libspotify has been deprecated a few years ago, but Spotify hasn't provided viable alternatives in the meantime to programmatically stream content through an external application using a premium account.

LibreSpot seems a viable alternative for some of the features provided by libspotify, but it's not an official library and it doesn't offer much support if something changes or is broken on Spotify's end.

The main issue is that there are still many developers out there (open-source and not) who need an official library to build 3rd-party applications that can stream music through a Spotify premium account. Spotify Connect is a solution to some of these problems, but not all of them - it requires another device running an official Spotify app that can stream content to a receiver, it doesn't support the case where you want to run your own stand-alone player.

The deprecation of libspotify has resulted in multiple issues and dropped support for several pieces of hardware and software, such as:

• Hi-Fi and smart speakers (example 1, example 2)
• Smart TV apps (example)
• Games with external music support (example)
• Spotify plugins in other players (example 1, example 2, example 3)
• Cars with integrated Spotify support (example 1, example 2, example 3)