diff --git a/backend/lib/ytdlp.js b/backend/lib/ytdlp.js
index ed3894d..2c5326e 100644
--- a/backend/lib/ytdlp.js
+++ b/backend/lib/ytdlp.js
@@ -64,10 +64,11 @@ async function downloadTrack({ jobId, artist, albumArtist, title, album, year, t
   }
 
   const outputTemplate = path.join(dir, `${trackPrefix}${safeTitle}.%(ext)s`);
-  // Use original artist name (with special chars) for all searches — stripping e.g. "N!GHT" → "NGHT"
-  // causes ytsearch to match "night" ambience videos instead of the artist.
-  // spawn() passes args directly without shell interpretation so special chars are safe.
-  const query = `${mainArtist} - ${title}`;
+  // Strip only Unicode symbol chars (☆ ★ ♥ etc.) for ytsearch — YouTube search chokes on them
+  // and returns 0 results. Keep ASCII punctuation (!&-) so e.g. "N!GHT" stays "N!GHT" rather
+  // than collapsing to "NGHT" which YouTube misreads as the word "night".
+  const searchArtist = mainArtist.replace(/\p{S}/gu, '').trim();
+  const query = `${searchArtist} - ${title}`;
 
   const baseArgs = [
     '--extract-audio',