[Linux] Spotify 0.8.8 for GNU/Linux

[parbo]

Update: Spotify for Linux v0.9.4 is now available. See here.

Hi everybody!

Today we pushed the latest and greatest Spotify client to our repository. This time you're getting the good stuff first, this version has only been rolled out to a small percentage of Windows/Mac users. It contains some of the features that were presented on our recent press event, such as being able to follow artists and tastemakers. Have a look at the brand new Follow page, where you can find interesting artists and other people to follow. You'll get updates on their activity, such as newly released albums etc.

As for Linux-specific fixes, there are some minor bug fixes. The biggest change is the packaging. The client now is installed to /opt and it uses XDG mechanisms to register icons and menus. The executable is now also built without hardcoded paths to libraries. This means that the folder can be put anywhere and just run from there. Unfortunately, this release still depends on libssl0.9.8. We'll try to get rid of that in upcoming releases!

The new client is just a "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" away!

What, you don't already have Spotify installed? Lookie here: http://www.spotify.com/download/previews/

Don't use Debian? Check out these zip packages:

http://download.spotify.com/preview/spotify-client-linux-0.8.8.323.gd143501e-i686.zip

http://download.spotify.com/preview/spotify-client-linux-0.8.8.323.gd143501e-amd64.zip

Edit: updated to include the zip packages.

[leamas]

@enochroot: I don't know if this is helpful, perhaps not, but still: you might want to try the installer at https://github.com/leamas/spotify-make. It splits the package into pieces and installs it complete other locations. Make e. g., a user install as described in README. Perhaps it's different enough to result in something. don't know,  your case seems hard...

[nonentity]

I have been using (& loving!) Spotify since the US-debut, and I have had zero issues with the linux client personally, it's performed flawlessly. But I am curious if the new search results pane (white background, grey shading, black text) is a sign of things to come? I use my spotify client on a HTPC and having the white background up is extremely distracting and downright unpleasant to look at. Thankfully the playlists are still charcoal/grey with white text.

So I have two questions, if the unifying theme does change, will users be given the choice to use a "Legacy" theme? And lastly, how can I retrieve and install the previous package? Hopefully the latter isn't too noobish, but I've only been Windows-free for about a year, and there is still much to learn.

[aspiers]

AFAIK, Spotify remove the old binaries every time they upload new ones.  This is really bad news for the unlucky people who can't get the new release working - parbo (or any other Spotify employee), is it possible to change this policy?  I can't think of any good reason for not keeping the old ones alongside the new ones.

[Vakio]

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@juchem wrote:

After I upgraded to 0.8.8, my client keeps hanging. Sometimes a couple minutes into the first track I play, sometimes after playing several tracks in a row. I experienced it with the previous versions as well, but not so frequent (and especially after resuming the computer from a suspended state). According to stdout, it's a dead lock:

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02:08:48.704 E [watchdog.cpp:174 ] Deadlock detected (Thread: network)
02:08:49.724 E [watchdog.cpp:174 ] Deadlock detected (Thread: gui)

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I'm seeing this too. The program hangs after those lines, and after a while starts spamming stdout with

"13:26:33.153 E [watchdog.cpp:182 ] Fatal deadlock detected - would have crashed!! (Thread: network)

13:26:34.153 E [watchdog.cpp:182 ] Fatal deadlock detected - would have crashed!! (Thread: network)
13:26:34.154 E [watchdog.cpp:182 ] Fatal deadlock detected - would have crashed!! (Thread: gui)
13:26:35.154 E [watchdog.cpp:182 ] Fatal deadlock detected - would have crashed!! (Thread: network)"

I haven't found a way to reproduce this yet, but it's pretty frequent. And I also agree with juchem in that it used to happen sometimes, but is now much more common with the latest version. Any ideas on how to diagnose it further? (Cleared the cache already, etc.)

EDIT: Debian unstable, amd64, KDE 4.8.4., kernel 3.7.1-1~experimental.1

[alexander_r]

sometimes spotify transmits the wrong HTTP-Links to facebook, for example "The Girl Is Mine" by Michael Jackson instead of "If I Don't Live Today, Then I Might Be Here Tommorrow" by Mando Diao. is this a linux-specific problem? I guess it's not to hide my bad taste 😛

[leamas]

@aspiers: +1.

See also http://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Release-process-don-t-remove-old-version-so-quickly/td...

[ost2life]

Right, well the linux version is still effectively crippled for me. However if anyone else is still having the library issue (where it's only importing a fraction of the local files even if they're all proper mp3's) then kry07 had a solution to get the spotify windows version working with mp3 playback in Wine 

Spotify for Linux is not updated, but i found a solution to use it in wine with local files 😄 !!!
I found a tutorial on a strange page in a strange language
"http://nuvolsgratis.cat/reprodueix-arxius-locals-amb-spotify-0-4-a-ubuntu/"
install Spotify and wine, then
+ get the l3codecp.acm from here:
http://www.4shared.com/file/60639031/274e3ee0/l3codecp.html
+ then type in terminal :
# mv ~/Download/l3codecp.acm ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/winemp3.acm
# winecfg -> Libaries -> add winemp3.acm

now you are able to use local files 😄

Obviously change the download directory to suit tastes, and if you'd rather not sign up to a download site, pm me and i'll pop it on my dropbox

[parbo]

I've now updated the post to include links to the zip packages. Sorry that it took a while.

Regarding the local files issue, I'm not able to reproduce the problems locally. Could you clean the cache and run spotify with strace? If you run strace -e trace=file -o trace.txt spotify and send me the contents of trace.txt as a private message, maybe I can get some ideas..

About the deadlock, could you get that under gdb and send me stack traces from all threads? Start spotify under gdb: gdb spotify, then press Ctrl+C when it has deadlocked and type: thread apply all backtrace

[parbo]

dbrgn: that looks like there's some failure in how we're XEmbed-ing the browser view. Did it work before?

[dbrgn]

@parbo I don't know, I'm new to Spotify and the older versions aren't available anymore 🙂

[Vakio]

Stacktrace after deadlock: http://pastebin.com/9Sut29Se

[aspiers]

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@dbrgn wrote:

@parbo I don't know, I'm new to Spotify and the older versions aren't available anymore 🙂

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dbrgn: we feel your pain ... http://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Release-process-don-t-remove-old-version-so-quickly/td...

[bjarte_k]

Local files works for me after I deleted libavcodec53 and installed libavcodec54. Opensuse 12.2.

[leamas]

Obviously, this is a really good finding!

However, removing the system library libavcodec53 is bit drastic. You should get the same effect for spotify without affecting the overall system by dropping libavcodec54 into the spotify folder - it should (ought to? might?) look there first before looking for system libs. Perhaps worth a try?

I'm standing by to update the installer I have at to handle this; it altready has the infrastructure for bundled libs in place.

[oggesjolin]

Did a new install today on a debian wheezy

get the following:

spotify: error while loading shared libraries: libQtNetwork.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Works fine on other machine same setup, but spotify-client was upgraded..

[Vakio]

libQtNetwork.so.4 is in the libqt4-network package, so try installing that. spotify-client must be missing a Depends:.

[oggesjolin]

Yes. Thank you.

[ost2life]

Okay this might seem a totally daft question but how do you do a complete deinstall reinstall of spotify? I ran sudo apt-get purge spotify-client which seemed to do the trick but when I reinstalled it auto magically logged back in and the local library and settings were all intact. I even manually removed .cache/spotify but again all config data was intact.

[Vakio]

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@ost2life wrote:
I even manually removed .cache/spotify but again all config data was intact.

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.config/spotify too?

In general, "apt-get purge" removes the package + any system-wide configuration files (that is, those residing in /etc), but keeps the configuration files in the users' home directories intact.

[ost2life]

Lol. Okay it was a daft question. I'll do that after work. Thanks!