How To Use Spotify with your Sqeezebox

Introduction

Although I’m personally a raving fan of TIDAL as my main audiophile streaming service, I can understand why Spotify is such a popular choice among the younger generation. First of all, the stability and ease of use of their smartphone apps is unbeatable (although TIDAL has been catching up lately). In addition, you have access to a huge library of albums that is constantly growing. Especially PoP/Rock and Punk genres are well represented. Surprisingly, I was also able to find a couple of audiophile albums on Telarc. My kids have their own Spotify subscriptions so it totally makes sense to play back their favorites on my audio system.

How Do You Get Spotify to Play Back on Your Music Server?

Apart from hooking up your kids latest gaming consoles to your DAC via Toslink and fiddling with an internet enabled TV, you can teach your good old Squeezebox some new tricks :)

You simply need either a physical Squeezebox or Logitech Transporter. However one of the Raspberry PI software emulators such as PICoreplayer will also work. If you have Sqeezebox Server running on your Raspberry PI, NAS or PC, you need a 3rd-party plugin called “Spotty” which is graciously provided by Michael Herger to the fellow Squeezebox community.

I installed this plugin on my Raspberry PI 3 which runs a test installation of Squeezebox Server and voila – I was able to listen to my kids music playlists! A nice side effect is that you can use your smartphones Spotify app to remote control the playback using Spotify Connect. That’s pretty cool.

Unfortunately, I don’t use Squeezebox Server full time these days because I’m running a Roon streaming setup but I totally recommend you give this a shot if you do happen to have a similar Sqeezebox Setup.

Alternative Method Using AirPlay

Another possible method would be to use AirPlay if you’re an iOS user although this could potentially drain your devices batteries. I installed Shairport (AirPort protocol emulator) on my Roon endpoint (Raspberry PI 3) which does everything I need in our home.