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One Hit Wonder
January 13, 2019
Not for now

Can we please get a "Current song playing" API endpoint?

  • January 13, 2019
  • 30 replies
  • 2352 views
Okay, this has been bothering me for a bit. I was recently "flexed on" by visiting Discord and seeing a bunch of Spotify Rich Presence on peoples profiles. I got into researching for a Deezer alternative, at least something that displays the current song, and I found nothing.

To anyone that doesn't know: Discord is a messaging app that has grown quite popular(think of it as a Skype replacement), and lets you display stuff on your profile, like if you're playing a game or listening to music. Most programs/services have either a 3rd party rich presence app or provide it themselves.

There isn't even an API endpoint for the current song playing and its info. Now I don't want to play an armchair developer, but I was very disappointed I couldn't even make my own Discord rich presence because a music service cannot provide me with the current song playing through their own API.

My tone may seem a bit harsh, but I've been resorting to using a 3rd party app that saves their songs in an SQLITE3 database, and I'm planning on getting the current song from there with C and write my own simple Discord rich presence.

Some of you might now use Discord and might find this completely unnecessary, but I'm mostly making this thread because of the lack of endpoint, not just lack of Discord rich presence.

What the API endpoint would probably need(the bare minimum):
  • Title of the current song, artist, album, album artwork link
  • Status(paused/playing/...)
  • Time(3:30/4:20)
Other things you could achieve with that endpoint:

  • Rich presence on every other thing that provides it with a very tiny memory footprint and overhead(who needs a GUI for that???), which further exposes Deezer to the younger demographics
  • 3rd party clients that would fill up some of the niche markets, first thing I can think of is a terminal client? People make that and other people like it, doesn't cost anyone nothing
One more disclaimer. I am aware of the "workaround" with the Javascript SDK. However I find this completely unnecessary as that limits everyone's options, and something as simple and permanently running in the background does not need a javascript SDK.

If I missed something somewhere, go ahead and contact me.

Once again I apologize for possibly sounding either confrontational or rude. I just want this endpoint, and not rely on 3rd party software for the fun little programs/scripts I like to make in my free time. I would never make this thread if I haven't seen a thread on StackOverflow that's 3 years old and has the problem of that missing endpoint.

30 replies

Rafael.
Ultimate Superstar
Ultimate Superstar
January 18, 2019
Hi there, thanks for the well detailed idea! 🙂 I will pass it on to our developers 😉
Guitar Hero
February 2, 2019
yes yes yes please
Roadie
February 27, 2019
Hi !
Can we know if this feature is yet implemented or when ?
Roadie
March 1, 2019
Hi there, thanks for the well detailed idea! 🙂 I will pass it on to our developers ;)

??
Rudi
Ultimate Superstar
Ultimate Superstar
March 3, 2019
@xolider

We'll update this topic once we know more about it - including a release time.
Guitar Hero
March 17, 2019
I'm also interested in this.
Roadie
March 27, 2019
I would also like this, right now I'm using a lame firefox plugin to try to do a similar thing.
Roadie
November 7, 2019

Gee, nothing yet :( 

Roadie
December 15, 2019

is this still a thing ?

Rudi
Ultimate Superstar
Ultimate Superstar
December 18, 2019

No updates on this yet, @Biquette. Thank you for your patience and support :thumbsup_tone2: