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Redistribute Spotify on Linux Distributions

Dear Spotify Team,

my name is NicoHood and I am an official ArchLinux Trusted User. This means I maintain some packages in the official [community] repository [1]. I am also able to move packages from the ArchLinux User Repository (AUR)[2] into [community] if the packages are popular enough (>10 votes).

 

As you can imagine spotify is really popular on ArchLinux with more than 1100 votes on AUR[3]. Me and the community would love to have spotify in our official repositories to provide our users a simpler channel of installing Spotify on ArchLinux.

 

The problem we face is that the Terms of Use forbid us to redistribute Spotify. We'd require an official statement that ArchLinux is allowed to package Spotify in its repositories.

 

I've already contacted Brendan Marsh (Product Owner, Desktop) about this topic via email without any further response. It would be nice if you can give the linux community a better channel for installing Spotify on non-debian systems.

 

Furthermore we then can cooperate and optimize spotify for ArchLinux (e.g. using more shared libraries, providing gpg signed tarballs and https downloads etc).

 

Me and the community hope to get some positive feedback. Thanks for taking the time. Please upvote this post if you also with to natively install Spotify on ArchLinux and other Linux Systems.

 

[1]: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?maintainer=NicoHood

[2]: https://aur.archlinux.org/

[3]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/spotify/

 

Edit 28.08.2019: This request has been marked as idea by the spotify staff. Please upvote it here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Linux-Add-Spotify-to-the-official-Linux-repositories/idi...

Updated on 2019-09-12

Hey folks,


We wanted to post an update as this idea has reached over 500 votes from our users.

 

We’re always working on improving the Spotify experience across platforms, but we’re afraid we don’t have any further information to share at the moment.

 

We typically don't announce integrations with third parties in advance. The best place to keep an eye on is our blog for news updates about any such partnerships.

 

Thanks!

Comments
mr_felixoid
Could you, please, read the first message in the topic and stop to offer
the snap, which is the same binary problem?
ArtGravity

@mr_felixoid wrote:
Could you, please, read the first message in the topic and stop to offer
the snap, which is the same binary problem?

I read the OP back when it was fresh. It made as little sense then as it does now. I've tried to offer useful suggestions to people who want to listen to Spotify on Linux. The app doesn't somehow magically work any better because it shipped in your distro versus being installed as a snap app.

Making the app officially available as a snap was a huge benefit for everyone not using a Debian derived OS. It has allowed me to enjoy my Spotify account on my OpenSUSE machines as well as my Debian and Ubuntu boxes. With proprietary software, that really is the best you can hope for.

mr_felixoid

"proprietary software"

Exactly, this is an issue. And neither spoiling a system with the snap nor
repacking a deb into a proper package (which is done in
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/spotify/) aren't solution. And this
topic about an open source.

That's it.

 

"allowed me to enjoy my Spotify account"

 

Good, but "suffer" is more proper word when we're talking about badly packed electron app with 1GiB ram consumption in the average

somnophobe

@ArtGravity -
The primary issue is lack of a clear redistribution policy.  The vast majority of distributions do not include the snap store as a part of their default repositories, nor do they include Spotify's .deb repo in their default repositories.
This is about making Spotify one-click-installable on a fresh installation of a system, effectively allowing distributions to make installing Spotify on linux as easy as it is on the Google Play store.  E.g:
* if I buy a new XPS with Ubuntu, I should be able to install it directly from the software center
* when I reinstall Debian, I should be able to just search "spotify" in synaptic and install it right away

 

This could be resolved either via the .deb or via the snap (although the .deb is far more likely) with a binary redistribution policy.  That's the only thing that I interpret the OP to be asking for.  We're not even asking Spotify to *do the work* in making it available, just to *allow others to legally do this work themselves*

TWMTLK

Spotify, this is big, please don't ignore this.

chapterzero

I don't mind installing from AUR, but as TS said this will make installation and update simpler for a lot of users.

jecogeo

Hey Guys, have you heard something from spotify? I'll be so happy to have it in the official Arch Repos. 

eltify

Goooosh, c'mon spot. You're starting to look like Nvidia

1290639528

Over 2,000 voteups and not a single official response.

 

Spotify is so disappointing =\

giddyupahoy

This would be very nice. Spotify has been pretty good to the GNU/Linux community over the last few years. Let's keep it going. 🙂

It might pay off to keep feeding the geeks, I think.