topic Re: Preview URLs Deprecated? in Spotify for Developers

Preview URLs Deprecated?

agegraves — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 13:16:15 GMT

Hey I am working on an app to auto-create Instagram posts for artists on Spotify with the idea that you'd direct them to your Spotify profile. I was going to use preview urls to let a user preview what their ad looks like but seems it's deprecated and returning as NULL now. Does anyone do anything similar to this in some other way?

Thanks!
Age

Re: Preview URLs Deprecated?

ribezaz — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 17:41:05 GMT

Hey @agegraves

Yes, it appears that many tracks no longer have a preview_url available via the Spotify API. While Spotify has not officially announced that preview_url is deprecated, many developers have reported that it's consistently returning null for most tracks.

Check if the track has a preview

Not all tracks had previews even before, so double-check with multiple tracks.
You can try using a different API request to verify availability.

Use a third-party service
- Some music metadata providers (like Last.fm, Apple Music, or Deezer) may provide short preview clips.
- You can explore integrations with these services.
Direct users to the Spotify track instead
- Instead of playing a preview, your app could include a "Play on Spotify" button that directs users to the full song.
Fetch track samples from another source
- If your app needs audio previews, you might need to license or retrieve short clips manually.

For now, if preview_url is returning null consistently, it seems like Spotify may have limited or removed this feature for most songs.

Keep an eye on Spotify Developer Community for updates!

Cheers,

ribezaz

Re: Preview URLs Deprecated?

agegraves — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 19:05:00 GMT

Okay thank you for confirming

Re: Preview URLs Deprecated?

Tanict — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:03:24 GMT

It's now officially listed as deprecated on console.

Re: Preview URLs Deprecated?

kliad — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 10:14:55 GMT

https://www.npmjs.com/package/spotify-preview-finder

this npm package solves it, please star the repo if it helped you

Re: Preview URLs Deprecated?

bogscam — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 14:53:56 GMT

i just figured out a way around this and i thought id share this with yall. even tho when searching for a track itself the preview url will return null, if you use the https://api.spotify.com/v1/search endpoint and find your song there it will have a preview url cause thats what spotify actually uses to serve the preview url in the app and web. hope that helps.