Comment by bitwize

This would have been a neat story... in 2024.

Today, it's a matter of:

  $ claude
  
  ⟩ I need to know how the Hitster app maps QR codes to Spotify or Apple Music tracks.

  ⋆ Obliterating...

  Now I have the whole picture. The QR code takes you to a URL with a track ID
  and a region. The track ID/region pair carry the mapping to the song—not the
  QR code. These mappings are in a file called `gameset_database_4.json`, which
  is an AES-encrypted, base64-encoded JSON file. The load-bearing seam is the
  derivation of the key from an XOR'd pair of strings concatenated to the length
  of the base64-decoded data, minus 12 bytes for the nonce and 16 bytes for the
  authentication tag...

OP could have had this answer in 5 minutes and spent the remaining 17h 55m playing with their kids or hugging their dog or something.