I’m working on a Spotify application that creates collaborative playlists by combining music from multiple users. Think of it like making the perfect party mix based on what your friends are listening to.
Right now I can only use the social.getToplist() method to grab top tracks from other users, but it’s limited to just 20 songs per person. That’s not really enough content to make a good playlist.
Is there any way to fetch public playlists that belong to other users instead? Or maybe there’s a method to increase the track limit when using social.getToplist()? I need more songs to work with for this project to be useful.
Getting public playlists from other users through Spotify’s API isn’t straightforward. The API won’t let you fetch playlists directly, and social.getToplist() only gives you 20 tracks per user. I ran into this same problem on a project. What worked for me was using the search function to find playlists if you know the username. You can also use the related artists feature - grab their top tracks and expand from there with popular songs from similar artists. Privacy limits are annoying, but you could ask users to share their playlist URIs directly as a workaround.
yeah, the 20 track limit sucks. you could try the web playback sdk with user auth instead - once people log in and give permissions, you can grab their saved tracks. way more content than just toplists. it’s trickier to set up but you’ll get much better data for collaborative playlists.
I faced a similar challenge when developing a collaborative app. You can get more content by utilizing multiple API endpoints instead of relying solely on social.getToplist(). For instance, use social.getRecentTracks() to pull the latest tracks from friends, then analyze their top artists and retrieve popular songs from those artists. Although it requires more API calls, this method significantly broadens your selection. Additionally, consider enabling users to manually share their playlists for greater collaboration.
Spotify’s API is pretty locked down when it comes to other users’ data. I’ve built similar apps and can tell you - there’s no real way to access public playlists through the official endpoints. But I found a couple workarounds. First, try the Browse API instead. You can search curated playlists by mood or genre rather than targeting specific users. Second option that worked great for me: build a playlist sharing feature. Let users voluntarily submit their playlist IDs to your database. Sure, it needs more user interaction, but you’ll get full playlists instead of those annoying 20-track limits.