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. 

[mint_more]

Audio features, Audio Analysis, Related Artists... the 3 things I built my entire application around are now all just gone with no warning. And right before holiday. I can't believe this. It would be one thing if they are working to fix some security issues recently discovered before reinstating the endpoints, or some level of warning for us to hurry up and submit for our extension. I want some level of explanation because this is so incredibly frustrating.   

[c0nstruct]

Yeah this is quite insane. It's crazy for you to guys to pull the plug without any notices, some of these APIs were very fundamental to many of our small personal projects.

I have been working on a small app (my final-year academic project) for months. My code-base probably consisted of thousands of lines of code. It is really discouraging to see that none of it works anymore because of this. I have a presentation about my project in about 1 week, not sure what I am going to present now. I was literally making ONE api call when my app started to get some audio features.

It really feels like months and months of my work just being burnt away. I understand it's your servers so you can do whatever you want, but there was an implicit trust between developers (who invested a lot of time in these projects) and Spotify, and it feels like it was broken.

Please find something better than this nuclear decision. Many of us don't have time to make replacement modules for this lol

[mint_more]

This really is just a tragedy here. I really hope you guys reconsider this, or allow us to have some type of extension. No warning? Just red tape? So many people here have been developing applications that add value to your service, and now those no longer work unless we refactor to use your competitors APIs. 

[ACCAdog]

Thanks for my safe, but if you stop it, i will be happier, MUCH HAPPIER!!!

[DubbayouDJ]

INFURIATED!!! by your/Spotify’s decision to remove these endpoints — “with the aim of creating a more secure platform.”

NONE of the affected endpoints pose a security risk to end-users that might use the App(s) we’re developing (i.e., these don’t require end-user authorization). So it’s apparent that your effort to “create a more secure platform” IS SOLELY FOR YOUR/SPOTIFY’S OWN INTEREST!

CRITICALLY… your/Spotify’s algorithm(s) for creating [end-user] custom/curated playlists FAILS BY 40-50% (i.e., the % of songs that don’t fit with the end-users’ ideal cohort of songs). Deprecating the “Audio Features” endpoint (and “Audio Analysis” in some instances) prevents developers from solving for YOUR FAILURE.

IRONICALLY… deprecating these endpoints will only encourage “stream ripping”, so that songs can be evaluated locally (…which is a violation of developer policy, but not really something you/Spotify can effectively police).

[gwenolechenouard]

Thank you Spotify team, you just destroyed months and months of work. I just can't believe it.

[ottic]

It seems that the Spotify Developer platform, after making changes that disrupt the functionality of many apps, can no longer be recommended for creating. It may be worthwhile for the operators of workflow apps like n8n to consider replacing their Spotify nodes with those from a competitor. I don't know what for example the Apple Music API offers, but its definitely a chance for other services to take over.

[Nolva]

**bleep** U SPOTIFY！！！！！

[DataGhost]

Just wanted to add to this. Managing music is annoying to do by hand because it involves a lot of mundane repetition and frankly that's what computers are for because who the **bleep** has time to do that every day? So I made an app that I've been using for the last few years to automatically manage my own personal playlists. I've been annoyed by and had to work around some needless limitations of the API before, partially by having my app tell me to do some things by hand. Today the rest broke because you just disabled large parts of the API without any heads-up. Thank you very much. When are you going to disable it entirely, or is that a surprise too?

I made this app specifically to manage my playlists on Spotify and you have now disabled parts of it with the helpful message "Please keep in mind that you can not enable transfers of data to another service, except for the purpose of enabling a user to transfer their personal data or the metadata of the user's playlists to another service.", which ironically is exactly what people might be thinking of doing since this change.

This will only push people into reverse engineering the protocol your app uses in order to bypass these arbitrary API restrictions, or push them away to another service entirely. Great job.

[UBer6688]

The worst idea ever. Did u see ur trashy daily mixes? They are full of 1-2 years old tracks. What's the point to continue using spotify? The only way to get REALLY NEW tracks from this pile of garbage was user script to sort it, but now it's gone, no way u did it....

[ReubenF]

Fundamentally disagree with the changes, but pulling the plug without any warning is shockingly irresponsible and pretty inexcusable for a service as popular as this. No warning or deprecation notice at all. Disappointed would be an understatement.

Also, the endpoints should not be considered "deprecated" as the docs label them, as this would imply that they generally continue to work - which they don't. Maybe you should just remove the docs pages in the spirit of this change. 👍

[IlyaMaxstill]

Disgusting changes, I'm leaving Spotify

[kingosticks4]

I know this is fresh and raw for many, but to expect anything else from the Spotify Development team is on you. They've been deprecating and breaking their API like this for 10+ years, the forum is littered with examples. This is what they do. And they can do it because the competition have no comparable offering.

If you are developing a personal app (i.e. one you don't intend to distribute), there are alternate/manual ways to obtain an access token you can (for the moment) still use to access the deprecated APIs. Anyone working on an educational project should be able to hack up something using that.

Feel free to PM me if you need a pointer, my earlier link seems to have mysteriously disappeared from the post. Maybe it's the terrible forum software here, maybe it's their unhelpful mod team (would be better placed providing support).

[jul1an]

I think **for security purposes** it's **important** that you make it impossible to manually copy/paste your playlists and even play them!

[Mordicus]

@igold check out ListenBrainz APIs, they have cool APIs for similar artists and songs, radios and such

[grgbrn]

Man, what a mealy-mouthed blog post

So you say "we're excited about continued engagment" and then without warning cut off most of your most interesting API endpoints. Presumably "more secure platform" means blocking AI bros from abusing/scraping your APIs? And you can't do that with rate-limiting or anything? Just, shut them down entirely. Oof

Sadly, not surprising from Spotify, just disappointing

[cringeCrocodile]

Unlike the blog, my existing Web API app with a pending extension request cannot access the depreciated endpoints either! 😥 So sad...

[igold]

Im very familiar with MusicBrainz and ListenBrainz. Their stuff doesn’t touch Spotify with a 10 foot pole.

[seandev]

I used the recommendations endpoint really really often like 600 requests per day and this change is a hard hit into my infrastructure. Thanks for just destroying that in 1 night.

[_AURA_]

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