[zamalek]

I think this is why Spotify will still have a market, even if their upcoming hi-def offering isn't free, such as with Apple or Amazon. The latter two (and all other alternatives, Qobuz and Tidal) don't have an API and so can't be ported to arbitrary platforms; they are only hi-def on Windows, Apple*, and Android.

Strawberry player is supposed to support Tidal, but I can't seem to pull the ClientID/ClientSecret key from the official client (I guess they closed that loophole).

[rrdharan]

Apple Music does have a web API/version now…

[mogery]

To be fair, any other platform could easily outdo Spotify in this regard, if they publicly documented their internal API. :D

[indrora]

The thing is, Spotify had libspotify.

It opened a whole bevvy of open and useful Spotify clients that worked amazingly and some that still do to this day. Mopidy, as well as a handful of amazing MPD-speaking daemons got me through college. The only conceit was that it required a premium account and yielding a third party client your authentication data. They had some issues with Facebook authentication as it was OIDC, but setting a user name and password on your account was a simple solution.

The Spotify team has killed libspotify in preference for a Javascript browser or Mobile Device library (ios/ObjC or Android /kotlin) that uses the browser to authenticate over openID. It can only be a connect target, not query the full api, and depends heavily on the browser or native api to play the media.

[notimetorelax]

Spotify exists to deliver music, other apps exist to lock users to their corresponding platforms.

[giancarlostoro]

How does Tidal do this? My understanding is Tidal is a music platform like Spotify.