Request for Guidance on Approved Audio Access for Limited Research / Evaluation

[lucas1021]

Hi Spotify Developer Team,

I’m building a Spotify-integrated music experience using the Spotify Web API for playback, metadata, and user interaction signals. At this stage, the project is in a research and evaluation phase, focused on understanding whether certain high-level audio characteristics correlate with listener behavior in a meaningful way.

As part of this evaluation, we’re exploring non-consumptive audio analysis on a small, capped set of tracks (on the order of thousands, not millions). The analysis would be performed offline and asynchronously, with no audio retained or redistributed — only derived, non-audio data used internally for testing and validation.

We initially attempted to use preview_url for this purpose, but we’re seeing that previews are unavailable for all tracks in our test set, which limits our ability to proceed.

Before going any further, I wanted to ask:

• Is there an approved mechanism or program for developers to request temporary or limited audio access for research/evaluation purposes?

• If not, is there a specific team or channel we should be speaking with to determine whether this type of work is permitted or supported?

We want to be very careful to stay aligned with Spotify’s Developer Policy and avoid building anything that relies on unsupported or unintended access patterns.

Any guidance on the correct path forward would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time,
lucas