Spotify for Developers
Spotify for Developers enables developers to build with the 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts and more from Spotify. Spotify for Developers offers along with full documentation a Web API, Ads AI, Android & iOS SDK, Web Playback SDK, Embeds and the ability for selected partners to create Commercial Hardware along with help from Design and Accessibility Guidelines. Developers can sign up and then get access to the Dashboard where they can create or manage their applications including getting stats, edit settings, add users during development mode or request an extension to allow their application to be available for a wider audience. Developers can also check out the Community where they can read the latest posts, talk with fellow developers on the discussion forum, check out the latest videos and events or even share their ideas and feedback along with any projects.
Web API
Spotify for Developers has a Web API where developers can retrieve metadata from Spotify content, get recommendations, create or manage playlists and more. Documentation includes how to get started along with explaining some of the concepts of the Web API such as access tokens and scopes. Documentation also includes tutorials to understand how to get access tokens including authorisation code flow with or without proof key for code exchange along with client credentials and implicit grant flows. Reference for the Web API is also available in the documentation where you can also try out the endpoints which include those for albums, artists, audiobooks, categories, chapters of audio books, episodes of podcasts, genres, markets, player for playback control, playlists, search, shows for podcasts, tracks and users.
Ads API
Spotify for Developers also has an Ads API where developers can mange and report on Spotify Ad Studio Campaigns. Spotify Ad Studio allows anyone to target the millions of listeners on Spotify where you can even use licensed background tracks, get access to voice actors and professional audio mixing for free and target audience based on demographics, interests and behaviours along with being able to track and report any results easily. Documentation for the Ads API includes quick starts and guides to get you started such as how to authenticate and information about what is supported. Reference for the Ads API is also available with endpoints for ad accounts, ad sets, ads, getting assets, campaigns, estimates, reports and targets.
Web Playback SDK
Spotify for Developers offers a Web Playback SDK for developers to use to create a new player in Spotify Connect to stream content to from Spotify inside a web application using JavaScript, along with being able to control playback and get metadata about what is currently playing. Documentation includes concepts and how to build a Spotify Player inside a web app along with reference for features of the Web Playback SDK including events and objects.
Android SDK
Spotify for Developers has an Android SDK which allows Android developers to interact with the Spotify application running in the background along with getting meta data for currently playing track and control playback. Documentation includes how to get started with creating an Android app to use the Android SDK, source code along with tutorials on authorisation, application lifecycle and more plus there are Javadocs for the Authorisation and App Remote libraries.
iOS SDK
Spotify for Developers has an iOS SDK which allows iOS developers to interact with the Spotify application running in the background and offload complexity such as playback, authentication, networking and offline caching. Documentation includes getting started with creating an iOS app to use the iOS SDK, along with concepts on application lifecycle and token refresh along with tutorials on advanced user authentication and making remote calls plus there is an iOS SDK Reference available on GitHub.
Embeds
Spotify for Developers also offers Embeds that allow developers add audio to their websites with interactive content from Spotify such as a podcast, album or other audio content such as playlists. It is possible to create a simple embed by copying a few lines of HTML from the Spotify application into a website or there is an iFrame API to allow web applications to dynamically load, play and pause content and there is an oEmbed API to handle links that have been shared by users. Reference for the iFrame API allows you to try it with a URL from Spotify or you can look at the methods and events for the oEmbed API.
Commercial Hardware
Spotify for Developers supports Commercial Hardware from select partners to enable devices to be integrated with Spotify's Embedded Software Development Kit to enable listeners to use the device to play their content on and control any playback. From the documentation companies can get an overview of the process to be able to implement Spotify in any devices along with implementation details such a requirements, guides including Spotify Connect, API reference and more.
Design Guidelines
Spotify for Developers has Design Guidelines to make it easy for developers to integrate Spotify in their platform while respecting their brand and legal or licensing restrictions and ensure that all Spotify users receive the same user experience no matter hich platform they listen on. Guidelines include how to use the content from Spotify along with using their logo and colours, naming restrictions and more.
Accessibility Guidelines
Spotify for Developers has Accessibility Guidelines to help developers extend the Spotify experience regardless of the manner in the way an application is used or how users interface with their devices. Guidelines include quick wins such as alt-text in images, medium-term wins such as navigation improvements and intensive wins such as working with assistive technologies and understand accessibility as part of the software development process.
Spotify.NetStandard
Spotify for Developers is supported by many developers and this includes third-party SDKs that make integrating Spotify functionality such as authorisation and access to the endpoints even easier. Spotify.NetStandard available on Nuget is a package written by me that allows .NET developers to take advantage of the Spotify Web API in their applications using the latest version of .NET. This could be in the browser with Blazor, on mobile with .NET MAUI or on the desktop with Windows App SDK and it is possible to down-level to .NET Framework 4.8 if needed. Full source code is available on GitHub GitHub along with integration tests for Spotify.NetStandard using Spotify for Developers.
RoguePlanetoid Podcast
Spotify for Developers is also the subject an episode of the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where you can listen to an overview of many of the features mentioned here as a companion to this article. My aim is to get more developers using Spotify for Developers in their applications this could be .NET developers using third-parry libraries like Spotify.NetStandard, JavaScript developers using the Web Playback SDK or for other platforms where SDKs may be available or create an implementation themselves using Spotify for Developers.