Spotify's lack of third-party clients is really what killed the service for me. Their client is just so user-hostile, shoving offers and podcasts and audiobooks and recommended payola songs in my...
Spotify's lack of third-party clients is really what killed the service for me. Their client is just so user-hostile, shoving offers and podcasts and audiobooks and recommended payola songs in my face, I couldn't stand to keep using it. Apple Music sets a better precedent for third-party clients.
Seems like they're clamping down on their API to make it strictly a tool for learning and not for building alternative clients for Spotify with. I can kind of understand where they're coming from.
Seems like they're clamping down on their API to make it strictly a tool for learning and not for building alternative clients for Spotify with. I can kind of understand where they're coming from.
If that's the goal, it's ill-advised in my opinion. Their strategy with APIs and libraries has been that way for a long time, though. It started the better part of a decade ago when they...
If that's the goal, it's ill-advised in my opinion. Their strategy with APIs and libraries has been that way for a long time, though.
It started the better part of a decade ago when they deprecated libspotify, which was essentially the core of the Spotify desktop/mobile native clients spun out into a C library and did everything, including streaming and playback. Upon deprecation they promised to follow up with new functionally equivalent APIs and SDKs, but that never happened.
Hostility towards third party clients is stupid strategically, in my eyes. By deprecating libspotify and paring their APIs down to uselessness, they destroyed an entire ecosystem of "bonus" functionality that Spotify subscribers gained, since the library/SDKs/APIs only functioned fully with an authentication of paying subscribers. It totally kills a whole range of legitimate uses and force feeds whatever harebrained UI ideas, incessant A/B testing, and irrelevant content the official client pushes, increasing the likelihood that the user will jump ship for some other service.
It also completely yields any control they had of third party clients. These days the things that used to be built on the official libspotify are now instead built on the reverse-engineered librespot, which as far as Spotify's servers are concerned are indistinguishable from a legitimate official client and cannot be stopped.
Somewhat comically, even Apple is less controlling in this regard. Multiple third-party Apple Music clients built on Apple's official libraries have existed for multiple years at this point and Apple has done nothing to inhibit their function or development.
Yeah I'm not saying I agree with their decision to restrict their APIs this way, just that I can understand that they want to control their platform more tightly and so these APIs had to be...
Yeah I'm not saying I agree with their decision to restrict their APIs this way, just that I can understand that they want to control their platform more tightly and so these APIs had to be restricted as well. I definitely agree with you that hostility towards third party clients isn't the smartest, Reddit's own hostility is what brought me to Tildes to begin with.
So interestingly, Spotify has reached out to librespot and have threatened to shut it down due to the conversations about incorporating lossless playback. The conversations that were occurring...
These days the things that used to be built on the official libspotify are now instead built on the reverse-engineered librespot, which as far as Spotify's servers are concerned are indistinguishable from a legitimate official client and cannot be stopped.
So interestingly, Spotify has reached out to librespot and have threatened to shut it down due to the conversations about incorporating lossless playback. The conversations that were occurring were discussing reverse engineering the DMCA Spotify had implemented on lossless, so their concerns were justified. However, the approach from Spotify should have been about providing lossless access rather than threatening legal action,
For learning what, exactly? Learning to use a API/service that exists exclusively for you to learn to use it? Why would anyone want to learn to use this if it is specifically designed not to be...
For learning what, exactly? Learning to use a API/service that exists exclusively for you to learn to use it? Why would anyone want to learn to use this if it is specifically designed not to be able to be used?
I assume it's meant to be a tool to learn how to interact with APIs to begin with. Authenticate users on a remote service, stream data from an outside provider, things like that.
I assume it's meant to be a tool to learn how to interact with APIs to begin with. Authenticate users on a remote service, stream data from an outside provider, things like that.
So I have a third party Spotify app that I use personally. Skimming through the changelog of the API, I suspect that my app will continue working on the current device, but will lose features if I...
So I have a third party Spotify app that I use personally. Skimming through the changelog of the API, I suspect that my app will continue working on the current device, but will lose features if I were to reinstall my app. This is frustrating but was also a risk I knew when I built a device around a service I did not control. (Edit: After some further reading, it seems like maybe the API change may not impact me. It is hard to tell because both the codebase is something I forked and did minimal API work with and also I am using Spotipy which is a python wrapper for the API.)
Over time, advances in automation and AI have fundamentally altered the usage patterns and risk profile of developer access, and at Spotify's current scale these risks now require more structured controls.
Honestly, it seems like just the restricting the API to premium users probably mitigates this risk. I think it is more about pushing users towards their own app, which they can then push users towards more profitable features.
Spotify's lack of third-party clients is really what killed the service for me. Their client is just so user-hostile, shoving offers and podcasts and audiobooks and recommended payola songs in my face, I couldn't stand to keep using it. Apple Music sets a better precedent for third-party clients.
Seems like they're clamping down on their API to make it strictly a tool for learning and not for building alternative clients for Spotify with. I can kind of understand where they're coming from.
If that's the goal, it's ill-advised in my opinion. Their strategy with APIs and libraries has been that way for a long time, though.
It started the better part of a decade ago when they deprecated libspotify, which was essentially the core of the Spotify desktop/mobile native clients spun out into a C library and did everything, including streaming and playback. Upon deprecation they promised to follow up with new functionally equivalent APIs and SDKs, but that never happened.
Hostility towards third party clients is stupid strategically, in my eyes. By deprecating libspotify and paring their APIs down to uselessness, they destroyed an entire ecosystem of "bonus" functionality that Spotify subscribers gained, since the library/SDKs/APIs only functioned fully with an authentication of paying subscribers. It totally kills a whole range of legitimate uses and force feeds whatever harebrained UI ideas, incessant A/B testing, and irrelevant content the official client pushes, increasing the likelihood that the user will jump ship for some other service.
It also completely yields any control they had of third party clients. These days the things that used to be built on the official libspotify are now instead built on the reverse-engineered librespot, which as far as Spotify's servers are concerned are indistinguishable from a legitimate official client and cannot be stopped.
Somewhat comically, even Apple is less controlling in this regard. Multiple third-party Apple Music clients built on Apple's official libraries have existed for multiple years at this point and Apple has done nothing to inhibit their function or development.
/rant
Yeah I'm not saying I agree with their decision to restrict their APIs this way, just that I can understand that they want to control their platform more tightly and so these APIs had to be restricted as well. I definitely agree with you that hostility towards third party clients isn't the smartest, Reddit's own hostility is what brought me to Tildes to begin with.
So interestingly, Spotify has reached out to librespot and have threatened to shut it down due to the conversations about incorporating lossless playback. The conversations that were occurring were discussing reverse engineering the DMCA Spotify had implemented on lossless, so their concerns were justified. However, the approach from Spotify should have been about providing lossless access rather than threatening legal action,
For learning what, exactly? Learning to use a API/service that exists exclusively for you to learn to use it? Why would anyone want to learn to use this if it is specifically designed not to be able to be used?
I assume it's meant to be a tool to learn how to interact with APIs to begin with. Authenticate users on a remote service, stream data from an outside provider, things like that.
So I have a third party Spotify app that I use personally. Skimming through the changelog of the API, I suspect that my app will continue working on the current device, but will lose features if I were to reinstall my app. This is frustrating but was also a risk I knew when I built a device around a service I did not control. (Edit: After some further reading, it seems like maybe the API change may not impact me. It is hard to tell because both the codebase is something I forked and did minimal API work with and also I am using Spotipy which is a python wrapper for the API.)
Honestly, it seems like just the restricting the API to premium users probably mitigates this risk. I think it is more about pushing users towards their own app, which they can then push users towards more profitable features.
Discussion on API changes: https://tildes.net/~comp/1soe/web_api_changelog_february_2026_spotify_for_developers