New artist name field on our API

A while ago we made an improvement to how track and artist information is displayed on SoundCloud, making it clearer and easier to understand.

Previously, it could be confusing when content wasn’t directly uploaded by the artist. One example might be tracks that are coming in as official label content. Another one would be artists collaborating.

This often lead to long track titles containing artist names, that were difficult to read on mobile devices. With our changes we cleaned those titles up. Now underneath the track we show the correct artist instead of the profile name.

For user uploaded content, we now display the information that users give us in the ‘artist’ metadata field during upload. If they leave this field blank, we will display their profile name.

Now this field is, finally, also availabe on our API.

Look out for metadata_artist

{
    "title": "Creepin'",
..
    "user": {
        "username": "Metro Boomin",
..
    },
..
    "metadata_artist": "Metro Boomin, The Weeknd, 21 Savage"
}