Music streaming service Spotify is opening up development tools to iOS developers which will allow them to write tools for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Spotify functionality will now become available for integration into any iOS app and will be able bring the music services library of 15 million tracks to a variety of applications.
The new coding options could spread Spotify far and wide in the application ecosystem. It is the mobile equivalent of being able to put a radio widget into a website. The service, called libspotify, is available for Spotify Premium users and developers starting today.
Spotify hopes that it can breed a new category of app with the music service baked inside. This could be an interesting development in cross-function apps. Imagine the ability to use your Twitter app or a news reader or a game and have the ability to control Spotify playing in the background without actually leaving the app.
Spotify is providing libspotify as a C API and can be used for accessing data about artists, albums, tracks and playlists. See the libspotify documentation and FAQ for further details about implementation. Developers can use an Objective C Wrapper to help integrate libspotify into their applications and make API calls.
Developer note from Spotify: “The example code distributed with libspotify uses the MIT license. All documentation, libspotify itself, and the associated C header file are distributed under the libspotify Terms of Use.”
If developers want to use libspotify for commercial purposes, they will need to contact the service’s partnership program. As a music service that licenses music from the major music labels, distribution of music (especially for the purpose of monetary gain) is a dicey issue. Make sure to contact Spotify to make sure your application is in compliance with its rules and regulations.
