MixMusic Star on GitHub

Spotify

MixMusic reads your Spotify library and searches Spotify through the Spotify Web API, and plays Spotify tracks itself, on Spotify Connect, or from their recording on YouTube Music.

Sign in

Spotify lets each app it does not review serve only up to five accounts its owner adds, and only while the owner has Spotify Premium, so you sign in with an app of your own. It takes two minutes:

  1. Open the Spotify developer dashboard, signed in with a Spotify account that has Premium, and create an app. Any name and description do; choose the Web API.

  2. In the app's settings, add this redirect URI exactly:

    http://127.0.0.1:47823/callback

  3. In the app's settings, under Users Management, add your name and the e-mail address of the Spotify account you sign in to MixMusic with, as your Spotify account page shows it.

  4. Copy the app's Client ID.

  5. In MixMusic, open Settings › Accounts, paste the Client ID and choose sign in to spotify. Your browser opens Spotify's sign-in page; once you agree, it sends you back to MixMusic.

To let a friend sign in with your app, add their name and Spotify e-mail address under Users Management too.

When Spotify refuses the sign-in

Spotify can let you sign in and then refuse the app the account's data. Settings › Accounts says which refusal it was:

  • This Spotify account is not one of the app's users. Add it under Users Management in the app's settings, with the e-mail address of the account you signed in with. Your browser may be signed in to Spotify with another account than the app's: Spotify's sign-in page shows which, and Not you? changes it.
  • The app's owner has no Spotify Premium. Subscribe with the account that made the app, or make one with an account that has Premium. Spotify can take a few hours to notice a new subscription. The developer dashboard says so too: the app's page reads "Your application is blocked from accessing the Web API since you do not have a Spotify Premium subscription", and the Web API box can't be ticked when you create an app. A new app of the same account doesn't help: Spotify blocks them all. Without Premium, MixMusic still searches and plays YouTube Music, with no account at all.
  • Spotify refused (HTTP 403), without a word of why: check both of the above. Spotify can take a few minutes to let in an account just added.

Then choose sign in to spotify again, or sign out to stop using Spotify.

MixMusic never sees your password. It keeps the token Spotify gives it in your system's credential store: the Keychain on macOS, the Credential Manager on Windows, the Secret Service (GNOME Keyring, KWallet…) on Linux. On Windows, where the Credential Manager can't keep it, it is encrypted for your Windows account in spotify-token.dpapi, in MixMusic's data folder. On Linux without a Secret Service, it is in a file only your user can read, spotify-token.json in the data folder; once a Secret Service is there, the token moves into it and the file goes.

How Spotify tracks play

Settings › Playback chooses:

  • Here, from Spotify (the default on Windows). MixMusic plays the track itself, with Spotify's Web Playback SDK, at Spotify's own quality, and no Spotify app needs to be open: MixMusic shows among your Spotify devices while it plays. It needs Spotify Premium, and Windows, whose webview, WebView2, plays Spotify's protected audio: WebKitGTK on Linux does not, and macOS's is not known to, as Settings › Playback says there. The equalizer and crossfade leave Spotify's audio as it is, as on Spotify Connect: use a system-wide equalizer for it, since Spotify notes that its audio settings can't change while another device plays it. The visualizer and the plugins' analyser hear it, on Windows 10 build 20348 and later. Sign-ins made before MixMusic played Spotify itself do not allow it: Settings › Playback asks you to sign in again. When Spotify cannot play here, MixMusic plays the track from YouTube Music instead, and says why.
  • On Spotify Connect (the default elsewhere). A Spotify device plays the track: your Spotify app on this computer, your phone, a speaker. It needs Spotify Premium, and a device with Spotify open. The devices button of the player bar chooses which device plays; by default, the active one. When no device can play, MixMusic plays the track from YouTube Music instead, and says so. On Windows, the visualizer and the plugins' analyser hear the Spotify app on this computer, as it plays, never recording it; other devices they can't hear, and the visualizer shows nothing then.
  • Here, from YouTube Music. MixMusic finds the track's recording on YouTube Music and plays it in its own player, with the equalizer, crossfade and the visualizer. It works without Premium. When a match is wrong, choose Find another YouTube Music match in the track's menu.

What Spotify allows apps

Apps in Spotify's development mode, as yours is, have limits:

  • The app's owner needs Spotify Premium.
  • Up to five accounts, added under Users Management, can use it.
  • A search returns at most ten results of each kind.
  • Apps see the tracks of the playlists you own or collaborate on, not of playlists others made. MixMusic tells you when a playlist is one of those.
  • Spotify removed the artist top tracks endpoint: MixMusic finds an artist's popular tracks with a search instead.
  • Requests are counted against a quota; when MixMusic hits it, Spotify asks it to wait, and MixMusic says so.