Changes to Web API

[Loneliest_Cabin]

Folks, some news on changes to the web API has been posted on the Spotify For Developers blog.

We want to reiterate the main message from the blog that we're committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all Spotify stakeholders. As such we have recently made some important changes related to access to some of our endpoints and functionality. You can read the details on the blog: https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2024-11-27-changes-to-the-web-api

We are here to listen to any feedback you may have. 

[anthonybaldwin]

**bleep** this change. This has NOTHING to do with safety, RE: the fact I can't use the API to backup Discover Weekly.

[BlinkBP]

Restricting APIs because of AI scraping is reasonable. But Spotify (and other companies) could still allow low rate API usage with some daily or monthly request caps, so that not every API user is affected.
It's unreasonable to punish and alienate your whole user base.

[yournatalita]

Oh, yeah, AI ruined another thing that was so dear to me: my stupid pet projects where I could play with Spotify API. I mean it's Spotify's data and they can do whatever they want with it and I agree they shouldn't share it with third party. Everything good comes to an end and it was too good to be true for so long.

With that in mind, I would expect AI music not getting into my recommendations (or platform in general), but who I am to judge their priorities.

[iammarkjohnson]

Thanks for sharing the update. Appreciate the focus on security — I’ll check the blog for details. Glad to know you’re open to feedback.

[spencerthayer]

WE FINALLY KNOW WHY SPOTIFY BETRAYED DEVELOPERS!

Spotify did not "secure the platform." It secured partners. On November 27, 2024, Spotify shut the door on new and in-development apps for core endpoints like Audio Features, Audio Analysis, Recommendations, Related Artists, Featured, and Category Playlists. Then on September 24, 2025, Spotify announced privileged integrations for Rekordbox, Serato, and DJay across 51 markets. That timeline is not a coincidence. It is a strategy.

Call the talking points what they are. “Security” and “anti-scraping” were cover stories. The practical effect was to cut off independent developers from the very data that made Spotify worthwhile, while green-lighting the same value proposition for select commercial partners inside closed software. Indie tools got a 403. Big vendors got a login button.

This is monopoly, not stewardship. Spotify removed the public road, then sold access to the toll lane. Startups and researchers lost the tempo, key, valence, and analysis needed to create real features that users actually need. Meanwhile, Spotify promotes “seamless mixing” with handpicked desktop DJ apps, locking creativity behind private deals and Premium paywalls.

Stop pretending this helps users. It kneecaps competition, buries open innovation, and rewrites the rules to favor whoever signs the biggest partnership checks. If Spotify wants the DJ market, it should compete openly. Restore feature parity for independent developers or say plainly that the platform is now a walled garden for partners who have big pockets.

Spare us the security theater and AI doomerism and give the community back the tools you took.

[NALStudio]

Thankfully the original post was edited to include the actual reason, safe and secure environment for shareholders 😄

[luminous]

I"m one year late to this and it still annoys the **bleep** out of me that the best endpoints available would become deprecated. What doesn't make sense to me, is reading over everyone's earlier posts, is that it seems that you guys had the rug pulled under you. But in that initial Spotify blog post where API changes were announced, it made it seem like anyone who already had access to the API, would retain access. So was that an outright lie?

[trunkadelic]

This is a horrible change and a small app I've been building for myself is not working anymore. 😞
Why can't we access our own Discovery Weekly playlist programmatically?

[bdubsw]

Hey Spotify, 
Are you really listening? This is so disappointing. I was so excited to build a custom browser and player within my homeassistant application then learnt you killed this off. I use spotify for the flexibility and the API, will look elsewhere now. What a shame.  

[mci]

I deliberately wrote a Spotify command line client so I could pull Discover Weekly to the radio I built on a Raspberry Pi and use it as an alarm clock. And now all my work has gone to waste. Shame on you, Spotify. This API is not reliable.

[spencerthayer]

Dear Spotify, the leak on Anna's Archive of your entire database and music collection is the inevitable consequence of your greed. And it is with delight that I get to say, "Ha, ha."

You attempted to enclose the cultural commons. You treated the collective labor of artists and the listening habits of the public as private property to be hoarded, gated, and sold only to capital-rich partners like AlphaTheta and Algoriddim. You shut down the only good thing your platform had going for itself, the open API, believing that by creating artificial scarcity, you could maximize subscription extraction.

You failed. And in your failure, you have proven a fundamental law of the digital age: The attempt to monopolize data only accelerates its liberation.

Because you refused to share a few endpoints with the community that built your value, Anna’s Archive has now shared everything with the world.

• You wanted to gatekeep Audio Features? Now, a 200GB compressed SQLite database containing metadata for 256 million tracks and 186 million unique ISRCs is available to anyone with a torrent client.
• You wanted to monetize access? Now 99.6% of all listened-to audio on your platform is available in a preservation archive that requires zero subscription fees and zero corporate permission.
• You wanted “security”? You have achieved the exact opposite. By alienating the developer class, the very people who acted as the immune system for your platform, you invited a structural rupture.

This is what happens when a corporation prioritizes profit over its users' utility. The response from the digital commons was immediate and devastating: total expropriation. The “security” excuse that was always a lie to cover for capital accumulation now will result in millions just getting everything you guarded for free. You didn’t want to secure the platform; you wanted to ensure your monopoly on the toll road. But you forgot that culture is not a finite resource to be locked in a warehouse. It is a living force. When you try to dam the river to sell the water, people will blow up the dam.

So here we are. You have lost the trust of your community, you have alienated your power users, and now, you have lost control of your assets. The metadata is free. The audio is preserved. The walled garden has been breached, not by “hackers,” but by the inevitable pressure of information seeking to be free from rent-seeking landlords.

Enjoy your “partnerships.” We have the library now.

[spencerthayer]

Check out https://www.music-assistant.io/ you can still use Spotify.

[holamau]

When I read the story about their entire collection being scraped, I chuckled so hard. Such a lame disservice they did to us developers and while they claimed it was for the sake of security, they still got f'd. 

So damn funny. Well deserved, Spotify.

And feel free to respond to the MYRIAD of criticism... sounds like we can have a wall react better since the sound would bounce back... the moderators on the Spotify side, definitely don't care about this.