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Spotify changes developer mode API to require premium accounts, limits test users (techcrunch.com)
submitted 22 hours ago by mrdown@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] chris@lemmy.grey.fail 10 points 15 hours ago

Man, this kind of sucks.

I wrote a nifty script a few years ago that pulls the popularity metric of a song, converts that to a star rating, and writes that to a tag with Mutagen. At a glance I can see the hits. If I like the track, I'll "love" it (side stepping the need for a personal rating). It's a system that's been serving me well for a long time.

Locking down APIs does seem to be the trend. I'm not sure I'll look to adapt.

Giving money to Spotify is out of the question, but I may pay for Deezer or something.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 28 points 20 hours ago

This is going to become more of a standard due to people vibecoding their own clients for every dumb thing.

[-] mrdown@lemmy.world 10 points 20 hours ago

It's all about profits and psying major labels even.more

[-] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Even the Spotify shuffle feature is built to maximize profits and to hell with the user experience.

I have almost 2 thousand songs on one playlist and Spotify plays the songs from minor artists (who don't get paid much) constantly, while songs from major artists (who get paid a lot more) are never played. I'm actually surprised to hear those songs when shuffle is turned off.

They've also recently added "Video Episodes for You" to my home screen with no way to turn it off. It takes up 1/3 of the screen with helpful titles like "Session 105, Hillory Duff", and "Reinvent Life from Rock Bottom and Become Unrecognizable." I have never watched a video or listened to a podcast on Spotify.

When it comes to enshittification Spotify's got it down.

Maybe someday one of the other music services will create something like Spotify Connect.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 8 points 18 hours ago

tidal.com

Lacks a few of Spotify's features, but the audio quality is great, and it's cheaper. Plus, fuck Spotify.

Qobuz is also good, apparently.

[-] andyburke@fedia.io 3 points 18 hours ago

seconding Tidal.

but also feeling like buying more physical media going forward.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago

Yeah, I tend to buy vinyl for the artists that I'm really into.

[-] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago

I looked at a tital a year or so ago and it wouldn't work for me. Will look again, maybe they've improved it.

[-] AndyMFK@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago

I came to the same conclusion., I need a "Spotify connect" type feature, and when I looked, tidal had just axed their equivalent.

Until a competitor allows me to play music on a headless Linux box and control it with my phone, I'm stuck with Spotify

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago

Depends what you define as "Wouldn't work for me." Song library has improved a lot, if that's what you mean.

[-] Yaky@slrpnk.net 3 points 17 hours ago

For me it was the opposite: Every "made for you" mix and playlist is fairly popular songs from artists that I like... But they are always the same few dozen songs, just shuffled in different order.

Video suggestions seem to appear if/after you listen to podcasts or audiobooks. I had them, my partner did not.

[-] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

My "Made for You" has occasional popular artists but most of the songs are from people who are relatively unknown. The only way I listened to a podcast is if I clicked on one by accident.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

I think it's more about closing a backdoor to free product that was generally out of reach for most people a few years. Free API access for devs has been a thing forever for the most part, but the barriers are now lower for people to abuse it.

Yes about profits in the sense they don't want people getting free access to content, but I don't think this is designed to net them a bunch of money or anything.

[-] XLE@piefed.social 1 points 19 hours ago

Agreed. To me, this sounds like a continuation of the abolition of Web 2.0, the era where APIs were open and nobody was talking about how they'd pay for it.

[-] Yaky@slrpnk.net 12 points 17 hours ago

Any FOSS / third party Spotify client I used already requires a premium account (I am fairly certain it's about playing ads), so I was under assumption developer API was the same.

Anyway, I just stopped using Spotify altogether. I'll support my local indie radio station instead.

[-] Foni@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago

I think this will be a problem for Spotiflac

[-] murmelade@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

The 350GB I already downloaded should last me a while. Doesn't it already get the metadata from Deezer, and flacs from Tidal/Qobuz/Amazon, anyway? Not sure why Spotify needs to be involved.

[-] Foni@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago

I don't know either, but if it's not from Spotify the links don't work, so if they break the API the program won't work.

this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
88 points (98.9% liked)

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