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Comment by basisword | Hacker News Reader

Yep, the API is now basically useless and you can't use it in production. All because of some anonymous greedy dickheads.

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Get the metadata from Anna. At least now it's freely available.

Also it's unfair to call Anna greedy. There can't be much money in giving stuff away for free.

Yes stealing other peoples things to 'give them away' is very noble. The meta data is useless to me. I can no longer build an app on top of Spotify's API because they've had to lock it down.

Have you considered blaming Spotify or the music industry instead for how ridiculously closed the entire system is?

$10 a month for all the music every recorded. Free with ads. How much more open can they make it?

There is nothing open about that. You own none of it. Only usable within their walled off platforms.

Want to build an alternative player? Can’t do that. Support new or alternative hardware? Sorry, no API access. Want to record them onto a tape/CD/SD card? Forbidden. Want to play songs at your neighborhood party? Illegal. Use them for a funny video? Nope. Even sharing lyrics gets you a DMCA takedown request.

I really hate people using terms like "theft" or "piracy" to refer to the act of artificially-limited copying. Copying something does not take anything away from the person you're copying from inherently. Theft does. And piracy is like theft, but with murder and kidnapping too.

Do you mean the stock holders of the major labels?

No the artists.

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