February 2026 Spotify for Developers update: thread

[ThePodfather]

Hey everyone, I’ve created this thread to provide an open space for discussion, feedback, concerns or ideas on an upcoming update to Spotify for Developers access.

We’ve shared a blog post that explains what’s changing and why. Please use this thread to share any thoughts about the update.

We'll try our best to answer questions but we're not in a position to respond to every reply in this thread. Where appropriate we will add updates in this post to ensure visibility to all commentators (instead of burying the information in the comments). I am not able to reply to individual DM’s but please note that everything shared here will be read and considered. If related questions or discussions pop up elsewhere in the community, we’ll link or merge them back here so everything stays in one place.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

You can find the full details in the blog post, and we’ll add links to any supporting documentation there as it becomes available.

[Jayoir]

It's ultimately Spotify's discretion as to which APIs remain available and the access/quotas applied thereto, but this is a really disappointing update. It seems to be the final nail in a coffin already saturated with nails.

The quota updates last year (limiting developers to an allowlist of 25 users that can use the app unless they are a company with 250k users and other extremely high-bar requirements) has already materially killed off the ability for people to build applications using Spotify's platform.

This more recent update (limiting access even further from 25 → 5 users) and removing some key endpoints like listing a user's playlists) is poor for developers and the users of their apps, but it is merely one more step down the road of killing the developer platform.

As I said, if Spotify wants to go in this direction then that's a business choice, but it would be great if this could be discussed candidly rather than speciously, as though the developer platform at Spotify still exists and serves developers, that innovation with Spotify's APIs is encouraged and supported.

Presumably this is in response to abuse of APIs and data mining Spotify's catalogue by some bad actors (though this is just a guess); it's disappointing that an esteemed engineering company such as Spotify's attempt to solve that problem is to pull developer access from their platform rather than actually fixing the root problem.

No shade to you, @ThePodFather, as the messenger, but as a developer that just built a web app that helps me  (and ideally my friends) organise my Spotify library in a fun way, it's just galling and disappointing to see things getting even worse.

edit: in my original post I mentioned that the API endpoint for fetching a user's playlists was being removed; this isn't the case – you can still fetch playlists of the current user (aka `me`) but not of other users, which is still an annoying limitation, but not as bad as I thought.

[t3pco]

Spoti-bye 🙂

As always, there will be good alternatives - and the artists you want to "protect" are already exploited by yourself. Other platforms are doing better. Feel bad for everyone being negatively affected by this decision - I can hear the screams from your internal developers that had to remove all the endpoints.

[Ryanatgeckomedi]

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limiting developers to an allowlist of 25 users that can use the app unless they are a company with 250k users and other extremely high-bar requirements

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^^^ Yes, this is simply ridiculous. It is impossible to build anything. We are between a rock and a hard place.

removing some key endpoints like listing a user's playlists

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^^ Goodbye Spotify. What is the point.

[Ryanatgeckomedi]

Whilst it doesn't solve the broader issues, there is still actually a GET playlist endpoint for the current authenticated user:

• Get Current User's Playlists (GET /me/playlists) – Retrieves playlists for the current authenticated user.

[Jayoir]

Ah thanks @Ryanatgeckomedi – I didn't spot that initially, I'll edit my original post to retract that bit. As you say, it doesn't solve the broader issues (and the new changes e.g. further reducing the number of users that are allowed to use an app).

[bluewave41]

This is absolutely laughable.

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Development Mode use will require a Spotify Premium account

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You're delusional if you think I'm going to subscribe again after you shut down app creation since CHRISTMAS and said screw you to anyone asking about it. What's stopping you from doing it again? What policies are you actually putting into place to solve this?

I'll take my apps somewhere else that doesn't treat their userbase**bleep**.

[dyl_nm]

I wish the blog post would cover what Spotify are doing to make the experience better for developers not abusing the system. There are a number of factors that makes developing for the Spotify ecosystem not worth it, primarily:

• unexplainably long waiting times for approval (which is why developers "use developer mode to scale up"
• unexplainable approval rejections that are silently reversed on re-application

What is Spotify's plan to address these issues? And what does the migration path look like for these endpoints that are being removed?

[JoaoAranha]

There is lack of information if the 5 allowed testing accounts need to be Premium or not ?

Each Client ID will be limited to up to five authorized users 

As they will share the same app id, there were changes in the amount of request quotas ?