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Optimizing API usage

Optimizing API usage and avoiding invalid artist calls - This article explains how to keep your integration efficient and within our usage expectations

Updated this week

Overview

Some API users run background jobs or batch processes that query the Bandsintown Events API for large lists of artists. If these jobs are not tuned, they can generate a high volume of 404 responses and unnecessary traffic. This article explains how to keep your integration efficient and within our usage expectations.

Typical symptoms

In our monitoring, problematic integrations usually show:

  • Large, regular traffic spikes that look like scheduled jobs, not user activity

  • High volumes of requests to /artists/{artist} or /artists/{artist}/events returning 404

  • Many different artist values requested only a few times each and never resolving to a valid Bandsintown artist

When this happens repeatedly, we may reach out and share a CSV sample of recent invalid requests for your engineering team.

Common root causes

Excess 404 traffic often comes from:

  • Batch jobs running over very large internal artist lists, including artists that do not have a Bandsintown profile

  • Free text being passed as {artist} (for example, video titles, channels, playlists, or labels instead of the canonical artist name)

  • Repeated calls for the same unknown artist without caching the “not found” result

  • Experimental or noisy data sources used directly as {artist} without validation

What we expect from API users

To help keep the Events API stable and responsive, we expect API users to:

  • Query Bandsintown only for artists that are actually surfaced or tracked in their product

  • Avoid broad sweeps over the full internal artist catalog

  • Minimize repeated 404 calls for the same invalid artist identifiers

  • Use stable identifiers when possible

If an integration continues to generate noisy traffic, we may apply stricter rate limits or temporarily suspend the API key until the implementation is adjusted.

Recommended implementation patterns

1. Scope batch jobs to active artists

  • Restrict background jobs to artists that are currently active in your product, for example:

    • Artists with recent activity or plays

    • Artists followed or saved by users

    • Artists with pages or dashboards visible in your UI

  • Avoid nightly jobs that loop over the full historic artist database.

2. Validate and clean artist identifiers

When calling /artists/{artist} or /artists/{artist}/events:

  • Pass the canonical artist name or a confirmed Bandsintown id_ value when possible

  • Do not send:

    • Video titles

    • Show or TV program names

    • Channel or playlist names

    • Extra qualifiers such as “Official”, “Live”, “Stage”, “Kinetic Manifesto Film”, etc.

  • Normalize URL encoded strings to UTF-8 on your side so they can be cleaned correctly before calling the API.

3. Cache 404 responses

  • If an artist lookup returns 404, store that result with a timestamp.

  • Avoid calling the API again for the same invalid identifier for a reasonable period (for example, 24 hours or more).

  • If you later confirm that the artist exists on Bandsintown, update or clear the cache entry.

4. Store confirmed Bandsintown IDs

  • When an artist resolves successfully, store the Bandsintown identifier you used (canonical name or id_ value).

  • Reuse this identifier in future calls instead of re-deriving it from noisy source data each time.

Monitoring and troubleshooting

If we contact you about noisy traffic, we will usually provide:

  • A CSV sample of recent 404 requests for your API key

  • A short description of the traffic pattern observed in our monitoring tools

How your team can use this:

  • Group invalid requests by artist to identify the most frequent problematic values

  • Check which data source or process produced those values

  • Update parsing, filtering, and caching logic to reduce or remove those calls

After deploying changes, you can:

  • Monitor your own 404 rate for /artists/{artist} and /artists/{artist}/events

  • Ask your Bandsintown contact to re-check our monitoring and confirm the improvements

When to contact Bandsintown

Please contact your Bandsintown point of contact if:

  • You plan to change your batch strategy or significantly expand your usage

  • You need clarification on acceptable usage patterns for your specific use case

  • You want a quick confirmation that your updated implementation looks healthy on our side

Keeping these points in mind will help your integration stay fast, efficient, and reliable.

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