Spotify not developer friendly

Spotify not developer friendly

Earlier this morning I was looking for a way to filter explicit/non-explicit content in Spotify, figured I wasn’t the first to ask about this. Sure enough after a quick Google search I found hundreds of listeners asking for the same thing. I then stumbled on an OS developers blog, Jason Singh. He had developed an app Beep which did exactly this! Yes! But wait…

Turns out when he finished the app it was rejected by Spotify for being “too niche” while there are literally hundreds of comments and requests for this sort of functionality. Maybe not everyone would use it, but why should that matter? If we only were allowed to develop apps that EVERYONE would use, there would be no apps. Well, aside from Clash of Clans, Angry Birds and fart apps.

The problem here is Spotify runs a more controlled app pool than Apple themselves. Not only do you need to develop an app, have it approved but apparently appeal to some imaginary list of “useful apps” that of course is not published.

I would recommend developers not waste their time writing apps for Spotify, only to have it rejected.

Alas until this complex app ecosystem is better defined we’ll all have to hear edited songs or worse, lots of F words on a global playlist while the family is listening…

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