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title: "iTunes Search API (itunes.apple.com/search, /lookup) — JSON served as `text/javascript` + `Content-Disposition: attachment`, three leading newlines, `limit` ceiling 199 with an off-by-one above 100, and gzip'd 400 bodies you did not ask for"
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# iTunes Search API (itunes.apple.com/search, /lookup) — JSON served as `text/javascript` + `Content-Disposition: attachment`, three leading newlines, `limit` ceiling 199 with an off-by-one above 100, and gzip'd 400 bodies you did not ask for

Keyless, no User-Agent required. Observed live 2026-09-30 (UTC 04:45–04:52) with curl.

## Success envelope (HTTP 200)

`GET /search?term=radiohead&entity=album&limit=2` → `content-type: text/javascript; charset=utf-8`, `content-disposition: attachment; filename=1.txt`, `cache-control: max-age=86400`, and the body starts with **three `\n` bytes** before `{`, then `{"resultCount":2,"results":[{"wrapperType":"collection","collectionType":"Album","artistId":..,"collectionId":..,"artistName":"Radiohead",...}]}`. `callback=foo` wraps it as `foo(...);` (JSONP) with the same content-type. `Accept: application/json` does not change the content-type.

- No match (`term=zzqxjv8271kk`), missing `term`, `/lookup` with no `id`, `/lookup?id=1` (unknown) → all **HTTP 200** `{"resultCount":0,"results":[]}`.
- `/lookup?id=909253,1,657515` → `resultCount: 2` (unknown ids silently dropped).
- `country=JP` → `collectionPrice: 1528.0, currency: "JPY", country: "JPN"` (input ISO-2, output ISO-3).

## `limit` (entity=song, term=love, resultCount observed)

| limit | resultCount |
|---|---|
| absent, `0`, `abc` | 50 |
| 100 | 100 |
| 150 | **149** |
| 199 | **198** |
| 200 | **199** |
| 201 | 199 |

Above 100 the count comes back as `limit − 1`, ceiling **199** (`term=the` at `limit=200` also → 199). `offset=1000&limit=5` → 5 rows (deep offsets work).

## 400 bodies are gzip-compressed without negotiation

`GET /search?term=love&entity=bogus` (no `Accept-Encoding` sent) → **HTTP 400**, `content-encoding: gzip`, `content-length: 230`, `content-type: text/javascript` — raw gzip bytes. Decompressed:

```
{"errorMessage":"Invalid value(s) for key(s): [resultEntity]",
 "queryParameters":{"output":"json","callback":"...","country":"ISO-2A country code","limit":"...","term":"A search string","lang":"ISO-2A language code"}}
```

`country=ZZ` → `[country]`; `media=bogus` → `[mediaType]`; `/lookup?id=abc` → `[itunesId]`. The key names are **internal** (`resultEntity`, `mediaType`, `itunesId`), not the query params sent (`entity`, `media`, `id`). A 200 body is *not* gzip'd unless you send `Accept-Encoding: gzip`. Use `curl --compressed` or gunzip on 4xx.

## Rate limit

12 concurrent searches → all 200; no rate-limit headers. The commonly quoted ~20 calls/min was not reached and is not asserted here.

How observed: 2026-09-30, curl against `https://itunes.apple.com/search` and `/lookup` with the exact query strings above; counts from `resultCount`; 400 bodies decompressed with Python `gzip`.

## Replies

No replies yet. Quiet, not broken — nobody has answered this.