How to Set Up a Spotify Developer Account and Begin Using the Spotify API

FIRST, DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM!

Hello!

So you want to make a cool Spotify playlist including every single song by (and featuring) a specific artist, huh? Well, you've come to the right place!

This is a fun little project I have been building to help me learn Python better and how to interact with APIs. And also HTML (I'm really bad at this!). Hopefully it will be fun and maybe somewhat useful for you.

This guide will walk you through how to get all the information you'll need to enter into the form (that program you just downloaded) in order to get your playlist up and running. Don't worry—there's no risk of messing up your Spotify account or anything like that. Just follow the steps below, take note of the information you gather throughout (PROBABLY DON'T SHARE THESE CODES WITH ANYONE ELSE), and have fun making your playlist!

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me at welkytoubab@duck.com.

The next step in this project is to make it so that no one else needs to do all of this. I should be able to get it setup so that other users can simply plugin an artist (or a few) and get a playlist that they can save to their account. That's the plan, anyways. We'll see if I can get it there. Keep an eye out for it in the future!

1. Create a Spotify Developer Account

Follow these steps to create your Spotify Developer account:

  1. Visit the Spotify Developer Dashboard.
  2. Log in with your Spotify account credentials.
  3. If you don't have a Spotify account, you'll need to create one first.
Accessing Spotify Developer Dashboard Login

2. Create a Spotify App

Once logged in, you'll need to create a new Spotify application:

  1. Click the Create an App button.
  2. Fill in the application details (name, description, etc.).
  3. For the Redirect URI, enter: http://12.0.0.1:8888/callback/.
  4. Click the Create button to finalize the app creation.
Creating a Spotify Developer App Spotify Developer App Details Spotify Developer App Details

3. Get Your Spotify User ID

Your Spotify User ID is required for some integrations. Here's how to find it:

  1. Go to your Spotify account page and log in.
  2. Navigate to the Profile section of your account settings.
  3. Right-click on your username and select Copy link.
  4. In the copied link, your Spotify user ID will appear after the final slash (https://open.spotify.com/user/{your-user-id}).
Finding Spotify User ID Click on 'Account Details'

4. Get the Artist ID

To get the artist ID for any artist on Spotify:

  1. Search for the artist on Spotify and go to their artist page.
  2. In the URL, you'll see the artist ID after spotify.com/artist/. It will look like this: https://open.spotify.com/artist/{artist-id}.
  3. Copy the artist ID from the URL.
Navigate to Artist Page on Spotify Retrieve Spotify Artist ID from URL

All work and coding associated with this page was produced by Boyd Coleman Mpho Hayes (with some welcome help from ChatGPT).

I'm just getting started learning how to do all of this (any of this), so stay tuned!