Apple Music: Use MusicKit for the Web to Authorise Media Tokens

[dmccaffery]

Today, one must use a browser to acquire a media token from a cookie that expires after a few days in order to authorise (and continue to authorise) the Apple Music provider. Apple has a web-based (JavaScript) API to integrate with Apple Music, including support for user authorisation.

https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v3/docs/index.html?path=/docs/introduction--page

It should be possible to integrate this API to authorise directly from the music assistant UI.

[dmccaffery]

More specifically, the user authorization API is here:

https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v3/docs/index.html?path=/docs/user-authorization--page#user-authorization

[MarvinSchenkel]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have already looked into this and I am not sure if we can get this to work in MA. MA uses python as a backend language, so automatic reauthentication of an expired token will be hard.

We might be able to use this as an alternative of the cookie method, but that would mean that we would have to integrate the musickit with our frontend. I am no front-end expert, so looping in @marcelveldt to judge if this could work.

[maxlyth]

There is a draft PR that should work on all web platforms including mobile.

To manage expectations: Apple Music does not not issue a renewable token so the authentication workflow has to be repeated on expiry. The lifetime is not documented but I believe it is 6 months. Sadly the token and workflow is proprietary, not OAuth but the framework does store re-auth helper data in browser local storage. This local data is not documented so until tokens start expiring for users it is really hard to predict how clean the user experience will be.

Also because it is browser localstorage it is tied to the url you use to access MA. Not ideal if you are using MA in HA with different internal/external hostnames.

Without a time machine this is hard to test. Anyone with insider knowledge, I am on Discord

[townsmcp]

I wonder if this is how Sonos do their Apple Music implementation?