
Ask HN: I'm looking for a Spotify software engineer to speak to - azeirah
Hey HN, I&#x27;m the author of a popular music plugin for streamers, http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sourceforge.net&#x2F;projects&#x2F;obsmusicstreamd&#x2F;<p>My plugin takes the current playing song from several music players, and outputs it to a text file, so it can be shown on a stream. Spotify&#x27;s most recent update broke compatibility with the plugin however, and now I&#x27;m being flooded with emails :(<p>Previously, it looked through all Windows using the win32api, and looked for windows with &quot;Spotify - &quot; in their title. Spotify&#x27;s most recent update replaced the title with &quot;Spotify Premium&quot; however. And now I&#x27;m at a loss, I&#x27;ve tried contacting their support to connect me to an engineer, but they didn&#x27;t want to.<p>I&#x27;ve looked through Spotify&#x27;s Appdata&#x2F;local and Appdata&#x2F;roaming folders, but found nothing I could potentially scrape to get the currently playing song.<p>So now, I&#x27;m looking for either someone with a lot of experience with Spotify who can help me out, or a Spotify engineer with inside knowledge...
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jasonhansel
If I remember correctly, the Spotify app creates a local web server with an
API that can be used to grab the currently playing song, among many other
things.

See:

\- [https://medium.com/@b3ngr33ni3r/hijacking-spotify-web-
contro...](https://medium.com/@b3ngr33ni3r/hijacking-spotify-web-
control-5014b0a1a360)

\- [http://cgbystrom.com/articles/deconstructing-spotifys-
builti...](http://cgbystrom.com/articles/deconstructing-spotifys-builtin-http-
server/)

\- [https://code.google.com/p/spotify-local-
api/](https://code.google.com/p/spotify-local-api/)

~~~
azeirah
I'm definitely taking a look at these, they look very promising.

Thanks

------
ivraatiems
Spotify's most recent update has ruined a lot of things for a lot of people -
you're not alone. I've had repeated conversations with Spotify Support about
the various things the update destroys, and they have made it clear they will
not escalate any requests in a way that involves letting me (or anyone,
presumably) speak with an actaul developer - though they will say they've
"forward[ed] your ideas to the dev team" if you complain enough.

Sorry :(

~~~
lt
Just curious - what has it ruined?

I use the free version, and while I noticed it is a bit different since a few
weeks, didn't really notice anything that would bother me.

~~~
pgwhalen
The autohotkey script that pops up when you google "spotify autohotkey" broke,
and that pretty much prevented me from listening at work for a week. Very
annoying to not have a quick way to stop my music when a coworker taps me on
the shoulder.

~~~
iamgoat
I've since downgraded, but for the day where I was using the new version I had
to switch to something more clunky:

    
    
      SetTitleMatchMode 2
      IfWinExist,Spotify Premium
      {
        WinActivate
        sleep, 100
        send, {space}
      }
      SetTitleMatchMode 1
    

And alt-tab may also help, but it sometimes brings up the wrong window.

------
umanwizard
Have you considered the possibility that someone could get fired for helping
you with this? If they didn't want to help you when you went through official
channels, it would look really bad if some random engineer gave you inside
information about how their proprietary software works behind his management
chain's back. (And it's telling that you want to talk directly to an engineer,
rather than someone who would actually have the authority to grant your
request).

Looks like you might have to just use good ol' reverse engineering...

(As an aside, I'm amazed Spotify doesn't provide an API for this.)

~~~
vacri
_Have you considered the possibility that someone could get fired for helping
you with this?_

In which case, the Spotify engineer would simply not respond. The Spotify
engineer is going to be far more aware of corporate culture than the outsider
who can't get any info out of them.

Let's not shame people for openly asking questions when they've already tried
to solve the problems themselves and also failed when using the 'official'
channels.

~~~
umanwizard
First, I wasn't trying to shame him at all. I thought it was an ill-advised
thing to try to do, and was explaining why I thought that. That's nowhere near
the same thing as "shaming".

Second, it's naive to think Spotify engineers are, as a class, immune to the
sort of social engineering that would lead people to commit serious policy
breaches. If people can be tricked into giving away their social security
numbers over the phone, it's not unreasonable to imagine somebody not
realizing something was serious that actually (for whatever reason) was.

~~~
vacri
_If people can be tricked into giving away their social security numbers over
the phone_ isn't quite the same as a question asked openly on Hacker News,
hence why I said "openly" \- open to community scrutiny.

I understand that you don't intend to be shaming, however that's what you're
doing: "how can you ask this question, when it _might_ cost someone their
job?". We can't all walk on eggshells in order to protect those people who are
close enough to the technical core to give technical answers, yet naive enough
to not be aware of phishing and/or draconian corporate culture.

In short, ask away. If there is a draconian response as a result of your
questions, that onus is not on you. And it's not like other phishers will
leave that naive person alone simply because you did; they're still going to
be a weak link in the chain, and they'll get compromised by someone malicious,
and they'll still lose their job next time around while at the same time
exposing their company to a malicious actor.

Similarly, if we're talking theoretical situations, then how about Spotify
management not being jack-booted thugs[1], and when the data breach is found,
instead of firing the naif, they use the event to update their corporate
policies and retrain all employees with access to privileged information about
phishing threats, thereby strengthening the company against future malicious
attacks? The naive employee then gains some valuable information on the nature
of the world and the company ends up stronger after this benign 'scare'. Win-
win all around.

[1] I don't actually know what kind of footwear they use

------
edcastro
If everything else fails, maybe add support to last.fm? This way the user
could just scrobble directly from Spotify to Last.fm and you get the song from
there.

------
niftylettuce
@azeirah Just talk to this dude he helped me when I had questions in the past.
gh: <[https://github.com/thelinmichael](https://github.com/thelinmichael)
email: <thelinmichael@gmail.com>

------
gargarplex
You should ask support to escalate your request. To someone in marketing.

------
gyaresu
Last.fm still continues to scrobble because it's a preferences setting not a
client plugin(?)

But the Last.fm plugin no longer works:
[https://open.spotify.com/app/lastfm](https://open.spotify.com/app/lastfm)

~~~
benbristow
That hasn't worked for a while. Was never very good anyway.

~~~
disposition2
I disagree, it was one of the few was to _discover_ music in the Spotify
desktop app (with Mobile or Web, you are just SOL). I'm actually working on a
webapp for personal use (integrating lastfm) to have some modicum of discovery
with spotify. Their internal 'discovery' tools, much like their radio is for
lack of a better work terrible.

------
auganov
Use a good old hex editor? Maybe one of the locations is stable enough. I took
a quick look at the dump and it doesn't look too hard. Interestingly the js
and css is not obfuscated.

------
johnnybravooo
Just capture the title from another source instead of the title bar. Spotify
is compatible with libre.fm, which is open source. I would use that.

------
joshmn
Have you thought about loading up an MITM proxy and seeing what's being routed
where and why? That might lead you to a fist-pump or two ;)

------
spike021
Non-premium users, like myself, have a window called 'Spotify Free' \- at
least on OSX. Might want to look into that on Windows.

------
whitehat2k9
Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but couldn't you just update it to look for
the new title string?

~~~
azeirah
The point is that the newest update -doesn't have- the song in its title
unfortunately...

[http://i.imgur.com/nPoKDOR.png](http://i.imgur.com/nPoKDOR.png)

------
johnnybravooo
Just capture the title from another source. Spotify is compatible with
libre.fm, which is open source.

------
Shebanator
Try searching linkedin - its not that hard to find spotify engineering execs
on there.

------
LukeWalsh
Also if a spotify engineer is reading this email me I have some UI mocks for a
few UX fixes in the mac desktop app

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leoh
I am not a Windows user... but if I were doing this on OS X or Linux, one
could look through memory or look at open sockets, though these operations
require special permissions.

