MPRIS cover art url file not found

[JasonLG1979]

Plan

Free

Country
USA

Device

Desktop Computer

Operating System

Ubuntu 20.04

My Question or Issue
I know this is like yelling into an echo chamber as nothing ever comes of these bug reports. We Linux users are basically just talking to ourselves. But here goes...

Recently the cover art url (mpris:artUrl) in the metadata leads to a dead end. The url itself is not malformed it just doesn't lead to anything but a file not found error.

As a side note, best practice for cover art is to cache it locally at least for the session and send the cached file url to MPRIS not only does that make covers load faster but it also cuts down on network traffic.

Moderators:
If all you're going to add is boilerplate advice to delete some folders and reinstall Spotify just don't... Maybe try actually fixing your software and/or CDN...

I would be ashamed of the state of the Spotify desktop app if I were you... 

[jpldcarvalho]

Don't be so aggressive.

There is who actually worked in this problem:

https://github.com/freundTech/SpotPRIS2

[JasonLG1979]

I'm upset because their desktop app is basically rotting and they know it yet they do nothing about it.

The daemon/service you're linking to is not a solution. It's ridiculous to run a standalone daemon just to workaround Spotify's broken desktop app.

The solution is for someone at Spotify to fix their garbage. If they're not going to fix their garbage then they should just toss it and start libspotify back up again.

I may see what can actually be done with the web api. I haven't really looked at it. If it can be used to create a proper backend for a player I may just write my own. I know my way around gtk, gstreamer and MPRIS. It wouldn't be my 1st guerilla music streaming service client (I am one of the main contributors to Pithos). 

 

[LinusCDE98]

My custom OpenGL-Display that pulled the cover from dbus also broke.

The coverurl that Spotify provides is invalid.

$ qdbus org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Metadata
mpris:artUrl: https://open.spotify.com/image/ab67616d00001e02d56e829cb8db19f77b1c79d1
mpris:length: 218174000
mpris:trackid: spotify:track:1En4GGPJDPtlGvrCkBIEpy
xesam:album: Fly Octo Fly ~ Ebb & Flow (From "Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion")
xesam:albumArtist: Qumu
xesam:artist: Qumu
xesam:autoRating: 0.47
xesam:discNumber: 1
xesam:title: Fly Octo Fly ~ Ebb & Flow (From "Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion")
xesam:trackNumber: 1
xesam:url: https://open.spotify.com/track/1En4GGPJDPtlGvrCkBIEpy

The provided art-Url is invalid.

A quick check on the WebApp showed that using the ID from that url and the prefix "https://i.scdn.co/image/" makes it work again. Though the client is more throughly checked.

This also means, that native linux toolbars that show the Cover, currently can't with the data provided by the Spotify Linux App.

[JasonLG1979]

Good to know, thanks I'm also the author and maintainer of the mpris-indicator-button GNOME Shell extension I can use that info to workaround the issue.

[adambyrtek]

I made patches for KDE Plasma media controller and task bar to work around this issue:

https://invent.kde.org/adambyrtek/plasma-workspace/-/commit/63d84595b6c91b72b872ac9f9090f8ea3d0aae83

https://invent.kde.org/adambyrtek/plasma-desktop/-/commit/abb57e47cf1ed1816f9c96740ff6ae3b0112a252

This is unlikely to be accepted upstream since the root cause is a bug in the official Spotify client, but in the meantime it solves the problem for me.

[Mihail]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for reaching out to us here in the Community.

We've chatted to the right teams, and can confirm they're working on this. We'd recommend keeping the app up-to-date, and checking for a fix in new releases!

If anything else comes up - the Community is always a post away 🙂

[okidian]

hi,

thanks for your reply.

this is the linux forum. your last release is from march https://snapcraft.io/spotify and there has been 8 windows releases since then https://www.spotify.com/us/opensource/

thank you

[JasonLG1979]

That's basically the boilerplate response I specifically asked not to get but expected...

"Be on the look out for some mythical future update that just might fix the issue."

[okidian]

they must be cutting costs to the point that an intern has to compile the whole thing on their personal laptop at home. OR they could just open source their junk no value whatsoever sh-tstink of a web frontend client and focus on selling their flowing bytes

[3HeadedMonkey87]

Hello!

I've created a simple python script to patch the Spotify binary, if you don't want to wait for the patch... just copy it in a text file, chmod +x it and execute it, like `sudo ./spotify-mpris-art-fix.py --patch`

https://gist.github.com/elegos/2eb0a569d1fc5411b4661e38f89ab3fd

[PingusPepan]

Hey guys,
the issue is fixed for me in the Spotify client version 1.1.67

[LinusCDE98]

Can confirm! It is reporting the correct url now!

This issue seems to be resolved with that version! Huge thanks!