Sorry folks, but I have some disappointing news from the Spotify Developer API camp. It turns out Spotify has decided to remove the following functionality without any sort of warning or grace period. This was announced on the Spotify Developer Forum Blog on Thursday November 27th 2024 (US Thanksgiving holiday - definitely nothing worth giving thanks for IMHO!).
The Spotify Web API will no longer be able to access or use the following endpoints and functionality in third-party applications (SpotifyPlus being one of them):
- Related Artists
- Recommendations
- Audio Features
- Audio Analysis
- Get Featured Playlists
- Get Categoryâs Playlists
- 30-second preview URLs, in multi-get responses (
SimpleTrack
object) - Algorithmic and Spotify-owned editorial playlists
What does this mean for me?
What these changes mean for the SpotifyPlus Integration and SpotifyPlus Card Dashboard users is that the corresponding functions that access the above features will no longer work, and in most case will return an error message.
What can I do about this?
You can make your voice and opinion be heard by posting a reply on the Spotify Community Forum. Let them know that this change is not acceptable and how disappointed you are. Please be respectful in the process; scream and shout with your internal voice if you have to (like I did).
Can these functions be replaced with equivalent functionality?
I currently have no plans to try an re-implement the affected functionality, as the deprecated Spotify Web API functions were the only way to retrieve the information. Itâs proprietary data, and if they donât want to share then thatâs their prerogative.
In Summary
Spotify is still a great platform for music streaming, but they lost a lot of respect from me today as a Spotify Champion and user of their Spotify Web API. As a developer of numerous APIâs myself, itâs unheard of to simply shut off a feature or endpoint without giving some sort of notice or grace period; and we definitely donât make major changes like this over a major holiday! IMHO, they totally dropped the ball on this one, not to mention dropped the hammer on numerous developers!
Just thought that you would want to know, and sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I will cross-post this in the SpotifyPlus Card community forum post as well.