diff --git a/Arrs_Stack/playback_aware_lidarr_discovery.sh b/Arrs_Stack/playback_aware_lidarr_discovery.sh
index b3fe62a..32d4073 100755
--- a/Arrs_Stack/playback_aware_lidarr_discovery.sh
+++ b/Arrs_Stack/playback_aware_lidarr_discovery.sh
@@ -529,8 +529,25 @@ EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES=$(echo "$EMBY_LIBRARY_JSON" | jq -r '.Items[] | .AlbumArtists[
 EMBY_ARTIST_COUNT=$(echo "$EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES" | grep -c . 2>/dev/null || echo 0)
 log "$EMBY_ARTIST_COUNT album artists in Emby library"
 
-_in_lidarr()      { echo "$LIDARR_NAMES"     | grep -iq "^${1}$"; }
-_in_emby_library(){ [[ -n "$EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES" ]] && echo "$EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES" | grep -iq "^${1}$"; }
+# MusicBrainz's canonical name for some artists (e.g. "blink‐182") uses a Unicode
+# hyphen/dash rather than plain ASCII "-". Last.fm's candidate names are plain ASCII,
+# so an exact-string match against Lidarr/Emby's names silently misses these artists
+# every time — they never register as "already known" and get retried (and rejected
+# as duplicates) on every future run. Normalize both sides before comparing.
+_normalize_dashes() {
+    local n="$1"
+    n="${n//‐/-}"  # U+2010 HYPHEN
+    n="${n//‑/-}"  # U+2011 NON-BREAKING HYPHEN
+    n="${n//‒/-}"  # U+2012 FIGURE DASH
+    n="${n//–/-}"  # U+2013 EN DASH
+    n="${n//—/-}"  # U+2014 EM DASH
+    echo "$n"
+}
+LIDARR_NAMES=$(_normalize_dashes "$LIDARR_NAMES")
+EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES=$(_normalize_dashes "$EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES")
+
+_in_lidarr()      { echo "$LIDARR_NAMES"     | grep -iq "^$(_normalize_dashes "$1")$"; }
+_in_emby_library(){ [[ -n "$EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES" ]] && echo "$EMBY_ARTIST_NAMES" | grep -iq "^$(_normalize_dashes "$1")$"; }
 
 # ==============================================================================================
 # ━━━ Score Stage 2 Candidates ━━━