Play Spotify

Listen to music from your Spotify Premium music account.

Spotify has disabled the API access for the skill, you will need to create your own. Instructions below.

To use this skill currently you will need to create your own application using The Spotify developer dashboard due to Spotify policy (see Spotify Authentication reason for some details). Detailed instructions are available below under Personal Access Token.

Listen to music from your Spotify Premium music account

About

Stream your favorite music from the popular Spotify music service. Spotify Premium users can search and play tracks from their own playlists or the huge Spotify music library.

You can also control your Mycroft device using the Spotify Connect system. So play DJ on your phone while listening on Mycroft!

This skill doesn't do any playback

This skill works with the Spotify Connect protocol to interact with Spotify devices, but doesn't perform any playback itself. If you want playback on the hosting Mycroft device, you'll need to set up a player yourself.

For Picroft users, raspotify is a good choice.

Install it and then make changes to /etc/default/raspotify as follows

• It is recommended to set the DEVICE_NAME to the name of the Mycroft unit (as registered at home.mycroft.ai) for automatic identification:

`DEVICE_NAME=""

• set your Spotify username and password under OPTIONS

OPTIONS="--username <My Username> --password <My Password>"

You make sound work with raspotify you may need to edit /lib/systemd/system/raspotify.service and there change User and Group from raspotifyto pi.

For desktop users the official spotify player works well.

The exception to this is the Mark-1 which is shipped with a spotify player library.

Authorization:

This Skill uses two different methods of authentication. Both need to be filled in correctly for the Skill to function correctly.

Personal Access Token

Creating access token

From the Spotify developer dashboard

1. Click "CREATE AN APP"
2. Fill out the create application form
3. Click on the new app and choose EDIT SETTINGS
4. Under Redirect URIs add https://localhost:8888

More info can be found here.

The config will by default be stored in the XDG_CONFIG directory, which is often ~/.config, so by default the generated files are found in ~/.config/spotipy/. If you wish to use another directory you can set the environment variable SPOTIFY_SKILL_CREDS_DIR to the directory where you'd like to store the config. This is useful when running in docker for example.

Install the beta version

Install the most recent version of this skill by telling mycroft:

"install the beta version of the spotify skill"

Connecting spotify skill

General Setup

After installing mycroft-spotify, from the mycroft-core folder run the auth.py script in the mycroft-spotify folder

source venv-activate.sh
python /opt/mycroft/skills/mycroft-spotify.forslund/auth.py

The script will try to guide you through connecting a developer account to the skill and store the credentials locally.

Mark-1

The Mark-1 has a separate service user for Mycroft so the commands needed to run the auth script is as follows:

sudo su mycroft
source /opt/venvs/mycroft-core/bin/activate
python /opt/mycroft/skills/mycroft-spotify.forslund/auth.py

Username and password to authenticate a Mycroft device

In addition to account details, Mycroft needs to be authorized as a device for Spotify. To do this, we use your username and password for Spotify. These must be entered as well, or you will receive an error message like:

I couldn't find any Spotify devices. This skill requires a Spotify Premium account to work properly.

when you try to use the Skill on a Mycroft device.

If you log in to Spotify using Facebook, your password will be your Facebook password, but your Spotify device username. You can get your Spotify device username here.

NOTE: You MUST have a Premium Spotify account to use this Skill. It will NOT work with a free Spotify account.

Examples

• "What Spotify devices are available?"
• "Play discover weekly"
• "Play Hello Nasty on Spotify"
• "Play something by Covenant"
• "Play the album Hello Nasty on Spotify"
• "Play my liked songs"

Commands

Playing music:

• "Play something by Covenant" - Will queue songs by Covenant
• "Play Background" - Will play either your playlist named "Background" or the first song result
• "Play Hello Nasty on Spotify" - Will play first song result matching the query

Controls:

• "Play the next/previous song" - Will skip the track either forward or backwards, respectively
• "Stop/Pause the music" - Will pause the current track
• "Turn on/off spotify shuffle" - Will enable/disable shuffling on the current song queue

Misc:

• "What Spotify devices are available?" - Will list currently available Spotify devices

Credits

@forslund The Mycroft devs

Category

Music

Tags

#spotify #music

Spotify Authentication reason

Spotify disabled my API access for the skill in August 2020, it was violating their Terms of Service by enabling voice control. I must have missed this back in 2017 when I created the skill. With some luck I can convince Spotify that since the skill is totally non-commercial and open source we may have a single API key for the skill.