How to retrieve all song details from large Spotify playlists using Python when hitting 100 track limit

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1

I’m working with Python to fetch data from Spotify’s web API. My goal is to extract track details like title, performer, and album from my personal playlists.

Everything works fine for playlists under 100 songs, but I’m stuck with larger collections because the API only returns 100 tracks per request.

I found that the endpoint /playlists/{playlist_id}/tracks accepts an offset parameter. My understanding is that setting offset=100 should give me tracks 101-200, then offset=200 for tracks 201-300, and so on.

However, when I try this approach, every request keeps returning the same initial 100 tracks regardless of the offset value I use. It seems like the parameter isn’t working as expected.

Has anyone encountered this issue before? What am I missing here?

2

This sounds like the same issue I hit last year. The offset parameter works, but there are some gotchas the docs don’t mention. First, use the same access token for all requests in your pagination loop - if it refreshes between calls, you’ll get weird results. Second, double-check you’re actually updating the offset in your request URL, not just the variable. I once screwed this up by concatenating the offset wrong - super embarrassing. Also, tracks can get removed from large playlists between API calls, which breaks pagination. Try logging your actual request URLs to make sure the offset’s being applied right.