API 403: Studen Premium: Premium required

[floriankapaun]

Plan

Student Premium

My Question or Issue

I am currently working on a student project with the Spotify API. On a simple play request (https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/player/play) I am getting this error response:

{
  "error": {
    "status": 403,
    "message": "Player command failed: Premium required",
    "reason": "PREMIUM_REQUIRED"
  }
}

 Is it because I am using a student premium account?

[Hubo]

Hey @floriankapaun, thanks for coming to the Spotify Community!

Awesome to hear you’re using Spotify for your project! You should be able to use Spotify Premium
for Students with the API, just like you’d use ‘regular’ Spotify Premium.

Could you make sure you’re using the access-token for the right account? Could you make sure that the account you’re logging into is on Spotify Premium (for Students) on spotify.com/account? 

Keep me in loop!

Have a good one,

Hubo

[dayannex]

Hi, I have the same problem, I have only one spotify premium account with its
respective app on https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard/applications,
I can play any track at https://developer.spotify.com/console/
but using the api (spotify-web- api-node) I get Player command failed:
Premium required PREMIUM_REQUIRED

[floriankapaun]

Hey @Hubo, thanks for your replay.

I appreciate your help and checked the things you asked for. I am using the right account and access-token. If I'm sending an request to https://api.spotify.com/v1/albums/0sNOF9WDwhWunNAHPD3Baj for example with my access-token, everything works as expected.

Best regards,

Florian

[Hubo]

Hey @floriankapaun, thanks for keeping me in loop!

Hmm, let's try something else. Could you make sure you're requesting the: 'user-modify-playback-state'-scope element? Also, does this happen with all tracks or just this one?? Let me know how you get on!

Have a good one,

Hubo

[floriankapaun]

Hey @Hubo, thanks for your suggestion.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either.

Let me show you step by step what I did, so we can make sure I didn't make any careless mistakes.

1. Request access-token

POST https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token

"grant_type": "client_credentials"
"client_id": "<my-client-id>"
"client_secret": "<my-client-secret>"
"scope": "user-modify-playback-state"

This returns

{
  "access_token": "<my-access-token>",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expires_in": 3600,
  "scope": "user-modify-playback-state"
}

2. Start/Resume a User's Playback

PUT https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/player/play

Authentication: Bearer "<my-access-token>"

And that returns

{
  "error": {
    "status": 403,
    "message": "Player command failed: Premium required",
    "reason": "PREMIUM_REQUIRED"
  }
}

[spotifyjosh · Accepted solution]

Hi @floriankapaun, welcome to the forum.

The client credentials OAuth flow won't work for this particular endpoint. In order to use the /v1/me/player/play endpoint, try getting an access token through one of the user authentication OAuth flows, like the authorization code flow. You can find out more about the different flows here: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/general/guides/authorization-guide/

[floriankapaun]

Thanks @spotifyjosh!
That was the answer to my problem. With an OAuth flow like you suggested everything is working as expected. 🙂