February 2026 Spotify for Developers update: thread

[ThePodfather]

Hey everyone, I’ve created this thread to provide an open space for discussion, feedback, concerns or ideas on an upcoming update to Spotify for Developers access.

We’ve shared a blog post that explains what’s changing and why. Please use this thread to share any thoughts about the update.

We'll try our best to answer questions but we're not in a position to respond to every reply in this thread. Where appropriate we will add updates in this post to ensure visibility to all commentators (instead of burying the information in the comments). I am not able to reply to individual DM’s but please note that everything shared here will be read and considered. If related questions or discussions pop up elsewhere in the community, we’ll link or merge them back here so everything stays in one place.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Update:
After some review and following feedback we have received from you below, we have decided to postpone endpoint access changes for existing Development Mode integrations. All other changes, including the Spotify Premium requirement, the authorized user cap and one Client ID per developer limit, will take effect for existing Development Mode integrations as planned. Newly created Development Mode Client IDs remain subject to the updated rules introduced on February 11. We will share additional details on revised timelines as they become available.

You can find the full details in the blog post, and we’ll add links to any supporting documentation there as it becomes available.

[canjeriver]

With the Web API changes, how should we use Remove Playlist Items for a relinked track - or can this only be done manually through the Spotify app now?

From the Track Relinking documentation, you must use the original track ID in any playlist operations, not the relinked ID. However, in the new endpoints, if a track has been relinked, only relinked content is returned, and with no linked_from. So we won’t know that a track has been relinked or what its original ID was.

[LambertSpot]

We have heard you, and after deliberations we are reversing the `external_id` removal. I will provide an update when the reversal is live, and the reference/documentation is updated.

So to be clear - we will not remove `external_id` on the 9th of March, and we will deploy a fix to re-introduce it to newly created development mode apps in the coming days. 

[iceJockey]

How do one get in contact with someone at Spotify developer review team?

Cant send DMs

[paulnics]

Please add back in the playlist tracks endpoint (or items) for public playlist!!!!

[iceJockey]

Well that sounds like there might be a chance of survival for my and many other smaller apps in the developement. As someone else wrote in my dream world there would be something in between 5 testers and unlimited. For mer personally it wouldnt be a problem if I had to add each user manually so if there was only like 100 quotas or 250 quotas or something like that, there would still be a point in keep developing my app.

[JonAgra]

I hear you loud and clear @LambertSpot, but I still feel deprecation of certain fields is still a bad move here. 

For example, I use the API for a personal project to find a particular artist by name. Many of the artists I may search for are ones I do not know of nor have ever heard of previously. However, as you may know, some artists may share the same name or may be presented with a similar but not exact name I search for. So for example, a search for artist "John Smith" (hypothetical situation) may return 20+ "John Smith" artists. I need the popularity field to find the most likely artist I'd be searching for. The intent of my personal app is to discover new artists I've heard of by word of mouth but never listened to. If I don't know which correct artist to pick and listen to, then I'm not going to discover the correct artist. Isn't the whole point of Spotify and the API to be music discovery? By removing these fields, you're limiting music discovery by your users/developers. Not cool in my opinion.

Edit: I found a roundabout way to potentially obtain my goals, but it's going to query the Spotify API more times than I already was before these changes. I now perform a search multiple times (for the new pagination rules) until I return all possible artists for my search. Then, I query albums for each of those artists, then search last.fm for that artist and album combination, which will then return their version of popularity. This seems contrary of your goals for limiting the API, because now I have to query the Spotify API exponentially more times than I previously had to, thus increasing utilization.

[wilcoit]

How can you get to 250K users with a 5 user limit on the developer API? Is this API effectively only for hobbyists? I don't see how you can develop anything innovative or novel with this setup.  

[pawjob]

this is def going in the history books as one of the most schizo things companies has done towards developers.

if this doesnt clearly show the "we have enough users and dont care about losing them so we will do whatever the f*ck we want to developers and customers" mentality i dont know what will.

The only thing you all managed to do is now everyone will go look for alternatives, workarounds, or "worse" scraping and directly using user auth tokens instead of going through the dev sdks where you at least have some way of controlling everything.

I know you all are mad about the annas archive thing, but why do you have to make it our problem?

I wouldnt touch spotify as a consumer, and now not even as a developer.

[BdubsWw]

---

@paulnics wrote:

Please add back in the playlist tracks endpoint (or items) for public playlist!!!!

---

+1 this was such a disappointing removal. Removing access to view spotify generated lists was one thing, but user generated public lists? commmmon

[jamesfolkestad]

Voicing total agreement with this.

---

@OFP wrote:

Hello Spotify Team,

I’m writing to share concerns about the new Web API quota policy and how it significantly impacts individual developers, students, researchers, and small teams.

As it stands today:

• There is no access to extended quota for new developers
• There is no path to publicly launch a small app
• There is no indie/individual developer tier
• There are no clear alternatives provided in the developer dashboard
• And the requirement of 250k+ MAUs effectively excludes anyone who is not already a large, established company

To many in the community, this feels less like platform protection and more like a complete shutdown of opportunities for new development.

Impact on Innovation

Historically, major innovation in tech ecosystems doesn’t come only from large corporations. It comes from:

• indie developers
• students
• hobbyists
• research groups
• early‑stage startups
• non‑commercial experiments

These groups create tools, dashboards, discovery features, accessibility utilities, analytics projects, and creative experiences that help the entire ecosystem evolve. Under the current policy, this avenue is essentially closed.

A Serious Emerging Problem: Black‑Market Account Sales

Because there is no legitimate way for small developers to obtain extended quota, some developers have reported that:

Spotify Developer accounts with extended quota are now being sold on black‑market channels, often for very high prices.

This situation is a direct consequence of the lack of an official access path. It does not improve platform security — in fact, it encourages misuse and unauthorized access.

Important Questions

1. Is Spotify intentionally moving toward a closed, partner‑only API model?
   Clear communication on this direction would help developers plan realistically.

2. Is an indie, hobbyist, or individual developer tier planned?
   With reasonable quotas, MAU limits, and a transparent approval process.

3. Why is there no legitimate path to publish small public or non‑commercial projects?
   Even a limited, sandboxed public tier would be extremely helpful.

4. How does the current policy promote innovation rather than discourage it?
   The message perceived by many developers right now is:
   “Unless you are already big, you’re not welcome.”

Suggestion

Please consider creating an official indie developer tier, offering:

• a reasonable but capped extended quota
• a small MAU limit appropriate for non‑commercial projects
• a clear and transparent approval workflow
• strong anti‑abuse guidelines
• potentially a small fee if needed

This would support innovation, education, and experimentation while maintaining platform security.

---

Ask

For apps that grow Spotify's distribution, retention, engagement, etc. -> there should be a pathway for serious developers to build things they're passionate about. 

Extractive apps should be blocked, you shouldn't be able to port/train data. But for those of us who want to build for the music lovers on Spotify, scale our impact, and build the long-tail use cases that don't fall into the roadmap for a platform at Spotify's scale - but matter deeply to large, underserved Spotify subscriber communities - I think smart gating & approvals can be extremely meaningful to the world, and the people who need the music & tools the most. 

A vibrant developer eco that supports Spotify's strengths also seems hard to beat when competing with other DSPs. I want to build on Spotify & support it, but if Apple Music currently offers the only pathway to grow impact, then there's no real other option.

For the love of music!

[LambertSpot]

---

@JonAgra wrote:

I hear you loud and clear @LambertSpot, but I still feel deprecation of certain fields is still a bad move here. 

For example, I use the API for a personal project to find a particular artist by name. Many of the artists I may search for are ones I do not know of nor have ever heard of previously. However, as you may know, some artists may share the same name or may be presented with a similar but not exact name I search for. So for example, a search for artist "John Smith" (hypothetical situation) may return 20+ "John Smith" artists. I need the popularity field to find the most likely artist I'd be searching for. The intent of my personal app is to discover new artists I've heard of by word of mouth but never listened to. If I don't know which correct artist to pick and listen to, then I'm not going to discover the correct artist. Isn't the whole point of Spotify and the API to be music discovery? By removing these fields, you're limiting music discovery by your users/developers. Not cool in my opinion.

Edit: I found a roundabout way to potentially obtain my goals, but it's going to query the Spotify API more times than I already was before these changes. I now perform a search multiple times (for the new pagination rules) until I return all possible artists for my search. Then, I query albums for each of those artists, then search last.fm for that artist and album combination, which will then return their version of popularity. This seems contrary of your goals for limiting the API, because now I have to query the Spotify API exponentially more times than I previously had to, thus increasing utilization.

---

While not documented, the search result is ranked based on relevance. So while `popularity` is not provided, the top result would be our best guess on what you are looking for. 

So when you search for "John Smith" and get a bunch of artists with the same name, we will provide what we believe is the best match at the top (first item in the list). 

This still does not help you understand the `popularity` of each artist individually - but perhaps the clarification on search ranking help you with your personal project.

[glenvanbrumelen]

Hi,

I’m wondering why i can’t add an app to my Spotify Developers even though I have yet to add a single one, Was this mode removed?

Thanks 

[LambertSpot]

---

@glenvanbrumelen wrote:

Hi,

I’m wondering why i can’t add an app to my Spotify Developers even though I have yet to add a single one, Was this mode removed?

Thanks 

---

Are you not able to click the "Create app" button on your dashboard - could you describe a bit more what you are doing, and where you run in to a blocker?

[LambertSpot]

---

@OFP wrote:

Hello Spotify Team,

I’m writing to share concerns about the new Web API quota policy and how it significantly impacts individual developers, students, researchers, and small teams.

As it stands today:

• There is no access to extended quota for new developers
• There is no path to publicly launch a small app
• There is no indie/individual developer tier
• There are no clear alternatives provided in the developer dashboard
• And the requirement of 250k+ MAUs effectively excludes anyone who is not already a large, established company

To many in the community, this feels less like platform protection and more like a complete shutdown of opportunities for new development.

Impact on Innovation

Historically, major innovation in tech ecosystems doesn’t come only from large corporations. It comes from:

• indie developers
• students
• hobbyists
• research groups
• early‑stage startups
• non‑commercial experiments

These groups create tools, dashboards, discovery features, accessibility utilities, analytics projects, and creative experiences that help the entire ecosystem evolve. Under the current policy, this avenue is essentially closed.

A Serious Emerging Problem: Black‑Market Account Sales

Because there is no legitimate way for small developers to obtain extended quota, some developers have reported that:

Spotify Developer accounts with extended quota are now being sold on black‑market channels, often for very high prices.

This situation is a direct consequence of the lack of an official access path. It does not improve platform security — in fact, it encourages misuse and unauthorized access.

Important Questions

1. Is Spotify intentionally moving toward a closed, partner‑only API model?
   Clear communication on this direction would help developers plan realistically.

2. Is an indie, hobbyist, or individual developer tier planned?
   With reasonable quotas, MAU limits, and a transparent approval process.

3. Why is there no legitimate path to publish small public or non‑commercial projects?
   Even a limited, sandboxed public tier would be extremely helpful.

4. How does the current policy promote innovation rather than discourage it?
   The message perceived by many developers right now is:
   “Unless you are already big, you’re not welcome.”

Suggestion

Please consider creating an official indie developer tier, offering:

• a reasonable but capped extended quota
• a small MAU limit appropriate for non‑commercial projects
• a clear and transparent approval workflow
• strong anti‑abuse guidelines
• potentially a small fee if needed

This would support innovation, education, and experimentation while maintaining platform security.

---

Thank you for taking the time to write this up. Since April there has been a gap in the API offering - you either qualify for extended quota mode and its business criteria, or you keep your app in development mode.

Some people were able to use the generous limits in development mode in conjunction with the client credentials to scale up an indie project beyond the user limit on the application. These apps might have been better served by the extended quota mode - but were unable to apply for it due to not meeting the criteria. Others trying to access user data were struggling with the 25 user limit, and unable to reach the scale required to meet the business criteria. Basically - the path that once existed from development mode to extended quota mode was severed for all developers without established businesses - just as you pointed out in your post.

With the changes announced for the 9th of March, you would see changes to the development mode. Even before that date, limits were reigned in and this impacted those apps that were using development mode in a way that was not intended - but out of necessity as no other alternative essentially existed (as described above). Some of these limits were too restrictive, and we have loosened it a bit, but some are still having issues (because they are not as generous as before the change).

Here is the gap, just as you (@OFP) have outlined quite well in your post. There exists an offering for personal/hobby use with limits to requests, data access, and number of users that suit that use case. There are further improvements and tweaks needed, but the offering is there. There also exists an offering for established business looking to integrate with our APIs, as long as they meet the criteria. This leaves a gap for what is bigger than personal, but smaller than business. Or as you suggested, an "indie developer tier". I want to acknowledge that we see this as well.

┌─────────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────────┐
│  Development Mode   │     │         ?           │     │ Extended Quota Mode │
│    Personal Use     │     │   Indie Developer   │     │ Established Business│
└─────────────────────┘     └─────────────────────┘     └─────────────────────┘

Unfortunately I don't have anything concrete to share around this, but we are aware of it, and we are talking about it. I know it does not provide much comfort if you had an "indie app" that was using development mode, that is now being impacted by the changes. I also understand if you are looking at other APIs that provide you with what you need now if your app does not fit within our current offerings.

Until there is a change - I at least hope it is more clear what we have, and what we don't have. I don't want anyone to start their indie developer journey in development mode - only to find that there is no viable path to take it further than that. We are working on making these things more clear on the developer portal as well. 

[musicisair]

Due to these moves by Spotify, I bet someone will create an anonymous cryptocurrency payments-backed API for accessing this Spotify data. They'll bootstrap their dataset off of Anna's Archive, then have a trove of premium Spotify accounts they'll use to scrap the Spotify UI.

Indie developers not being tied to Spotify directly anymore will likely use this new external API to integrate with other streaming platforms, and Spotify will loose customers to alternative providers.

And now Spotify be in a worse off position than you are today.

[wilcoit]

LambertSpot I do appreciate your explanation, but it's a bit late. Unfortunately, I have built two very nice apps that I cannot get off the ground due to the limitation. Is there any path at the moment for a review/exception? I really don't want to refactor for another service.

[zackfischmann]

Hi Team,

I want to share a specific case study of how these changes are affecting a real business built on Spotify's ecosystem, because I think it illustrates a gap that might not be visible from the inside.

My name is Zack Fischmann. I've been a working musician for 25 years and a software engineer for 10. I have 5 albums on Spotify as an artist and have been using the app since ~2013. A few years ago I started a company called Magic Nothing to help independent artists navigate music marketing because all my music buddies were asking me for help. Our motto is Music Marketing Doesn't Have to Suck.

One of our biggest challenges has been helping artists get over their skepticism about Spotify and see what the platform has to offer. We've spent years doing that. We built a 76K organic follower community on Instagram around Spotify marketing education, helped thousands of artists design and launch ad campaigns that drive millions of people off social media and onto Spotify, and have been active advocates for the platform because we genuinely believe in what it offers artists. We built a business around this education work, and it became a full-time job within 2 weeks of announcing the project.

That work led us to build the Magic Nothing platform, a curation marketplace connecting independent artists with genuine playlist curators. We went to market on the dev mode API because we needed to move fast. In under 3 months we went from $1.5K to $16.7K in weekly revenue, with 600+ active curators and 3,500 artists on the platform. 50-75% of our revenue goes directly to curators, and everyone works together releasing, curating, and promoting music on Spotify to listeners all over the world. It's effectively a free advertising engine for Spotify that also rewards artists and quality curators.

Here's where it gets complicated.

On the same day Spotify for Developers announced these API changes, Spotify for Artists reached out to us about a paid partnership to create content promoting Spotify's tools. We're literally being asked by Spotify to champion the platform while simultaneously losing the API access that powers our platform's core intelligence. With these updates, we're losing playlist quality scoring, track verification, genre analysis, and our recommendation engine.

We've been building fallbacks for March 9. We'll survive. But the intelligence layer of our platform goes dark -- we lose the ability to verify that curators are providing legitimate information, to score playlist quality, and to match artists with the right playlists/curators. This ultimately pushes us away from Spotify in order to build replacements. 

The natural answer is Extended Quota Mode, but the application requires a minimum of 250K MAUs. We're at 15K according to Google Analytics. The form literally blocks submission below the 250k threshold. We don't want to lie to submit it.

We've spent weeks reaching out through every channel we can find. Friends and former colleagues at Spotify, the S4A team that initially reached out to us, developer community contacts. Every path leads back to the same form we can't submit. One of the developers who helped design the form told us directly not to bother with it. He was laid off from Spotify two years ago.

I want to be direct about what this feels like from the outside: we built a business that drives users to Spotify, advocates for the platform, and is being asked by Spotify itself to promote Spotify. And we're being cut off from the tools we need with no viable path to Extended Quota because of a hard MAU floor that doesn't account for businesses like ours.

Everybody loses here. Our artists lose better curation. Our curators lose quality tools. Spotify loses a platform that actively drives listeners to it. And we lose the intelligence that makes our marketplace trustworthy.

Is there a path for sub-250K MAU apps with real commercial usage and demonstrated investment in Spotify's ecosystem? We're not asking for special treatment... just a door that isn't locked by a threshold we'll hit in a few months but can't meet today.

Appreciate you creating this space for feedback. Happy to provide any additional context about our platform, usage patterns, or the specific endpoints affected.

Zack Fischmann
Founder, Developer & CEO, Magic Nothing

[JoaoAranha]

I feel your pain, maybe we can hold hands and with the power of your numbers informed at your post, maybe we can make some "noise" to at least our plead be taken in consideration... The worst is make a distinction of who is able to pay for premium and who is not is out. Simple as that... We need to join forces to make them hear our pleads... We are not asking for anything that all other major services are already doing that is to make "tiers" of access to resources... Here is the thread i created to try to make our voices heard... Best of luck to your app and thx in advance...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/Spotify-Create-an-Indie-Developer-Tier-amp-R...

[JoaoAranha]

I really dont get the part that a simple switch at Spotify 4 Developers to indie developers cant be done, even we wanting to provide the same informations and documentations but in a personals instance, since we are not companies, to enable us to apply to even a half or half of a half extended quota that probably will cover all our uses to at least dream with an full extended quota someday... We are not asking for a special treatment, with not providing documentation, personal docs, access to review the apps claiming to this "indie quota", checking a form with "i agree", we are not the bad guys, we are the ones wanting to keep it fair, and the actual point is not... Let's be honest, it's 2 changes in the internal DB and 4 words in the legal papers to create an Indie Quota, so for heaven sakes, why not ? Best regards 

[newbie_duck]

I've discovered this service MusicBrainz (https://musicbrainz.org/) which for me solves a lot of problems for my App (not the 205K MAU). there is an API and an extensive database of artists information and they seem to like developers ! I've got to refactor (🥴 but better longterm) and use MusicBrainz as my Master then I can refocus my app on Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music🎉. Spotify will be the poor cousin with manual updates for consumers.

I'm so over with complaining now, I've got a better data architecture for expansion. Thank you Spotify for removing yourself from the centre of my world. 🥳.