I have a slightly more techncal question under the same general topic.
I am using the spotify developer "play button" in multiple tracks mode to genrate a spotify playlist within an iframe on my site.
https://developer.spotify.com/technologies/widgets/spotify-play-button/
This technique allows me to assemble playsists on my own site using only front end code to query the spotify search api for track ids and then simpy pass the track ids in through the iframe url like so:
iframe src="embed[dot]spotify[dot]com/?uri=spotify:trackset:PREFEREDTITLE:5Z7ygHQo02SUrFmcgpwsKW,1x6ACsKV4UdWS2FMuPFUiT,4bi73jCM02fMpkI11Lqmfe" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true"
This allows my users to quickly generate a playlist on my site and listen to it (or at least sample it) without having to have the spotify client necessarily installed. For users who DO have the spotify desktop client installed, the playlist will appear in thier desktop client. My collegues and I have noticed that the shuffle button in hte spotify client is ALWAYS disabled for any playlists built using this "play button multiple tracks" technique, HOWEVER the "repeat" button and menu item is enabled. Im very curious if this is some kind of intentional limitation imposed by technical or design restraints, or if there is any simple way to "enable shuffle" on one of these semi-dynamically-genreated playlists. Any help would be appreciated.
Note:
I have searched the entire API / SDK docs and realize there are ways with libspotify to generate a "playlist" object on behalf of a user, add tracks to it, etc. I kind of understand that a list of songs in a play button is not necessarily a "playlist" object and I understand if things look very similar but funtion differently. I will eventually get to a more robust implementation of the API's, oauth etc, on my backend to be able to fully manipulate real "playlsit" objects, what I am after right now is an answer regarding the "Multiple track play button". Why limit users from being able to shuffle these? Is it simply a matter of maintaining sync between the iframe and the desktop client in terms of track order, etc?
My best solution to this problem has been to provide my own "shuffle" button that simply destroys the iframe, shuffles the local array of tracks and then re-implodes them into the query string and instantiates a new iframe. For RDIO I am at least able to tell the player what track it should progress to next. I am trying to make the spotify experience as good as the rdio experiece for my users and I just hate telling users and stakeholders "oh, well spotify only allows you to shuffle playlists that have a certain kind of origin but that differentiation is more technical than visual so it's hard to really tell, but if you can't shuffle it you probably better copy and paste all the tracks from the fake playlist into a real one". Nobody likes that response.
Much appreciated, please let me know if I should be starting a new thread or using a different forum, etc.
Jose,
Developer at a small music discovery startup.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random