This project started because the way I was using Spotify was to just always hit shuffle on my “Liked Songs” playlist which ranges across a lot of genres. So it got jarring going from Stereolab “Lo Boob Oscillator” to Adam Sandler’s “The Excited Southern Southerner …”. I’ve revealed too much.
Since then, I’ve divided them up into “headphones” for walking around, “driving”, “home” and “work”. Every playlist needed to be honed to the situation. But the phalange dexterity required to shuffle things around was cost prohibitive in the Spotify UI. For everything else it has a great design team, it was just this particular use case.
I wanted to be able to kick things out of one playlist but actually move it to another playlist. “This actually does not belong in Home because nobody needs to hear this when they are over but in my Headphones, yes.” And it couldn’t be just by scrolling through track names and deciding then diving into right-click hell, I needed to be able to make these edits while walking around or driving (shhhh).
The key was the currently playing track, which the Spotify API provides given the user’s identifiable access token. “You are currently playing $this”
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/get-the-users-currently-playing-track
{
"timestamp": 1723854999716,
"context": {
"external_urls": {
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3M2PMqHisFbeZYyTQkQKg6"
},
"href": "https://api.spotify.com/v1/playlists/3M2PMqHisFbeZYyTQkQKg6",
"type": "playlist",
"uri": "spotify:playlist:3M2PMqHisFbeZYyTQkQKg6"
},
"progress_ms": 2160,
"item": {
"album": {
"album_type": "single",
"artists": [
{
"external_urls": {
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/artist/3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt"
},
"href": "https://api.spotify.com/v1/artists/3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt",
"id": "3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt",
"name": "Stereolab",
"type": "artist",
"uri": "spotify:artist:3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt"
}
],
"available_markets": [],
"external_urls": {
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/album/5plHekIiphgTChKLttY5P4"
},
"href": "https://api.spotify.com/v1/albums/5plHekIiphgTChKLttY5P4",
"id": "5plHekIiphgTChKLttY5P4",
"images": [
{
"height": 640,
"url": "https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b27399d2a24448632ae0a89d234d",
"width": 640
},
{
"height": 300,
"url": "https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d00001e0299d2a24448632ae0a89d234d",
"width": 300
},
{
"height": 64,
"url": "https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000485199d2a24448632ae0a89d234d",
"width": 64
}
],
"name": "Lo Boob Oscillator",
"release_date": "1995",
"release_date_precision": "year",
"total_tracks": 1,
"type": "album",
"uri": "spotify:album:5plHekIiphgTChKLttY5P4"
},
"artists": [
{
"external_urls": {
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/artist/3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt"
},
"href": "https://api.spotify.com/v1/artists/3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt",
"id": "3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt",
"name": "Stereolab",
"type": "artist",
"uri": "spotify:artist:3Rj0tDHoX7C5NFq5DKIpHt"
}
],
"available_markets": [],
"disc_number": 1,
"duration_ms": 396637,
"explicit": false,
"external_ids": {
"isrc": "GBJCJ9500008"
},
"external_urls": {
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/track/5DILJYk31ZXENMY26k3br1"
},
"href": "https://api.spotify.com/v1/tracks/5DILJYk31ZXENMY26k3br1",
"id": "5DILJYk31ZXENMY26k3br1",
"is_local": false,
"name": "Lo Boob Oscillator",
"popularity": 0,
"preview_url": null,
"track_number": 1,
"type": "track",
"uri": "spotify:track:5DILJYk31ZXENMY26k3br1"
},
"currently_playing_type": "track",
"actions": {
"disallows": {
"resuming": true
}
},
"is_playing": true
}I wanted to be able to globally like/unlike tracks.
I wanted to have a stack of playlists I’m currently managing.
Sometimes tracks belong in more than one playlist. I wanted to click one button and add / remove from multiple.
Ultimately, this became the interface, here is the app demo:
Over time it coheres to the vibe of each playlist. Has Spotify made art / music a commodity? Don’t answer that.
So I hope this app makes you remember which songs you treasure and also discover new things and add them to your vibe playlists. You can do that by playing Discover Weekly or Release Radar that Spotify sets up for you automatically, and using Playlister to appropriately distribute the tracks.
“… for music is the sountrack of our lives … ” — Abraham Lincoln
As the app is in “development” mode and thus can only have 25 users which are already filled up for me, I made the code open source so that you can run it yourself. Apache 2.0 license, go nuts. Please add features.
They said I can’t submit it for public consumption unless I’m a company. If companies are people how are people not companies, John Lennon?
https://github.com/dethbird/playlister
You plug in your own API keys and can run it locally or on a web server you pay for. I can help you do that but then you owe me a sandwich.