Announcement

**jabben** · 2010-06-15, 22:36

Finally!

The was no problem at all installing or start using this fine this longed-for plugin on my Ubuntu 32bit-server. I'm currently enjoying a seamless mix of local and remote songs. Splendid!

/j

**erland** · 2010-06-16, 00:25

Originally posted by Triode

Please provide feedback and let me know if this plugin is interesting to people...

Well, it's the biggest enhancement to my Squeezebox experience for a very long time, so it's definitely VERY interesting to me. It's worth every dollar I had to spent on the Spotify Premium account to make it work. This is one of those plugins that's totally going to change how I find new music and listen to it. Really great work with this, thanks for all your efforts.

Just for convenience, I'll mention the issues you have already got via mail earlier which haven't been solved yet, just to avoid duplicate reports from other users and make it possible for other beta testers to comment on them. There isn't anything in this list which you haven't already seen.

The web interface:
============
2.
It would be nice to get album art in search results, at least in album lists, is that possible ? It works on SqueezePlay but not in web interface.

3.
It would be nice with a "Play" button beside albums in search result, should the the same as the "All songs" item in the sub menu, possibly an "add" button might be nice too.

4.
Would it be possible to add functionality so you can build a Spotify playlist and save it to spotify ?

5.
If possible, I would prefer that search results was rendered the same way as in standard library. So album lists shows the album and artist as separate clickable links and track lists shows the track, album and artist as separate clickable links. This would make it really easy to switch between the different search types, for example start by searching for a known track and then click on the artist list of one of the matches to list all albums for that artist.

6.
It would be nice with a "Play" button beside a playlist in search result, should the the same as the "All songs" item in the sub menu, possibly an "add" button might be nice too.

7.
Similar to point 5 it would also be nice if I could see artist and album information in current playlist for each track, currently it only displays the track title and album cover.

8.
After adding a track as a favorite it looks a bit strange in when expanding "Favorites" menu in default skin, it looks ok in classic skin. I suspect it might have to do with a missing icon or something similar. The "Spotify" entry in the screenshot is the DSBridge connection, it's the "Love Doesn't Ask Why" entry that's the one connected to your plugin. Here is the screenshot: http://erland.isaksson.info/arkiv/sl...fyFavorite.png

SqueezePlay interface:
===============
10.
Would it be possible to add a "Similar artists on Spotify" item in the context menu on all artists (local and spotify) that listed the "Similar Artists" from spotify ? That way it would more user friendly to find similar music as the one you already have in the local library without having to revert to searching that needs you to enter text. Enter text works good on touch interface but not so good on Radio, Boom, Controller and Touch IR-remote interface.

11.
Would it be possible to add a "Albums on Spotify" item in the context menu on all artists (local and spotify) that listed albums for the specified artist from spotify ? That way it would more user friendly to find new music from artists you already have in the local library without having to revert to searching that needs you to enter text.

12.
Is it possible to control the rendering of album lists ? It would be nice if albums where shown on multiple lines in same way as My Music/Albums menu lists albums

13.
Is it possible to control the rendering of track lists ? It would be nice if tracks where shown on multiple lines in same way as current playlist lists tracks

14.
To make searching a bit better, it would be nice if it remembered the last 20 search texts I've used so I could reuse them without having to enter all the letters manually again.

15.
In addition to point 14, maybe it could even remember which Spotify artists/albums you have listen to before and the ones in your Spotify playlsits and make it possible to browse among those by Albums or by Artists/Albums ?

Other things:
========
16.
It doesn't work with synchronized players or multiple players by design, so if any user have problem with that, it's a limitation of the Spotify API as I've understood it. It might be a good idea to give a better error/warning message if someone tries to use multiple players.

iPeng interface
==================
19.
In iPeng the Spotify icon in the "Radio" menu isn't shown, it just shows the default radio icon.

20.
In the "What's new" menu I have some problem in iPeng if it's only a single track. It works for multiple tracks but for entries that only have a single track I just get the heading and not the clickable track itself. The heading contains the track title but I cannot click on the heading to play it. After some time I realized I can hit "Play Shuffle" at the top to play the track.

21.
Album lists doesn't show the album cover in iPeng. It works perfectly on the Controller though, it shows the album list text entries first and after a second the album covers are shown.

**Philip Meyer** · 2010-06-16, 07:49

Announce: Spotify Premium Plugin (Beta)

>This is one of those plugins that's totally going to change how I
>find new music and listen to it.
>
I use Spotify to try some music for a new band that I have heard of somewhere else, but don't use it to discover new artists/albums. i.e. I find it good for when I know what I am looking for.

Whilst it's undoubtedly a great new way to listen to music, what features does it provide to enable you to discover different music to listen to?

I think the following are possible ways to discover new music with Spotify - which of these are possible with the plugin that are changing how you discover new music?:

1. Play Spotify Radio based on selected genres and decades.
I don't use this in Spotify, because the genres are not specific enough, and playlist is too random. There are plenty of other plugins that provide similar functionality (eg. lastFM), providing more control and have more obscure artists in their DB.

2. Navigate to an artist and find similar artists.

3. Navigate to an artist and play artist radio (plays a mix of similar artists).

4. Browse Spotify "What's new" music.
The music is often not new music, but music recently added to Spotify's library. There's not many to choose from, and they come up randomised.

5. Browse Spotify "Top Albums" and "Top Tracks" music.
The list always has the same top pop acts listed, which aren't very interesting to me.

I haven't tried the plugin because I haven't got a premium account yet, but might try it some time.

Phil

**elziko** · 2010-06-16, 09:09

Great news, thanks!

I know you mention in the first post that this works with Spotiy premium - can I double check it doesn't work with Spotify unlimited?

Thanks!

**erland** · 2010-06-16, 09:44

Originally posted by Philip Meyer

>This is one of those plugins that's totally going to change how I
>find new music and listen to it.
>
I use Spotify to try some music for a new band that I have heard of somewhere else, but don't use it to discover new artists/albums. i.e. I find it good for when I know what I am looking for.

Since this is pretty new, I haven't used Spotify much yet, I got my premium account last week when I got the beta from Triode. The main advantage as I see it is that I can listen to something directly on my main music listening system to see if I like it, without Spotify I have to use illegal methods to download music files or preview the 30 first seconds with bad audio quality through laptop speakers.

I think "Similar Artists" has most potential to actually find completely new music and possibly also "What's New" and the "Top Artists/Albums/Tracks" functionality.

I think it's going to reach is true potential when it's somewhat more integrated with my main music library, so I can select similar artists from Spotify to one of the artists I already have in my local library. Possibly an integration with LastFM similar artists functionality might also make sense, I'm not sure how good the Spotify similar artists functionality are yet.

The Spotify plugin currently don't have a year or genre browse method, but if that's possible it would be a great enhancement if the genre information is good enough. Currently the plugin supports "Whats New", "Top xxx" and search for Albums, Artists and Tracks.

I think US and possibly also UK users somtimes forget that LastFM streaming and Pandora streaming where similar functionality already is available isn't supported in all countries, for example not where I live.

**paddaw** · 2010-06-16, 19:33

Ubuntu 10.04 32bit. Works perfectly. Easy install and great UI. THANK YOU!

**Triode** · 2010-06-16, 19:44

Comenting back on the use case - the killer feature for me is the 320k streams. I've played with Napster in the uk and its good for causal listening of many artists, but I didn't find I could listen at length on a hifi to those streams (128k wma when I tried). 320k streams is a whole different level to me and it makes it a reasonable case for a spotify premium subscription.

So my target use case was to stream high quality streams via a transporter, external dac and tube based hifi (triodes!) - this is what motivated me to write the plugin...

I will be working through the plugin UI enhancements suggested by Erland and others over the next couple of weeks - would we grateful of any other feedback.

**Philip Meyer** · 2010-06-16, 20:17

Announce: Spotify Premium Plugin (Beta)

>I know you mention in the first post that this works with Spotiy
>premium - can I double check it doesn't work with Spotify unlimited?
>
I'd like to know that too. Spotify Premium is a whopping £10 a month, whereas Spotify Unlimited is £5.

I predominantly listen to local music, rather than internet streaming, but if the Squeezebox UI were to provide new ways of discovering new music through Spotify, then I may be tempted with Unlimited.

Spotify Premium - Spotify (US)

https://www.spotify.com/uk/get-spotify/overview/

Spotify Premium is a digital music service that gives you access to ad-free music listening of millions of songs.

I wondered if a registration is required for streaming because of advertisements. Both Premium and Unlimited are add-free.

Premium is needed for the 320kbps streaming, though.

**erland** · 2010-06-16, 20:46

Originally posted by Philip Meyer

>I know you mention in the first post that this works with Spotiy
>premium - can I double check it doesn't work with Spotify unlimited?
>
I'd like to know that too. Spotify Premium is a whopping £10 a month, whereas Spotify Unlimited is £5.

I predominantly listen to local music, rather than internet streaming, but if the Squeezebox UI were to provide new ways of discovering new music through Spotify, then I may be tempted with Unlimited.

I'm not 100% sure but since it says that mobile applications only are supported with premium account, I suspect premium is required to use the API and thus to use this plugin.

If someone have Unlimited it should be easy to try and let us know for sure.

**Triode** · 2010-06-16, 20:47

Originally posted by Philip Meyer

>I know you mention in the first post that this works with Spotiy
>premium - can I double check it doesn't work with Spotify unlimited?
>
I'd like to know that too. Spotify Premium is a whopping £10 a month, whereas Spotify Unlimited is £5.

Short answer is I don't know.. It is based on libspotify: http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/overview/ which definately needs a subscription. The documentation for this says it needs a premium account, but it was written before the unlimited one was launched.

Perhaps an unlimited subscriber could try it out and let us know?

**goxboxlive** · 2010-06-16, 21:27

Trouble running on debian 64

Hi, great plugin you have created. This was what i have been waiting for to subscribed to Spotify.

But i cant get the helper app stay running. It starts, but stops imidialtly.
My system is:

Code:

Versjon: 7.5.1 - r30884 @ Wed Jun 16 02:03:31 PDT 2010
Vertsnavn: linuxserver
Serverens ip-adresse: 10.0.0.3
HTTP-serverens portnummer: 9000
Operativsystem: Debian - NO - utf8
Plattformarkitektur: x86_64-linux
Perl-versjon: 5.10.0 - x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
MySQL-versjon: 5.0.51a-24+lenny4
Totalt antall tilkoplede spillere: 1

I have installed all the libs that is required as you described. I cant see anything from the log either (it's blanc). But here is an output from my /var/log/messages. Can you see whats causing this?

Code:

[10-06-16 20:41:26.8536] Plugins::Spotify::Settings::__ANON__ (92) error fetching status: Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected              
[10-06-16 20:41:27.1570] Plugins::Spotify::Settings::__ANON__ (92) error fetching status: Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected              
[10-06-16 20:41:27.4607] Plugins::Spotify::Settings::__ANON__ (92) error fetching status: Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected              
[10-06-16 20:41:27.7646] Plugins::Spotify::Settings::__ANON__ (92) error fetching status: Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected              
[10-06-16 20:41:28.0688] Plugins::Spotify::Settings::__ANON__ (92) error fetching status: Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected              
[10-06-16 20:41:28.3727] Plugins::Spotify::Settings::__ANON__ (92) error fetching status: Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected              
[10-06-16 20:41:37.7943] Slim::Formats::XML::gotErrorViaHTTP (332) Error: getting http://10.0.0.3:9001/toplist.json?q=artists&r=GB                            
Connect timed out: Transport endpoint is not connected

I have also opened the port 9001 at my firewall, also tried other ports that i have working, in example the port i am using for torrent.

Any help will be apriciated.

jorn.

**Triode** · 2010-06-16, 21:37

Originally posted by goxboxlive

Hi, great plugin you have created. This was what i have been waiting for to subscribed to Spotify.

Hum - can you find the spotifyd location and run it from the command line from the directory it is in. It should give some error messages if/when it crashes (or linux will say segfault or whatever if its the code)

**goxboxlive** · 2010-06-16, 21:42

Yes, i will try tomorrow. Thanks for quick respons.

**pete the feet** · 2010-06-16, 22:05

Yahoo nice one Triode. Just installed it 10 minutes ago and it works.

Announcement

Announce: Spotify Premium Plugin (Beta)

Announce: Spotify Premium Plugin (Beta)

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