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Fastpotify

• amadeuspagel 25d ago
  It's hard to think of a name worse then "spotify" itself, but fast "fastpotify" may be it.
• wilted-iris 26d ago
  Spotify is in the process of killing the librespot project that this and most third party Spotify players are built on. I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end. I’ve migrated to a self hosted library with streaming and radio for discovery. I hope we’ll see many projects in the space flourish. Many, like Navidrome and the whole OpenSubsonic ecosystem, seem to be doing quite well.
  • wahnfrieden 25d ago
    CIUT has some great shows and most are available online. University of Toronto.
  • nan60 26d ago
    > radio for discovery Would you be willing to share a bit more about this setup? The only thing keeping my on streaming is the fact that its almost impossible to find new music otherwise. I know LastFM exists but it just doesn't click for me the way that streaming does. I like discovering music organically.
    • dylan604 26d ago
      > radio for discovery was a big question mark I had as well. The Clear Channel and iHeart stations are not known for discovery. Now if you find a college station or by some miracle an independent station you can get some new stuff. My favorite local college station is also ad free. They also have an app which I lean on as it's not the strongest transmitter so their coverage is spotty. Maybe there's other indy stations with apps as well??
      • BLKNSLVR 25d ago
        This radio station is local to the city I live in, and they've been great for music discovery for me, although heavy focus on local artists, but they've put me onto a few international artists as well. https://threedradio.com/ https://threedradio.com/ I subscribe to them, have done so for ~10 years I reckon. I don't listen as much as I used to, but I want them to continue existing either way. Be aware, the quality of their playlists is incredibly variable, but that's part of the charm. I guarantee you'll hear something you haven't heard before... for better or worse. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zHR0HMFY60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zHR0HMFY60 (with 2 minutes of silence at the start to, presumably, avoid auto-copyright claims).
        • BLKNSLVR 19d ago
          This may be long dead, but a relatively recent musical discovery I've come across is Nando's. They play some great Southern American music, with real nice vibes and beats. My Shazam usage is about 75% Nando's. And I don't mean Southern United States, I mean real, geographical definition South American. There's even a pretty long playlist someone has curated, specifically called Nando's Music: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0kgcsnicEnZYjaU3zoGbU5?si=Off72d9LQ1qHnSQm--ev-g https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0kgcsnicEnZYjaU3zoGbU5?si=...
      • mcmcmc 25d ago
        Public radio is great, NPR and the member stations have some great streaming channels. KEXP and KCRW are two favs
      • wilted-iris 25d ago
        I believe there are! I consistently hear good things about KEXP and FIP but I haven’t listened to either extensively. I listen to a lot of SomaFM (free, https://somafm.com/ https://somafm.com/) and the Flow State radio-podcast (paid, https://www.flowstate.fm/ https://www.flowstate.fm/).
        • GaProgMan 25d ago
          I would always recommend KEXP. They have a really varied set of shows and setlists, don't seem to be swayed by "we must play the top 40", genuinely care about music, and are super nice if you head into the building in Seattle (which has a public access space, coffee shop, bathrooms, and a SubPop store). I've had three tours around the place just by telling the folks there that Im there from out of town. To be fair, I might have gotten the tours because I came all the way over from England the times, but it's my favourite place to hang out when I'm in Seattle. Also Ken is the nicest guy ever, and he introduced me to Larry Mizzel Jr while he was broadcasting live. Get the app, or use the player on their website, and hive then a try for an hour or do. The app has the ability to "heart" a track while it's playing live, which helps with discovery.
    • bubblemoth 25d ago
      I left spotify around two years ago for a self hosted option (I mostly use navidrome+feishin). Music discovery was a concern for me as well, but then I realized that I didn't like the idea of spotify curating which music I discovered. So far, this is what has worked for me: - Actually listening to the music I have now. I think the art of listening through full albums has slowly died, but there is so much music we're ignoring because we just listen to Artist's top tracks. - Word of mouth. Asking my friends what they listen to. This is a way that people used to discover music and I've found so much good music this way. - Bandcamp. Bandcamp is SUCH a good way to discover new music. You can listen to the music in app, there are great articles and you can actually support the artists!
      • pixelatedindex 25d ago
        Epic bought bandcamp many moons ago. Did they enshittify it or is it still going strong?
        • stijnveken 25d ago
          Epic actually sold Bandcamp 3 years ago. I only started using it lately so I can't say how it was before, but I think it's still good. https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-layoffs/ https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-la...
          • deleted 25d ago
            [deleted]
          • kennywinker 25d ago
            Unfortunately bandcamp laid off virtually all of their engineers a month or so back: https://www.hypebot.com/new-bandcamp-layoffs-why-artists-are-worried-and-where-to-turn/ https://www.hypebot.com/new-bandcamp-layoffs-why-artists-are... So, not enshittified, but either abandoned or headed for ensloppification.
            • nsteel 25d ago
    • msmagh 25d ago
      using nts.live and and fip radio -> https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip at the moment for same purpose. Radio France allows to save liked track names in profile to look up later.
      • lolive 25d ago
        In addition to those two bangers, BBC6 and RNE also have shows to discover new musics. PS: RadioParadise is also a safe place for good music.
    • hyperadvanced 25d ago
      Call me a boomer but I’ve had a ton of fun with XM radio. I can find new music on Bandcamp but nothing compares to hearing some classic from the 80’s that you would have never thought to put on when you’re driving home after work on a Friday.
    • hillbillydilly 25d ago
      I don't know about you but spotify discovery feels like the least organic discovery possible. Its so homogeneous and predictable and corporate slop adjacent it makes me cringe just thinking about it.
      • refactor_master 25d ago
        I've discovered so many great artists through Spotify, and been to many of their shows (which Spotify also helps surface with their "Live Events" feature). I regularly get artists with less than 100k listeners in my Discover Weekly, which I then look up, and find that they did a concert on KEXP, and the comments all proclaiming "I knew good music wasn't dead!". So I can say for sure that I don't share the slop sentiment. Sure, there's some generic filler every now and then, but any non-cohesive mix, as opposed to a carefully curated album is going to have songs that naturally become "fillers". Just now, I discovered that Spotify snuck in "The Juan Maclean - Running Back To You (2014)", which is a cover of "Brian Bennet - Solstice (1978)". Neither songs are completely unknown, but they're also not exactly Bruno Mars. I don't know if this is pure luck or algorithmic rhythm analysis, but for me it's working.
    • cmoski 25d ago
      Hype machine used to be so good for this. I haven't used it for a long time but it looks like it is still going in some fashion.
      • gnarlynarwhal42 25d ago
        I used to use hypem soo much during the music blog days and had a subscription etc but it seemed to stop working or something so after a while I stopped using it. I will have to check it out again
    • wilted-iris 25d ago
      I listen to Flow State, SomaFM, and aggregate from local shows and a few people I follow on social media among other discovery platforms. (I don’t have a favorite yet.) I found that Spotify was increasingly recommending AI artists and songs I already knew. It surfaced very little outside of my comfort zone and effectively nothing that wasn’t new. There’s a whole world of music out there that Spotify wasn’t showing me.
      • bityard 25d ago
        I stopped listening to Pandora well over a decade ago because its algorithm eventually decided that I only liked 12 songs in the whole world.
    • kachnuv_ocasek 25d ago
      I just listen to NTS most of the time.
      • SSLy 25d ago
        nts is all fire until a dj plays mp3 bitcrunched track that just hurts your ears
    • ivh 25d ago
      I use https://radioparadise.com https://radioparadise.com for this, since more than 20 years.
    • twilo 25d ago
      There is nothing better plexamp but unfortunately after plex raised their prices it might not be worth it for most
    • thesuitonym 25d ago
      > its almost impossible to find new music otherwise I don't know where this opinion came from (Probably Spotify's PR department) but it's just so weird to me. Do you think people didn't find new music before streaming? It's not impossible, you just have to talk to people.
  • pbasista 26d ago
    > Spotify is in the process of killing the librespot project How could they possibly do that? They cannot prevent people or AI from reverse engineering their APIs.
    • TingPing 26d ago
      Depends on how much they care. They can take down repos containing any keys, or use heuristics to block clients.
    • hahn-kev 25d ago
      Technically no, but they can just ban you. It would not be impossible to detect.
    • egeozcan 25d ago
      Anthropic can prevent people from using their models with the subscription plan outside Claude Code, why couldn't Spotify?
      • sbinder 25d ago
        Because millions of Spotify-compatible speakers are sold with firmware that will never be upgraded, so they can't ever change the Spotify connect protocol without breaking those devices.
        • epihelix 25d ago
          ... and no company ever broke backwards-compatible support.
          • LollipopYakuza 25d ago
            I'd say it's a good thing they are not (?)
    • baggachipz 25d ago
      DMCA has entered the chat.
  • protocolture 26d ago
    >I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end. Already ended for me. They killed the plan I was on, and then started sending me begging emails to sign up for a new, more expensive one. But once I experienced their platform with ads, I just stopped using it entirely.
  • jarym 25d ago
    > I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end There was a world before Spotify. Though the music labels didn’t much like that world we can easily go back to it.
    • selcuka 25d ago
      > There was a world before Spotify There was, and it was definitely not "the golden age of music streaming".
  • echelon 25d ago
    > I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end. It's just getting started. We're going to vibe code the entire enshittified internet to be ours once again. The dream of the 90's and 00's is alive again. The indie web is going to become unstoppable. We can build anything of size and scale with the limited spare energy we have now. Every product will be reborn without big tech tendrils.
    • nalekberov 25d ago
      > We're going to vibe code the entire enshittified internet to be ours once again. It’s such a wishful thinking, but no it doesn’t and won’t work this way. Code != useful product. Plus today’s web is all about fabricated content, AI bots, cloudflare challenge walls and all other annoying stuff. The very idea of being able to create something in seconds is already killing internet.
      • mixedCase 25d ago
        Garbage being created at unprecedented rates does not diminish the fact that LLMs are acting as a positive multiplier for useful tools; this very item being one. No one in all these years had gone through the effort of replicating the Spotify client with a snappy fast interface for a reason. Everything had been an integration into already existing software, or simpler interfaces, because the effort was not worth it. The equation has changed.
      • echelon 25d ago
        You can look at the glass half full all you want, my glass is overflowing. This is the best year in all of my 20 years in tech. I'm creating so much stuff and it's all I've ever wanted. This is the dream of the 2000's, and big tech can't stop us anymore. I think I'm going to write my own music player soon that behaves exactly like I want it to. Maybe this weekend. Or maybe right after my home automation project. But I can probably squeeze them both in. It's like Christmas every day now.
        • nalekberov 25d ago
  • colordrops 25d ago
    Why are they killing librespot?
    • HaloZero 25d ago
      Probably for the same reason Twitter killed their API, more control over the experience and to serve ads/cross-promote. More cross-promote for Spotify.
  • HaloZero 25d ago
    What makes you think Spotify is killing it? I know they aren't supporting FLAC but otherwise I don't think they're actively trying to stop it as opposed to not really caring if they support it (which is more "We don't care" as opposed to "We have to stop this")
    • wilted-iris 25d ago
      Librespot no longer works for new accounts. APIs are being gated off and they’re applying legal pressure to dissuade projects from reverse engineering anything new. At the end of the day, they can turn the tap off anytime they want, whether by technical or legal means. I tired of having so much of my music experience at risk and chose to migrate on my own terms.
      • inigyou 25d ago
        They can only turn the tap off because those projects operated in ways that required them to leave it on. Biggest mistake most librefication projects make is to do their project out in the open where they can easily be subject to legal pressure, then fall into complete disarray the moment that pressure appears. They can't move underground once pressure starts, because everyone already knows who they are.
        • port11 25d ago
          Bit of an unfair take. You propose the open-source community operates behind closed doors like the very software they aim to replace? I’d argue Spotify has so little to gain by being hostile, that perhaps the lawyers are more expensive than just ignoring these pet projects (which would never gain mass adoption).
          • selfhoster1312 25d ago
            > the lawyers are more expensive than just ignoring these pet projects The lawyers are more expensive than happy customers staying customers because they can enjoy the client they prefer, that's for sure.
  • nickysielicki 25d ago
    Tools for piracy are much better today than they were back in the Napster or grooveshark days. It’s actually kind of shocking to me that we haven’t had a popcorntime moment for music again. Nothing technical is preventing the creation of a perfect decentralized anonymous p2p FLAC streaming platform with plausible deniability.
    • paweladamczuk 25d ago
      How would the plausible deniability piece work? If you stream some bytes to someone else, you can't deny doing it. Unless you imagine this working over Tor, idk what the performance of Tor is these days but I never thought it could support such an application.
      • nickysielicki 25d ago
        Music is relatively small. Tor is totally capable of hosting zlibrary without bandwidth restrictions getting in the way. By plausible deniability I simply meant adopting a similar approach that Stremio has, to keep it on the good side of App Store approval processes. The app itself only allows for creative commons content by default, but with the right incantations it can host anything.
        • joshschreuder 25d ago
          Stremio and other apps like Fusion have gone up and been (reasonably quickly) taken down off the App Store though. Not really "on the good side" when your main distribution method is "add this app to your account within the first 1-2 weeks of it being in the App Store or never again", or sideloading.
    • Gander5739 25d ago
      Have you heard of Soulseek? It's an active p2p music sharing platform.
      • lukeasch21 25d ago
  • righthand 25d ago
    Spoiler: Spotify has always been terrible. The golden age of music streaming was Zune pass where you could stream and download 10 songs/mo. And arguably Pandora always had a better radio algorithm than Spotify.
    • pjerem 25d ago
      The first Spotify client, the one in Qt was actually really good. Things started going downhill slowly when they integrated Facebook then very fast when they threw everything through the window to rewrite everything in electron.
      • zokier 25d ago
        the first spotify client was plain win32
    • szszrk 25d ago
      > Spotify has always been terrible. It wasn't, really. At least not completely. I fully agree on the algorithm - I miss times of scrobbling to Last.fm, which was much better at this. (Spotify always supported scrobbling to Last.fm from their client, surprisingly). Spotify used to be snappy and worked really well on Linux. I even used it for local libraries, as it was one of the few options that didn't crash on mine. It was at the beautiful time when we realized web apps can have local storage, Google released that experiment called Chrome to "show public how modern browser can evolve and inspire other browser makers how to progress". We know it ended up in "extinguish the market with it", unfortunately. But Spotify chose native app approach - they distributed it as packages. Deezer on the other hand, back then (I don't know now) had just native web app that could pull music locally. I think it was an extension of Chrome (?). It also worked perfectly fine on Linux, almost two decades ago. We had a lot of decent options back then.
      • righthand 25d ago
        Scrobbling to Last.fm isn’t music streaming.
  • kombine 25d ago
    I've also canceled my Spotify sub three weeks ago and migrated to Navidrome. I'm still not quite satisfied with the available clients, I'm using Feishin. Fastpotift looks like a nice candidate to extend to support Navidrome.
  • devindotcom 25d ago
    I'm glad they're doing well but I would guess only a tiny fraction of the people who use Spotify would be capable of setting up Navidrome. I tried and went back to Plex. I wish it were otherwise but if something takes more than a few clicks to go from zero to music that leaves 95% of users out! I hope these projects get more accessible though.
  • jorisw 25d ago
    > Spotify is in the process of killing the librespot project Source?
    • the_mitsuhiko 25d ago
      https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot/issues/1649 https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot/issues/1649
      • jorisw 25d ago
        Thanks, but don't see how this Issue backs that up.
        • the_mitsuhiko 25d ago
          Not sure what you call it, but new accounts are no longer able to use librespot.
      • nsteel 25d ago
        Also, https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot/issues/1737 https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot/issues/1737 We are seeing a slow but steady stream of small breaking changes, designed to gradually piss off everyone involved. While avoiding a large breaking change that attracts a load of bad publicity. Sadly this strategy is the only good idea they've had in years.
  • azalemeth 25d ago
    If anyone other than me really likes classical music, I thoroughly recommend Hyperion Records. DRM free downloads in your choice of codec, one to two free CDs worth of sampler per month to download (with a jewel case PDF!) and some truly excellent world leading groups and beautiful new music.
    • 10729287 25d ago
      Thanks for sharing. I loved buying then downloading cheap samplers from punk and hardcore labels when I was younger. That was part of the culture and that really helped me discover new music and shaping my tastes. This is something that doesn't exist that much anymore and I'm glad to find this initiative. I try to listen to classical music but that's a very difficult world to discover, this will probably help by helping me to focus on few titles instead of jumping in the gigantic and maze-ish pool !
      • azalemeth 25d ago
        I really enjoyed this comment – thank you. One part of the classical diaspora I think is both under appreciated and undergoing something of a renaissance is that of contemporary choral music. There are many great examples but two I'd like to draw to attention to two of those I have recently sung, and really enjoy: (1) The works of Ēriks Ešenvalds,[1] a Latvian composer who was a fellow in composition at Trinity College, Cambridge and brought really a large part of the surprisingly rich eastern European singing tradition to the west. I had never heard of the Singing Revolution against the USSR in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – countries with a wonderful, rich choral tradition where music (and choirs) played a really nonzero part in the downfall of the USSR. All absolutely beautiful and a group I sing with has worked with a lot of composers from this part of the world. Amazing soundscapes with harmonies that are never quite as good in equal temperament as outside it and yet always tonal and beautiful. (2) Desmond Earley and the choral scholars of Trinity College Dublin – who conjures up a rich sound world of very pure, Irish tones that almost sounds synthetic but is made entirely from human voices and traditional instruments. It is simple to sing but difficult to master. I would highlight Dúlamán, [3] a traditional song about the economic importance of seaweed. [1] https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_HYP202607B https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_HYP202607B – track 6 (the whole lot is free!) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iRfI1ezYjA&list=RD3iRfI1ezYjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iRfI1ezYjA&list=RD3iRfI1ezY... – this was a sampler from hyperion too and I have the whole lot legally as flac.
  • scrollop 25d ago
    What do you use to stream your local content? Using plex at the moment.
  • Shorel 25d ago
    I feel I am in the golden age of music streaming right now. Just use Deezer instead of Spotify. Perfect quality and it great selection.
    • BoingBoomTschak 25d ago
      I have a free Deezer account from my family. Shit is extremely barren. Some examples: 1. (already posted on HN) Wanted to try Midori's early stuff, but no "1st" EP nor "2nd" LP. Not on Spotify nor Apple Music either. Only yesterday: 2. Looking at Bleach (the Japanese hardcore punk/noise rock band): nothing and they aren't extremely obscure or anything (https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/bleach-4 https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/bleach-4). They're on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5gRsPZZNgrkagQnDlyFZUC https://open.spotify.com/artist/5gRsPZZNgrkagQnDlyFZUC) but missing two LPs; on Apple Music too (https://music.apple.com/us/artist/bleach/74570682 https://music.apple.com/us/artist/bleach/74570682) and one more LP available. 3. Okay, let's try Meat Puppets' lauded second LP from my backlog... artist is there, but four first LPs aren't. On Spotify and Apple Music. 4. For fun, let's try to find that very obscure kote kei demo, (螺旋 (Rasen) - Hysterical Noi「z」e / Like「M」(1997)). Nothing, of course, but well, I can't even find it on private trackers or SoulSeek (got some mystery mp3s "somewhere"). So, if I were to stoop down to streaming, looks like Spotify/Apple are less worse here.
      • Shorel 25d ago
        This is actually informative, thanks. In my case, some music I want is unavailable, some releases from Discos Fuentes of Salsa Brava from the 1970s. But, in this case, they are also unavailable from Tidal, Spotify, etc...
    • draven 25d ago
      I use Deezer (in a browser tab, and on my iphone.) It's good, but far from great. If several artists / bands share the same name, there will be one artist page with all of the artists/bands releases. The queue management sucks, I can add stuff to the queue, move / remove individual entries. That's it. If I added an album to the queue and want to remove it, I have to click a little cross one time for each track of the album. Notifications about new releases: great. Except the UI is a tiny dropdown, and hovering over an item removes the little marker signaling it's a new one. It's really difficult to catch up when there are more than 5 new entries. etc.
  • echoangle 25d ago
    It seems like there's an official alternative to librespot now: https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2026-08-13-introducing-spotify-soloist https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2026-08-13-introducing-sp...
    • wilted-iris 25d ago
      Yes! This launched after I left Spotify but I agree it looks neat. I find the three month build expiration concerning, but I also have a low risk tolerance for my music experience.
• ralfhn 26d ago
  It takes five minutes to make a website look less obviously AI-generated.
  • brendanmc6 26d ago
    It takes five seconds to scroll to the bottom and see that it's a Jekyll theme before posting a negative comment
    • danilafe 26d ago
      Surely they're referring to the llm-isms in the text?
    • minitech 26d ago
      A Jekyll theme from the same person as this project, yes.
  • p-e-w 25d ago
    The website looks great to me, clean and simple, perfect for a project like this. “Not looking like it was made by AI” isn’t something I value for itself in a website, any more than “not looking like it was made with injection molding” is something I would value in a plastic item. Either it’s good or it isn’t, but it’s not good or bad because of how it was made.
    • xxs 25d ago
      > “not looking like it was made with injection molding” Aside machining POM, what else is there. Injection molding tend to be great.
  • famahar 25d ago
    If it was a site made with AI it would be stuffed with way more ad copy, components, UI toggles, and small text. If this was made with AI, they seem to have restrained it from going on the gaudy UI mess of most AI generated sites that are what I like to think of as "Maximalist Minimalist". A hodgepodge of a design library.
• fishgoesblub 26d ago
  Spotify used to use Qt for its desktop client. Good times.
  • occz 25d ago
    This is actually wrong, it was never QT. It was however not built with web technologies back in the day
  • reddalo 25d ago
    Good times. The old Spotify client was native and fast. I miss that. The new one is heavy and clunky.
  • AtNightWeCode 25d ago
    Did it really? I remember that Wimp used Adobe Air and Deezer used Flash.
• zoky 26d ago
  It supports WinAmp skins too… Dare I say it?
  • hdjrudni 26d ago
    It really whips the llama's ass?
• Walf 26d ago
  Fuck Spotify. Even if you don't care about the ethics of Daniel Ek's investments, the platform itself is crap. One of the lowest paying to artists, not paying at all unless they hit a threshold, and the catalogue is filling up with AI slop, which they push on users via 'radio' and 'mix' playlists, so they can pay even less royalties. No, thanks.
  • SuperMouse 26d ago
    I've tested Deezer for half a year. The software quality was horrible. Had a lot of crashes, it often took many many seconds to change between the songs and often getting stuck, the buffering algorithm was nuts and eating a lot of bandwidth. Everything on a standard Pixel. Full 5G coverage was available. Alternatives?
    • Walf 25d ago
      Tried Tidal? The one gripe I have with it is no remote control, as in using phone to change what's currently playing on the device connected to my sound system, without it thinking I want to start playing on my phone. Apple Music pays artists better, too.
    • cmehdy 25d ago
      Tidal is the last streaming service I use, split between that and a jellyfin+arrs setup coupled with buying music from artists directly. Fuck Spotify and their rotten leadership. Was amongst the early adopters (2009). I'm sure they won't care for the loss, and I won't miss th when they're gone.
      • jorisw 25d ago
        Seriously tried Tidal. Gave up on it because of the software quality.
    • zcrar70 25d ago
      Qobuz have the highest per stream payout rate for artists [0], and have the best audio quality of all streaming platforms (better even that Tidal imho). They have desktop, mobile and android auto (and presumably carplay) clients, and an equivalent to Spotify Connect whereby streaming can be switched to a different client. Downsides are no native client (same webview approach as Spotify), not as strong recommendations (though slowly improving), good but slightly quirkier UI (also slowly improving). For me the trade offs are worthwhile. [0] eg. https://resources.onestowatch.com/ethical-music-streaming-platforms/ https://resources.onestowatch.com/ethical-music-streaming-pl...
• monster_truck 26d ago
  I hacked the official client apart to hide some bullshit (like podcasts) and fix bugs that were pissing me off. Shared it exactly once and it stopped working within a month. Bugs were still there too I stopped sharing after that.
  • figmert 25d ago
    Have you seen Spicetify[0]? It allows for this kind of stuff and seems to be a lot more stable than doing it all manually. [0] https://spicetify.app/ https://spicetify.app/
    • monster_truck 25d ago
      I have, it's good, but it is not compatible with some of the things I am doing which are quite a bit more foundational/stuctural. The pile of scripts I've accumulated do a pretty good job of resolving easy breakages, listing anything worse, and running a little lap around all of my typical interactions (from another account running in a cloud vm) to diff the network requests so I look normal to them.
• rixed 25d ago
  Another site tricking users willing to look at the code into starring the repo instead. How desperate do you need to be to resort to this?
  • yedpodtrzitko 25d ago
    I had to read the comment a few times. Do you mean "starring" instead of "starting"?
    • rixed 25d ago
      Yes sorry, fixed. Thanks!
  • earcar 25d ago
    No. The "Star" button is a simple link to the repo.
    • rixed 25d ago
      I stand corrected, and I'm glad i was wrong.
• exitb 25d ago
  It’s not specific to this program, but I lately get this feeling that distributing widely a piece of software that exists for 5 days and saw a dozen releases in that period is stretching the open source trust model.
  • krekr 24d ago
    Think of something nerds will like (like this!), package malware, distribute, profit. That's the idea, right?
• punarinta 25d ago
  Software has finally started to get faster, and I love it. Pls don't consider this a spam, but if anyone is interested in a fast native Slack client, I'm building one, since Slack themselves don't want to: https://msga.app https://msga.app
  • ainiriand 25d ago
    Make MSTeams Great Again when? Amazing work btw.
    • sceptic123 25d ago
      Teams was never great to start with
    • idonotknowwhy 25d ago
      I just looked through the slop Readme file, it looks like teams is supported.
      • punarinta 25d ago
        Yes, Teams is supported, but since their API is really poor compared to Slack, the support is pretty limited.
  • rsolva 25d ago
    Just tried your slack client, it has all the features I need and it is super smooth and lightweight, thanks!
  • Shorel 25d ago
    Love it. I did the same for Postman/Bruno.
• nalekberov 25d ago
  Without looking at the codebase I am pretty sure it’s a vibe coded rust app, because this is what today’s most programmers understand about software.
  • tetrisgm 25d ago
    and?
    • worldsavior 25d ago
      That's boring, and unmaintainable.
      • txdv 25d ago
        until someone comes up with a non vibe coded one ill be happy having at least a fast option
      • dzikimarian 25d ago
        It's working way better than original client. What does it say about Spotify devs?
  • txdv 25d ago
    the commits are very fine grained and the text is unusually not AI. I mean you can beat AI to do anything nowadays, but this looks not that bad
    • ghosty141 25d ago
      I'd argue nobody writes such long commit messages this consistently. I'm VERY sure this is fully AI generated.
    • TonyStr 25d ago
      The volume of commits is quite crazy. For example, he wrote a +486/-51 commit in 20 minutes (33287cb) with quite dense rust code. That's about 25 changes per minute -- very impressive! The docs also smell of LLM output, for example describing the app as native despite using egui/wgpu. But hey, he's here, we can just ask him! @earcar
• armcat 25d ago
  You had me at Winamp
  • angelofthe0dd 25d ago
    Winamp was peak.
• winrid 25d ago
  [dead]
• mappu 25d ago
  If you're focused on lightweight, native and fast, I don't think you should use an immediate-mode GUI toolkit. Why does an app like this need to hit a 60fps framerate? It's not a game.
  • winrid 25d ago
    Most immediate mode does a scene graph diff so it's not that bad I have a custom IM GUIs based ide thing in C++ that uses like .2% of my 10yo CPU.
    • IshKebab 25d ago
      Egui doesn't do that. But it's written in Rust and only updates when you interact with it so in practice it's way more efficient than I would have expected.
      • winrid 24d ago
        as a side note I absolutely hated writing UIs in egui. It is a really nice framework, but the iteration times were painful.
  • mijoharas 25d ago
    I was surprised to see an immediate mode gui toolkit. They're great to integrate into a game loop because you control your loop, (and they're a delight to use) but I thought for perf retained mode was the way to go? Am I missing something? Then again if the bar needing to be beaten is spotify's existing desktop app maybe it doesn't matter?
    • deleted 25d ago
      [deleted]
  • deleted 25d ago
    [deleted]
  • earcar 25d ago
    Author here. Two reasons I chose an immediate mode UI framework: 1. Latency. A click paints on the next frame, because it sidesteps the stages of a retained mode UI: there's no dirty-marking, no layout and paint passes scheduled for later, no cached visual state that can be stale. 2. Simplicity. The UI is a plain function of app state. There's no retained tree to keep in sync and no invalidation bugs: mutate the state and the next frame shows it. Yes, the drawback is that you have to watch what a frame costs, but it doesn't repaint at every frame. It paints on input and you can schedule repaints yourself. Fastpotify sits at zero CPU when idle, asks for a few frames a second while a track plays, and runs at full rate only while you scroll.
• drxzcl 25d ago
  That seems like the kind of name that's gonna earn you a C&D.
• broodbucket 25d ago
  Would be great if it could get included in Flathub, without it, I'd rather have an AppImage than a Flatpak file I think
• TnS-hun 25d ago
  It is a shame that Spotify have not made their Dear ImGui-based version available: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/3075#issuecomment-604711590 https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/3075#issuecomment-60...
• abrookewood 25d ago
  I think the key call out with this is how cool egui is (the Rust GUI library it uses). Check out their website: https://www.egui.rs/ https://www.egui.rs/ The demos are very good: https://www.egui.rs/#clock https://www.egui.rs/#clock Edit: egui is an immediate mode GUI library written in Rust. egui runs natively on , and on the web it is compiled to WebAssembly and rendered with WebGL or WebGPU. Everything you see is rendered as textured triangles. There is no DOM, HTML, JS or CSS. Just Rust.
  • WithinReason 25d ago
    The anti-aliasing is broken, it doesn't apply gamma correction
    • IshKebab 25d ago
      Did you look at it recently? Until a few months ago text was a blurry mess but it seems like they've mostly fixed it now.
  • troupo 25d ago
    > Everything you see is rendered as textured triangles. There is no DOM, HTML, JS or CSS. Just Rust. So that's why text selection doesn't work.
  • Fumblenuts 25d ago
    This feels like it would be an accessibility nightmare? But maybe it could be cool for doing some advanced animations or rendering games or something.
  • TonyStr 25d ago
    I was about to come here and say that egui is a terrible choice for web. Everything is rendered in a canvas, so accessibility and extensibility is thrown out of the window. Basic browser functions like pinch-zoom don't work, it has some very wonky visual bugs when resizing the window, interactions have a very noticeable delay, no browser extensions work with this. This is really not a good solution for web apps, and if you're vibe coding your apps anyway, there isn't any reason not to have a native browser application.
• slaye 25d ago
  https://fastpotify.rocks/winamp/ https://fastpotify.rocks/winamp/ what a great feature!
• deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
• 0fflineuser 25d ago
  If anyone is interested in selfhosting or wants to stop using spotify without losing the discoverabily: I use explo+slsk+lidarr+navidrome, for access on my phone I use dsub2000 or symfonium but mainly dsub2000. Explo is the software used for the discovery https://github.com/LumePart/Explo https://github.com/LumePart/Explo It automatically downloads daily jams, weekly jams and weekly exploration playlists from your listenbrainz account(free) using youtube, soulseek(with slskd) or lidarr (support was merged very recently). I also imported all my artists from my spotify account when I migrated which you can do in lidarr with the plugin ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶ bellow ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶p̶o̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶d̶a̶r̶r̶.̶ plugin: https://github.com/TypNull/Tubifarry https://github.com/TypNull/Tubifarry ̶f̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶d̶o̶c̶k̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶m̶a̶g̶e̶:̶ ̶g̶h̶c̶r̶.̶i̶o̶/̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶s̶e̶r̶v̶e̶r̶-̶l̶a̶b̶s̶/̶p̶r̶a̶r̶r̶:̶l̶i̶d̶a̶r̶r̶-̶p̶l̶u̶g̶i̶n̶s̶ docker image: lscr.io/linuxserver/lidarr:nightly This plugin is also needed for downloading songs with slsk in lidarr.
  • kombine 25d ago
    I'm using a similar setup with soularr, and I just need to import my playlists from Spotify, but I'd rather not use a fork of lidarr.
    • 0fflineuser 25d ago
      Hi, Actually it's not a fork it's the docker image for the plugin branch. Sorry I set this up quite a long while ago and didn't remember correctly. And it seems to have been merged so the plugin branch is not needed anymore, see: https://github.com/Lidarr/Lidarr/pull/1829 https://github.com/Lidarr/Lidarr/pull/1829 So the official image would work. edit: I just migrated and I can confirm it works. I used lscr.io/linuxserver/lidarr:nightly, note that the `latest` tag won't work as it's using the `master` branch which doesn't have plugin support yet, so either use the `nightly` tag or the `develop` tag. See: https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-lidarr/#version-tags https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-lidarr/#version-ta...
  • herzzolf 25d ago
    Thanks for sharing Explo, looks like a good project for discovery, I’m going to check it out! I’m using a similar setup, with Lidar/Navidrome, but using Subwave for discovery. It works very well for going through your library and playing music like a radio station would, but it won’t recommend anything that’s not already in there.
• egeozcan 25d ago
  Winamp feature is great but so random, and I love how it's listed as if it's a usual feature expected from any music player. Hoping for a future in which people complain about missing basic functionality like winamp mode being missing in their music player of choice! Let me start: I was going to recommend foobar2000 with the spotify plugin but the lack of a winamp mode must be a dealbreaker for many!
  • devindotcom 25d ago
    I get around the lack of such a mode by still using winamp!
• gitowiec 25d ago
  When I saw the Winamp skin I had to hold to not cry
• sznio 25d ago
  I've been thinking recently about buying an AI-capable GPU and using it to reverse-enginner and debloat apps I use every day. It seems like a task that even a dumber AI model could do. Disassemble the app, then either cut the things I don't care about, or just implement it fresh in a correct way.
  • IshKebab 25d ago
    I don't think models that run on single GPUs are capable of that yet sadly. You still need to spend ~$100k to get an actually good local LLM. Correct me if I'm wrong, local AI guys. It's really hard to get actually numbers on this stuff, but to run e.g. GLM 5.3 Flash as far as I can tell you need one of those super expensive 8 GPU machines.
    • doublerabbit 25d ago
      Aye, and those 8GPU machines are expensive. Powering 2x GPU for GLM is eye watering expense, £5k a month.
    • sznio 25d ago
      if i tasked it with "create spotify" I'd need that much. asking it to "disassemble Spotify and find out the minimal code path needed to play a song" is much more in reach. I don't need it to oneshot it. If it gets stuck, I've read enough disassembled C to figure it out and get it unblocked. Instead of banging my head against a binary for 5 hours, I'll have my agent bang it's weights for 20 hours, then put in my 1 hour of polish. My first task would be to fix the Android version of Facebook Messenger. My friends still stick with it because they have iPhones, and that version works fine. I have been putting up with broken image previews for 2 years now. I'll fix that fucking wild pointer they don't care about and make it usable as a chat app. And I'll remove the ads while at that.
      • Shorel 25d ago
        Qwen 3.8 will do it, but it will probably require 72 hours or more.
• earcar 25d ago
  Author here. Happy to answer any questions!
  • benjaomin 25d ago
    I takes several seconds to load the Queue, what's happening there?
    • benjaomin 25d ago
      correction: it took several seconds to load the queue the first time.
  • jorisw 25d ago
    This app is a dream come true for me. As a user I'm heavily invested in Spotify but I've grown more and more irritated with their client. Especially the recommendations, which thankfully are largely absent from your client. Would love a setting to also remove the "Made for you" section, as well as the "Recommended for you" section, both on the home page. I was using Spicetify to customize the official client to this effect, using CSS.
  • jorisw 25d ago
    Per another comment, is it true that you trick people wanting to view your code on GitHub, into starring your repo?
    • earcar 25d ago
      No. The "Star" button on the website is a simple link to the repo.
  • mijoharas 25d ago
    I was curious about the choice of an immediate mode rather than retained GUI toolkit. Could you speak a little more about the trade-offs and decisions there w.r.t. performance. (Nice work btw, seems very interesting!) C.f. this comment[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49519099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49519099
• GuestFAUniverse 25d ago
  That name is horrible. Potify sounds like a toddler is learning to take a dump. And well, putting "fast" in front of it doesn't impress either in that case.
  • Traubenfuchs 25d ago
    Potify, the scientifically proven way to get toddlers potty trained, with wearables, app support and an AI coach.
• merrvk 25d ago
  Tried using Spotify web client on Safari the other day. Performance was absolutely terrible. For comparison I was using Apple Music via safari before. I’m just surprised that such a big company can produce such an awful web experience, guess everyone is just using the native app, but for some that’s not possible
• skor 25d ago
  if you want to discover new music, have a look at nts.live
• alexyoung 25d ago
  I realise I’m pissing into the wind here, but I find the LLM text on the homepage and docs quite funny/ awkward. > “Ctrl+M turns it into a tiny player that wears any classic Winamp 2 skin, spectrum analyser, equalizer, and playlist included. 2000s vibes, pixel for pixel.” Everything is said with too much intensity, and phrasing that sounds impressive but doesn’t really mean that much. Like “wears any classic Winamp 2 skin” feels so awkward, what’s “wears”? You mean it can use it? I feel like if you can’t be bothered to write the code, at least document it yourself and write the marketing copy so I know you understand the product. Otherwise how can I trust running it on my computer? Did the LLM generate some amazing rm -rf somewhere, or another blunder that wrecks data I might care about?
  • doublerabbit 25d ago
    I too enjoy wearing the RealPlayer skin of the 90's. Makes me look very chic.
    • bryanrasmussen 25d ago
      If the last twenty years of horror movies have taught me anything it is that maybe you can't be a real player, but you can always wear their skin!
  • jcarrano 25d ago
    If it can transform into Winamp I don't care if the code is LLM generated, typed by infinite monkeys or found in some ancient scrolls. Jokes aside, how can you be sure that the official Spotify app (or any app, or Windows) was not written by a LLM without supervision?
    • phatfish 25d ago
      The official Spotify app has some skin in the game. Random dudes self promotion project, not so much.
      • ornornor 25d ago
• dylanger 25d ago
  [dead]
• progbits 25d ago
  What do you all use to buy music these days? I've been slowly trying to stop my spotify usage and replace it with owned audio files. Mostly I try to use Bandcamp but many artists are not there. Sometimes I just rip the audio from youtube but would prefer a way to buy that gives most of the money to the artist.
  • embedding-shape 25d ago
    Saving everything until Bandcamp Fridays for the ones on Bandcamp, otherwise pretty much Beatport or not buying it at all. Some labels I've listened to for a long time (like Liquicity) I buy the music straight from their store, figure the artist/label gets the most then.
  • aorth 25d ago
    After discovering music I like on YouTube or whatever, I buy albums on Bandcamp and Qobuz if possible, and Amazon as a last resort. Then I host them on my personal Navidrome server to enjoy without involving any big tech.
  • dotancohen 25d ago
    Are compact discs no longer available? I used to rip from those - every album I've ever downloaded and kept I have the CD for. Some bought before the download, many bought after. But it's been a long time since I've heard anything good enough to purchase.
    • VilleSalonen 25d ago
      [dead]
  • VilleSalonen 25d ago
    [dead]
  • jbarberu 25d ago
    My personal tier list is: - Bandcamp - CD - 7digital I host the media on a Jellyfin server and use offline playlists on my phone with Finamp for Android, works quite well for me!
• mrmincent 25d ago
  I would pay reasonable money for a similar native MS Teams client. I now run teams on a separate laptop to avoid it killing my main work machine.
• NoboruWataya 25d ago
  Wow, I was going to say I assume the pic in the top right is of the official Spotify client, which seems confusing, but it seems this actually just looks really like the official client. Which is good but possibly makes it more likely Spotify will come after you. The UI feels a lot less sluggish than the official client (which in my experience seems to have gotten way worse lately) but in many cases I am just sent to a loading page which ultimately takes a similar amount of time to load the content. So it seems a lot of the slowness is coming from the Spotify server side, it's just that the official client seems to freeze while waiting for a response whereas this doesn't. Hopefully Spotify don't kill librespot. As I understand it you can basically only use it with Premium accounts, so it's not like they aren't getting paid anyway. If some other provider were to come along and offer access to the same content as Spotify with a stable API that you can use with any client, I would pay more for that than I currently do for Spotify. As an aside, ncspot is another good and more minimalise Spotify client, which is a TUI.
• Ciantic 25d ago
  Very cool. I'm cloning the repo, just in case it gets taken down. I've been using EGUI, but its biggest problem is that LLMs really struggle with it. There isn't enough good examples of it. This codebase seems to have a lot of good examples, so given this as a reference, one might make a lot of progress much faster.
• smcleod 25d ago
  I wish someone would do this for Apple Music. Their app is dreadful!
• Semkas 25d ago
  Lots of people seem to care about whether a project was built by hand over time by a few committed developers, or if it was vibe-coded in the past week by a single person. Whether the distinction matters or not, it would be nice for everyone involved if projects falling into the second category were more upfront about that.
  • yitchelle 25d ago
    As a matter of interest, would seeing a full disclosure that vibe coding was used sway your decision one way or the other?
    • Citizen_Lame 25d ago
      Due to security and future updates, yes.
    • matsemann 25d ago
      Yes, a project maintained and built over longer time has a bigger chance of staying relevant, than someone's weekend fun they will abandon once the dopamine hit of "making something" wears off.
      • slowin 25d ago
        Isn't software written by hand more likely to be abandoned due to the extremely costly nature of keeping its development going? Abandonware definitely existed prior to vibe coding. As long as it's open source, now you can pick it up and keep vibe-developing it if you care to, for very little money/effort.
        • fluidcruft 25d ago
          Possibly, but sunk costs fallacy often means it's possible to rely on the maintainer to stick around. I think we all know how disposable LLM-generated code can be. If I wanted to vibe code my own thing, I'd do it my way rather than fork an abandoned project. What's needed is more of a nexus thing where there's evidence multiple people work together or some long track record of someone scratching a very specific itch. Or if we're all using agents to build the same thing some way for them to team up. It's a sort of proof of life thing and it's difficult to distinguish those from flashes in the pan.
• ourcat 25d ago
  Vibe coded or not, Spotify is a disgusting company for artists, however fast or fancy it's made.
• Skwid 25d ago
  If anyone wants a lightweight, GUI, non-slopcoded spotify client I find spotify-qt[1] does the job nicely. Alas, it wears only the skin of your system QT theme [1] https://github.com/kraxarn/spotify-qt https://github.com/kraxarn/spotify-qt
• ramon156 25d ago
  I'd love to put in some love and effort into a Spotify replacemeny that supports jams. I'd share the app with friends. I needed an excuse to make a cross-platform app anyway.
• ginsmar 25d ago
  To play your local music: https://yunomusica.com/ https://yunomusica.com/
• cyberclimb 25d ago
  nice that it supports ARM Linux! This is a major gap with the official Spotify desktop app
• baxuz 25d ago
  Fastslopify
• arajnoha 25d ago
  Just came to say that official client (all its processes combined) uses 1.1Gb of RAM on my macbook air, while this, playing the same track from the same playlist and nothing else, gets only up to 280Mb
  • piker 25d ago
    Because the official client is an electron app.
  • Retr0id 25d ago
    That's an improvement for sure, but 280MB also seems like a lot.
  • flyingjoe 25d ago
    I came here to say the opposite. Running on MacOS 15.7 the original Client uses ~200mb and Fastpotify uses ~500mb playing the same song while being substantially slower when navigating music. EDIT: I forgot about the Spotify Helper processes - taken into account the original spotify needs ~1GB. However it's still a lot faster than Fastpotify
• Retr0id 25d ago
  Interesting. I've always wanted something like this. The official Spotify player sucks in many ways, but the UI/UX is decent, or at the very least I'm used to it now. All the other lightweight Spotify clients roll their own UIs in ways that I don't like, so I really appreciate that their LLM has taken the time to clone the UI 1:1. But now I have to decide if I want someone else's vibecode on my computer. I think not.
• som 25d ago
  Love the Winamp feature - but more so that it comes with milkdrop! That is next level. What would YouTube music support look like? And another random feature request - universal playlist import / export (i.e. take my YouTube playlist and convert it to Spotify and vice versa - Rosetta stone style)
• prinny_ 25d ago
  This may be a low effort comment but I just wanted to say that there was a missed opportunity to call this project Spotifast.
• rot256 25d ago
  Spotify is, without doubt, the worst piece of software that I still use on a daily basis. It's incredibly buggy, incredibly slow, and the UI has so many "usability inconsistencies". I find the Android app particularly bad, just a couple of examples: - Under a playlist you get a list of suggested songs, the UI element looks like a "regular song", but unlike every other "song" element the user has been trained to recognize, the "swipe right to queue" does not apply to these elements. For some reason. - When you don't have connectivity, e.g. you walk into a Faraday cage, then the search tries to reach the internet and won't show you results before it either: 1) does so, 2) times out. Which means you can't browse your local library before some websocket times out. Just show me the local results first?
  • zipy124 25d ago
    It's actually crazy that a music app struggles to play music many times. By far my worst big app experience.
  • NaiveBayesian 25d ago
    Yes, the Android app is particularly bad. For the past couple of weeks, it's gotten to a point where the app will take 30s to load on my phone. Nothing, not even reinstalling the app fixes this.
  • tormeh 25d ago
    It's a music player, and it's way too heavy for what it does. Well, it does a lot it doesn't need to, too. Uses 1.5GB of RAM on my laptop atm. Since I only have 16GB on my work laptop that's noticeable. I'd love it if Spotify AB could replace its client with a native Rust one, although using an immediate-mode GUI library like fastpotify does might not be the best option... Is there any music streaming service with fast native cross-platform (Linux, Mac, Windows, Android) clients? Because I'd switch. Feel like Spotify's recommendations have taken a nosedive lately, so that wouldn't hold me back too much.
    • shinycode 25d ago
      Quite annoying when, as we see in the tv show “the playlist” that traces back the story of Spotify, the founder put a huge emphasis on performance to differentiate them from the rest and create the best possible UX…
• sceptic123 25d ago
  Looks good, but ran into loading spinners fairly quickly, large playlists kill this, I suspect because the api is not properly respecting the cache headers and is refetching the same information repeatedly and thus getting rate limited. Also Once that happened I wasn't then sure if issues I'm seeing are from api or the app itself. It's possible this is prioritising the responsiveness of the UI rather than the actual speed of user interactions. Also the menu bar icon doesn't work for me (on MacOs). I can see it, but it doesn't do anything and there's nothing in the app itself to enable/disable it (though thankfully it does respect cmd+drag to delete).
  • sceptic123 25d ago
    Also doesn't seem to remember player position between app openings
• yonisto 25d ago
  Serious question: down the road, what's the point of such a UI? (Don't get me wrong, I really like and enjoy it!) My spouse, for example, doesn't interact with her clock app anymore—she just talks to it. Wouldn't many programs just use a local LLM to perform whatever is needed?
• quyleanh 25d ago
  It’s relied on librespot so cannot work with free account.
• djhworld 25d ago
  I might be misremembering, but I swear when Spotify launched it was a big revelation at the time because the client was super fast and playback was almost instantaneous. This was a big deal as other music players like iTunes were bloated. Obviously streaming was the big selling point, something that iTunes didn’t offer at the time, but I swear the client was written in some native UI framework, along with the C/C++ library. Or was the spotify UI always just a browser engine skin and the perception of speed was from the playback engine? Anyway, cool to see projects like this
  • lysace 25d ago
    You're remembering correctly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28203654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28203654 What's funny about having to rely on unauthorized clones to provide a fast native UX was that Spotify's original client back in 2008 started out as beautifully light, custom rendered native client. Few Apps ever had that wow factor the first time I used it, it was so much lighter and more responsive than anything else of the day. I remember being perplexed at how I could search and skip to any part of a song quicker than iTunes could looking at a local library. Everything was latency-free and instantaneous. We were building a Music Startup at the time, so we investigated how it worked. We we’re very surprised we couldn’t find any evidence of an established UI toolkit. It looked as though they had built their own custom UI renderer and optimized TCP protocol which sent back its metadata in XML. Their traffic looked like it was initially seeded from their own (or CDN) servers (for best latency) and then overtime we would see some P2P traffic on the wire. Our QT/C++ client had decent performance but was noticeably heavier than Spotify's. I was disappointed to see their native client eventually be abandoned and succumb to become yet another Chromium wrapper. I expect it fell to the pressures of a growing startup adding 100s of developers (without the skill of their original CTO/devs) where a native UI couldn't be updated and re-iterated as fast as a Web App. I wish they maintained 2 desktop clients, and left their native client alone to just be an audio player and push all their new social features to their new flagship CEF app. It's unfortunate the skill and desire of building fast native UIs are being lost to Electron and CEF wrappers. Seems the larger the organization the more likely they are to build new Web rendered Desktop Apps and we have to rely on unauthorized Indie efforts like this for fast, responsive native UIs. (The comment is from a 2021 post about another Rust-based Spotify client.)
• haaz 25d ago
  always thought the spotify ui was really really good, it just has way more features and feels like it is made by a great team that actually uses the app and has input over it's design, vs apple music which is just a normal app that feels like it was made by a committee
• stuaxo 25d ago
  One of the things I liked the least about spotify is typing in a song name, and then getting a infinite list of every song named like that. I want the song to be a starting point, like Last.fm radio was, I almost never want to listen to every version of it.
• sota_pop 25d ago
  Kudos, I have been carrying exactly this on my personal “to do” projects list for quite some time. Looks really nice!
• Waterluvian 25d ago
  Spotify on Ubuntu one day stopped outputting audio and never again could I get it to work. How do you screw up the one thing your app needs to do?!
• azraellzanella 25d ago
  As one more option -> https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd I've been using it for a while, shows up as a speaker, and uses around 25-40MB of RAM.
  • echoangle 25d ago
    There's also this as an official solution: https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2026-08-13-introducing-spotify-soloist https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2026-08-13-introducing-sp...
• swah 25d ago
  Doesn't play but looks just like the original.
• deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
• toomasr 25d ago
  Now we just need an iOS app that doesn't offer you a choice of speakers on every open and you can just hit play as you intended
• dzonga 25d ago
  whether vibe coded (which it is) or not - this is free work for a corporation. that could hardly care less for it's users / customers.
• vehemenz 25d ago
  I can’t speak for mobile, but the desktop/web product has been a disaster for years. When Spotify went full Electron a few years back, a bunch of standard macOS keyboard shortcuts stopped working. These issues were on their “support” forum for years before being automatically closed.
• TKAB 25d ago
  oh my god. The WinAMP mode is awesome! Probably been waiting for this to be available on macOS for 20 years.
• sandrew17 25d ago
  The classic skins are bringing me back. Well done.
• angelofthe0dd 25d ago
  I use the Spotify browser UI on my PC because the Windows 11 app is such a joke. However, the browser UI makes my screen go completely black for a second every single time. That's my #1 reason for wanting to try this. Spotify's playlist algorithm is a joke at best, but that's another issue altogether.
• ljouhet 25d ago
  I used `cargo install --path . --locked` to install (had an error when compiling `librespot`)
• cdrnsf 25d ago
  I've been using Navidrome for a while and love it (long enough to have written an iOS + macOS client). I mount my music from a B2 bucket and use a shell script to sync additions to it. AudioMuse-AI does a great job generating playlists and populating similar artists. There are lyrics plugins, an Apple Music plugin that can populate metadata and on and on. It's a great system and free from the catalogue rot and slop that's been eroding the benefits of streaming for a while now.
• infomiho 25d ago
  I had the same urge recently, I got tired of huge RAM use. It looks much less cool, but it suits my needs. Built a native Spotify player with Rust and GPUI: https://github.com/infomiho/cadence https://github.com/infomiho/cadence
• mjaniczek 25d ago
  I like the idea of a fast Spotify player, but I can't get over my doubts of LLM code quality when the audio playback stutters even with the 200ms output buffer setting (on macOS).
• khernandezrt 25d ago
  Other than having abysmal inconsistencies in their UI, ive never had any problems with the native Spotify app. I've been using Spotify for 10 years now and when im on my PC i open the app, either put my Podcast or song and then minimize it. Didnt know people had such issues with the app.
• baggachipz 25d ago
  Go easy on Spotify, they don't have much budget left after paying ungodly sums of money for exclusive contracts with nazi-enablers.
• eonmatrix 25d ago
  Cool project. Building it on Fedora is another story.
• drooopy 25d ago
  I find spotify to be more bloated now than iTunes was when apple pulled the plug on it.
• bjord 25d ago
  need this for android. on average, it takes genuinely about five minutes to open—I think it reindexes my entire micro sd card every time.
• deleted 25d ago
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• jeffgreco 25d ago
  This is cool. A few small thoughts: - would love to be able to disable podcasts / anything non music related. it's my #1 gripe with the official Spotify client today. - Winamp buttons shouldn't remain "pressed" in that play state - Winamp doesn't like being stuck to one edge of the screen, after putting there and interacting it will often jump inward a bit - Winamp could use the EQ in collapsed mode - Would be nice for Winamp to remember its position (i think it grabs the NW corner of the large player every time?
• stan-ely 25d ago
  Looks neat, i hope the librespot issues from the initial days don't come up here
• harel 25d ago
  This looks great, I'll give it a try. It seems like most of the comments focus on how this was created, whether it's vibe coded, agent engineered, LLM assisted or however you want to term this. On one hand, I am sad at the collapse of my craft. I love building things in code, figuring it out from the system design to the last compile. On the other hand, I love how productive I am now. How I can complete tasks faster. As someone mentioned, there is a very larger distance between "I vibed coded it and I don't know how it worked" to "I built it and I used LLMs to assist the process". It is possible to design a system, and instruct LLMs to write code for you. Task them the actual act of code writing, not feature development. It's not "build me a music player" but "I'm building a music player that works like so, and you will now write me the play button component that will behave like so and so, focusing on this or that, paying attention to x, y and z and avoiding a, b and c". Although the scope is different but I imagine a similar debate when one didn't need to write machine code anymore...
• alejoar 25d ago
  Doesn't appear to find Nest speakers :( I'd use it otherwise, this is great.
• braggerxyz 25d ago
  I use Strawberry as my music player on Linux, which is a native Qt app and has Spotify integration. No need for the spotify app. Strawberry has great collection support as I own thousands of ripped CDs.
  • mdnahas 25d ago
    I just looked at Strawberry. Spotify is done via a GStreamer plug-in. It looks like you have to compile it yourself.
• DressOrc 25d ago
  oh wow, Ive been waiting for this for years, its insane we run entire browsers just to play music. Very excited to try this out
• j1elo 25d ago
  I've been using Slint as UI toolkit for Rust and so far liked it, coming as I am from the Qt/QML world. However, at the beginning I had to choose between Slint[1] and egui[2] (which this project uses) [1]: https://slint.dev/ https://slint.dev/ [2]: https://www.egui.rs/ https://www.egui.rs/ Anyone has experience in both and is able to drop some thoughts on their strengths & weaknesses for mid-to-large projects?
• bilekas 25d ago
  My worry with this, like all Spotify clients really, is its dependance on Spotify's, quite litteraly, worst public facing API that is known to exist. I have been using Spotatui and it's been fast enough, but it would be nice sometimes to have a better 'new music' search experience. I'll give this a try, but if Spotify are hell bent on destroying API users, I fear the project maintainers will have more work than it's worth.
• qgin 25d ago
  Not helpful for Linux users, but FYI both the Windows and Mac Apple Music clients are native apps.
• kermatt 25d ago
  I recently went through most of the Spotify clients I could find on GitHub, looking for something "lean", including screen real estate. Most of the GUI apps had something similar to the official app in the maximized window, but none had a good mini-player, something I could put in the corner of an external monitor and control most of the important functions with minimal mouse clicking, including EQ and playlist. Interestingly this one with its Winamp mode is what I was looking for. Nostaliga is probably playing a part, but it a good UI does not have to be "modern". I also went through a tour of TUI apps. Lots of interesting work there, but a full TUI with windows was less convenient to navigate, and some of them try to do too much. I wound up using https://github.com/hrkfdn/ncspot https://github.com/hrkfdn/ncspot because it specifically does not attempt to be a character mode GUI. Almost like a ViMusic.
• hndqbrg2uk 25d ago
  Nice to see fastpotify framed this way — I'd been circling the same idea without the right words.
• Dansvidania 25d ago
  I would welcome a mobile counterpart to this, if it is even possible. The iOS app is even worse.
• poody 25d ago
  I use youtube music.. It has everything I listen to and more.. Want an obscure college band (Go ZURCHER) ? .. It is there! Want some rare DnB (source direct).. It is there? Want a curated ambient collection? It is there! UX is totally fine on Apple and Android..
  • exp1orer 25d ago
    I tried switching from Spotify to Youtube Music but the "download for offline" functionality is incredibly broken -- often doesn't recognize that it's on wifi to start downloading, multiple minutes to download an album that Spotify downloads in a few seconds, and for a longer playlist the pause/resume when you go off wifi doesn't work at all.
• phusion 25d ago
  Took a very long time to get it to sign in and play on my local machine... we'll see if it's worth switching from the official client.
• dj24 25d ago
  It uses 495mb on my machine, slightly false claims
• legohead 25d ago
  If this player has true random playing of your songs, instant sell for me. Also, a mobile version would be great, even if I have to do a manual install. Spotify's "random shuffle" has been broken for years, with a long running thread [1] complaining about it. A lot of the commenters think there is some kind of "artist priority" playing algorithm, with some kind of maximum profit goal or something. But I think it's simpler - if Spotify just plays the same ~20 songs, they save a lot on bandwidth as it can just play from a local store. Who knows the real reason, I just know that it's annoying when I have a 2000+ song playlist and only hear a small percentage of it. And yes I'm aware last year Spotify announced "fewer repeats" shuffle - but it doesn't work, or isn't sufficient anyway. [1] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/All-Platforms-Option-to-have-a-true-shuffle/idi-p/4880594#comments https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/All-Platf...
  • HDThoreaun 25d ago
    The most sickening part of this is that it isn’t actually broken, it’s working exactly how Spotify wants. Spotify thinks we are so stupid we actually want their janky “shuffle” that doesn’t work properly.
• skarz 25d ago
  But can my daughter, who has a Managed Account, use this?
• flyingshelf 25d ago
  I never understood the complaints about Spotify. Apple Music behaved like crap with something as simple as being offline, to me it's always been a no-brainer to use Spotify over anything else.
• pqdbr 25d ago
  Carmine is cooking. His work on RubyLLM has been incredible, even going as far as upstreaming important work about fiber usage into Rails Solid Queue so that we reap the Async benefits, which are essential in this LLM age.
• deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
• christosk92 25d ago
  I think it's cool people are making custom clients. I actually am working on my own client: WaveeMusic (https://github.com/christosk92/WaveeMusic https://github.com/christosk92/WaveeMusic). I decided not to base it on librespot because it still talks to Spotify's old AP audiokey channel. Official clients don't use that path anymore, it already refuses accounts created after ~2023, and Spotify can turn it off whenever they want. I decided to use the new PlayPlay instead, the DRM path the official apps actually use. That also gets you music videos, and lossless / FLAC (still working on the decode). Also the app is more focused on the native Win11 niche for the folks who like those type of UIs.
• internet_points 25d ago
  I'm using Qobuz now, they have both downloads and streaming, and apparently pay the artist more than any of the other streaming alternatives. I've found all the music I've looked for there too (including some artists that dropped Spotify). Quite happy with everything except maybe the name ..
• maxrev17 25d ago
  These apps and systems have hard quirks built in to make you learn them then find the alternatives jarring so you don’t switch. It’s a retention trick by engineers who know what they’re doing. As many pointed out decent music player/library ux was solved yonks ago.
• ergocoder 25d ago
  I've stopped using Spotify for 2 years now. What I've realized is that Spotify is great for discovering new songs. But I'm a grown up and listen to the same hundreds of songs every day anyway. No need to keep paying the taxes.
• actinium226 25d ago
  I don't really get the comments about Spotify having a terrible UX, works fine for me. It uses 300 MB of RAM on my MacBook. Saving 50MB of RAM in exchange for losing the ability to play lossless files isn't a trade I want to make. Cool project though, will keep an eye on it.
• ICHx 25d ago
  Time to leave electron amid the ram crisis
• mansilladev 25d ago
  For me, stock Spotify client on Mac is using ~200MB RAM (no videos / canvas). I probably need to try a leaner build on Fastspotify (built it myself from source), bug the damn thing was using ~350MB RAM. Both RAM counts were based on initial load + playing one song.
  • boguscoder 25d ago
    have you summed up all the Spotify Helper processes from Chrome? alas its way beyond 200MB. But I just built and ran release build of fastpotify and its also hovering in 500s
• mayli 25d ago
  > It starts in well under a second and typically uses 100–250 MB of RAM. Hmm, a music player now use much RAM :/
• rickreynoldssf 25d ago
  To give you an idea of the kinds of Engineering decisions going on at Spotify, they do thousands of deploys per day and are PROUD of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-E24t0YM2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-E24t0YM2g Must be one of THE WORST engineering orgs running right now.
• rubymamis 25d ago
  Like this, but the problem with such immediate mode GUI apps is that they constantly burn 1-2% of CPU when the app is idle. A waste of compute and power.
• paaloeye 25d ago
  Saw it's Rust, closed immediately.
• tarwin 25d ago
  If you want this experience but don't want Spotify may I suggest my "amp" app - you can get it on tinyjs.app It's small ~10mb. Yes, takes a bit more memory, but it plays all your local files including rarer things like FLAC + Cue, midi and all the tracker files you could want! And includes a bunch of viz - and you can write your own too. It doesn't do Winamp skins; decided I wanted to add more than they could support.
• arnefm 25d ago
  Suddenly I couldn't resolve fastpotify.rocks in DNS. Quad9 is now blocking this domain for some reason. https://quad9.net/result/?url=fastpotify.rocks#domain-tester https://quad9.net/result/?url=fastpotify.rocks#domain-tester ThreatStop lists the following info: Severity Level: 5 of 5 Confidence Level: 5 of 5 Risk Level: 4 of 5 I assume this is a false positive, but who can be sure in this day and age...
• stronglikedan 25d ago
  Unfortunately this won't fix the atrocious recommendation system. I really wish these music services could just license Pandora's system. Since Pandora won't add high quality streams, they may as well offer a license to make up for the money they leave on the table monthly. The most user hostile part about Spotify though, is that you can't just thumbs down a song and never hear it again. Why the fuck would I want you to "not recommend it for 30 days" if I'm telling you I dislike it? If I didn't lock in a bundle deal years ago that I still can't pass up, I wouldn't use it at all. As of now though, it's relegated to my backup player for when I can't find a song on YT Music or Qobuz.
• brikym 25d ago
  This looks amazing but unfortunately this project is doing free work for Spotify rather than brining competition they need. The root problem is that the content access is so gatekept. Apple music opens on it's own. Spotify is junk. YouTube music isn't much better. They've all become lazy and need a shake up.
• avidruntime 25d ago
  Cant seem to get milkdrop to work on the binary installed via cask on arm macOS. Everything else feels very snappy and fun
• milk2540 25d ago
  Please make an android port Please god I will pay
• grougnax 25d ago
  [dead]
• pikzel 24d ago
  Very promising, but works poorly. Playlists load in ~10s, app crashed after a few minutes. Vibe-coded low-quality app.
• petreradu 24d ago
  For me, it gets the job done, which is mainly managing the hundreds of podcast episodes I am bookmarking (and probably never listen to). Or maybe the iOS version is a bit better than the Android one.
• _rwo 24d ago
  took few sessions to re-slop this to OpenSubsonic (navidrome compat) backend; didn't even looked once at the code, I love and hate the future we live in thanks again for sharing!
• aleksandrm 23d ago
  Too bad this requires a Premium subscription, can't use this without one.
• mock-possum 23d ago
  hmm I wanted to like this, but for me it's noticeably slower/laggier than the official spotify app, and it's missing common ui features (you can't multi-select and delete from a playlist)
• paaloeye 22d ago
  The only problem with macOS Spotify, in my opinion, is audio thread isn't isolated to system performance and it can drop audio frames under load. Yes, it's Electron and it's a full browser under the hood, but given the complexity of the UI, it's a fair trade-off. I'd love to see some like headless Spotify client on macOS.
• SnowingXIV 20d ago
  > Local playback tops out at 320 kbps. Spotify protects its lossless streams with DRM that librespot does not support, and Fastpotify will not circumvent it. This can change if lawful support lands upstream. I was interested until this bit, and it is a shame. Not the developers issue, but man that's frustrating.