Spotify API: retrieve Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists

[sushitime]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

CA

Device

Windows Desktop Computer

My Question or Issue

Hi,

I'm using the Spotify developer web API, but I'm unable to find a way to retrieve the discover weekly and release radar playlists.  I've tried using the console to "get current user playlists" by setting the limit to 50 and offset to 0, enabled all scopes for the auth token but didn't get any of the two playlists:
https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-current-user-playlists/
I have 38 private playlists pop-up total, so I know it isn't a limit issue.

I've took a short look around the other requests, but none of them seem to give me what I want (but maybe I'm speaking too soon on this one).

Please help and thank you in advance.

[spotifyjosh · Accepted solution]

Hi @sushitime, welcome to the forum. It's possible to find those playlists using our Search API. Keep in mind that to do this, you'll need to use an access token obtained through one of the user authorization flows (like the authorization code flow).

[sushitime]

Awesome, thank you!

[AverageUnknown]

I tried to query the Search endpoint with q="Release+Radar"&type=playlist and I'm getting a bunch of extra results from user playlists, when all I want is the Spotify-curated list. Am I missing something that would help filter that list down to the one I'm looking for?

[ogostos]

Have you tried to get playlist by its spotify id? Seems it doesn't change.

[levvvski]

Any update on this?

[tintin10q]

There should really be a filter to only get spotify generated playlist

[lukens]

When I try getting the playlist by id it has no items in it. Same with Discover Weekly.

I think I’m using the correct ids, because the playlist name is correct in the response. I got it from the share url.

[Ximzend]

Hi @lukens

Since November 27, 2024, apps that had no quota extension before that date, are not able to get algorithmic and Spotify-owned editorial playlists. You can read more about this change on this page.

Edit: I earlier said "newly created apps", but this is wrong. Even existing apps without a extension cannot use those APIs anymore.

[lukens]

Ah, ok, that’s disappointing. Though, in my use case I can work around it with the small manual step of adding it to my own playlist first.

I did also chuckle at “We’re excited about the continued engagement we’re seeing to learn, experiment, innovate, and deliver unique experiences with Spotify”, it seems that sentiment didn’t last long, given the recent changes to extension approval, which will sadly shut off the majority of developers from ever being able to deliver a unique experience with Spotify (as they first need to deliver it to 25K monthly users without Spotify).

[Sc0rpagion]

@lukens Not even 25K, 250K. The stifling of innovation is inevitable once a private commercial entity fulfil such an important role as access to art. Spotify became the de facto way to consume music in the last few years, their monopoly on access to music is unquestionable, so now their terms about the consumption of music have essentially become society's terms about the consumption of music.

Twenty years ago there were two options, libraries, and purchasing music. The latter was accessible to the economically advantaged and the former was a lifeline for the rest. In that context, both provide a lot less access to a variety of music than we have now, but at least there was an equaliser between the two lesser extremes. Now through lobbying, defunding and a general disdain for public ownership, we've created one extreme, a monopoly, and the owner of that monopoly is not conscientious of the power they've inherited.