my playlist:

1. http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/169170570?client_id=CLIENT_ID
2. http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/251027701?client_id=CLIENT_ID

The URL for track 1 returns a JSON object and also appears properly in my /playlists request. However, track 2 gives me a 403 in the URL above and is not present in my /playlists request.

Why is this happening? As far as I can tell, track 2 is a public track and should be accessible. The interesting thing is I can still stream track 2 by adding /stream to the end of the URL:

http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/251027701/stream?client_id=CLIENT_ID

What's going on here?

Answer 1

It's most likely that the artist has blocked API access to this track.

SoundCloud has introduced an option for right holders to disable all API access to tracks by default, returning this 403 error when requested

From: SoundCloud API URLs timing out and then returning error 403 on about 50% of tracks