Using Spotify, not their horrid app/site

I use Spotify and I am not too ashamed about it. I’m sure there are concerns about how they treat artists. I have used most popular music streaming services - YouTube Music (also when it was Play Music), Apple Music and lately, Spotify has been the music service of choice.

I like that I can find most music there. Along with last.fm, it lets me discover and play new music from Last.fm once you link your accounts. Most of the time, however, I use the app on my phone, or off a web browser on the laptop or PC. I hate them. They change things all the time; they’re inefficient at workspace usage and they are painfully slow and buggy. I don’t want videos in my music player; I don’t want podcasts, or recommendations or local events or anything else! Just let me find and play my music, the way I want to!

Fortunately (until Spotify decides to hunt them down), there are alternatives. One way is to start playing a track on your phone or desktop, then switch to a Linux command-line Python tool called spotify-cli. There are arguments you can pass and it lets you control Spotify.

I typically use -

spotify play ___________
spotify search _________
spotify queue __________
spotify prev 
spotify next
spotify seek 160 (to skip to the solos!)

A better way to use Spotify might be to use mopidy (alongside mopidy-mpd so mpd clients can connect, and mopidy-spotify for the obvious purpose). You could then use ncmpcpp as a ncurses-based Spotify client, or more conventional GUI players. I like Cantata. I remember using it ages ago but I don’t remember why I gave it up for the mobile app. However, when I tried Mopidy yesterday, something was broken with the libraries for Spotify or gstreamer-plugins. I’m going to wait for the weekend and hope it’s fixed.

I’d like to talk much more about how I discover new music, books, movies and TV shows, but I’ll leave that for another post.

For now, if you’d like to hear what I listen to, this is my Spotify profile - cyberjunkie. If you’d like to share yours, or recommend other clients, mail me blog@cyberjunkie.in!