It doesn’t appear to be working for new releases, which leads me to believe that there is an arbitrary cut off date after which UPC lookups no longer work.
For example, here’s a release from October 2021:
$ curl -s 'https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?upc=8718723185646' |jq
{
"resultCount": 1,
"results": [
{
"wrapperType": "collection",
"collectionType": "Album",
"artistId": 387969348,
"collectionId": 1589460842,
"artistName": "Various Artists",
"collectionName": "Volume 005 - EP",
"collectionCensoredName": "Volume 005 - EP",
"collectionViewUrl": "https://music.apple.com/us/album/volume-005-ep/1589460842?uo=4",
"artworkUrl60": "https://is5-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/1c/0e/84/1c0e84f1-7634-a5d9-62c2-165d4c6fdc6f/source/60x60bb.jpg",
"artworkUrl100": "https://is5-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music115/v4/1c/0e/84/1c0e84f1-7634-a5d9-62c2-165d4c6fdc6f/source/100x100bb.jpg",
"collectionExplicitness": "notExplicit",
"trackCount": 4,
"copyright": "℗ 2021 We’re Going deep",
"country": "USA",
"currency": "USD",
"releaseDate": "2021-10-08T07:00:00Z",
"primaryGenreName": "Dance"
}
]
}
Compared to a release from this month:
$ curl -s 'https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?upc=8718723192361' |jq
{
"resultCount": 0,
"results": []
}
As far as I’m aware Apple has not published any information about changes to the iTunes API, but it seems to me that it is being slowly phased out in favour of the Apple Music API (which does not support UPC lookups). This began when iTunes URLs started redirecting to Apple Music.
Actually, it may well be related to this:
Anyone know of any releases that were put out on the 24/25/26th November 2021?