spotifyr

Overview

spotifyr is a wrapper for pulling track audio features and other information from Spotify’s Web API in bulk. By automatically batching API requests, it allows you to enter an artist’s name and retrieve their entire discography in seconds, along with Spotify’s audio features and track/album popularity metrics. You can also pull song and playlist information for a given Spotify User (including yourself!).

Installation

Development version (recommended)

devtools::install_github('charlie86/spotifyr')

CRAN version 1.0.0 (Note: this is somewhat outdated, as it takes extra time to submit and pass CRAN checks)

install.packages('spotifyr')

Authentication

First, set up a Dev account with Spotify to access their Web API here. This will give you your Client ID and Client Secret. Once you have those, you can pull your access token into R with get_spotify_access_token().

The easiest way to authenticate is to set your credentials to the System Environment variables SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID and SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET. The default arguments to get_spotify_access_token() (and all other functions in this package) will refer to those. Alternatively, you can set them manually and make sure to explicitly refer to your access token in each subsequent function call.

Sys.setenv(SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx')
Sys.setenv(SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx')

access_token <- get_spotify_access_token()

Authorization code flow

For certain functions and applications, you’ll need to log in as a Spotify user. To do this, your Spotify Developer application needs to have a callback url. You can set this to whatever you want that will work with your application, but a good default option is http://localhost:1410/ (see image below). For more information on authorization, visit the offical Spotify Developer Guide.

Usage

What was The Beatles’ favorite key?

library(spotifyr)
beatles <- get_artist_audio_features('the beatles')

library(tidyverse)
library(knitr)

beatles %>% 
    count(key_mode, sort = TRUE) %>% 
    head(5) %>% 
    kable()

key_mode	n
D major	24
G major	21
A major	13
F major	12
C major	11

Get your most recently played tracks

library(lubridate)

get_my_recently_played(limit = 5) %>% 
    mutate(artist.name = map_chr(track.artists, function(x) x$name[1]),
           played_at = as_datetime(played_at)) %>% 
    select(track.name, artist.name, track.album.name, played_at) %>% 
    kable()

track.name	artist.name	track.album.name	played_at
Dollars & Cents	Radiohead	Amnesiac	2019-03-11 23:16:24
Morning Bell/Amnesiac	Radiohead	Amnesiac	2019-03-11 23:14:29
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors	Radiohead	Amnesiac	2019-03-11 23:11:14
Pyramid Song	Radiohead	Amnesiac	2019-03-11 23:07:06
Treefingers	Radiohead	Kid A	2019-03-11 23:02:17

Find your all time favorite artists

get_my_top_artists_or_tracks(type = 'artists', time_range = 'long_term', limit = 5) %>% 
    select(name, genres) %>% 
    rowwise %>% 
    mutate(genres = paste(genres, collapse = ', ')) %>% 
    ungroup %>% 
    kable()

name	genres
Radiohead	alternative rock, art rock, melancholia, modern rock, oxford indie, permanent wave, rock
Onra	alternative hip hop, chillhop, trip hop, wonky
Flying Lotus	alternative hip hop, chillwave, electronic, escape room, experimental hip hop, glitch, glitch hop, hip hop, indietronica, intelligent dance music, wonky
Teebs	abstract beats, bass music, chillwave, wonky
Aphex Twin	ambient, electronic, fourth world, intelligent dance music, new rave, trip hop

Find your favorite tracks at the moment

get_my_top_artists_or_tracks(type = 'tracks', time_range = 'short_term', limit = 5) %>% 
    mutate(artist.name = map_chr(artists, function(x) x$name[1])) %>% 
    select(name, artist.name, album.name) %>% 
    kable()

name	artist.name	album.name
Illegal Smile	John Prine	John Prine
Shattered Dreams	Earl Sweatshirt	Some Rap Songs
The Bends	Earl Sweatshirt	Some Rap Songs
December 24	Earl Sweatshirt	Some Rap Songs
Loosie	Earl Sweatshirt	Some Rap Songs

What’s the most joyful Joy Division song?

My favorite audio feature has to be “valence,” a measure of musical positivity.

joy <- get_artist_audio_features('joy division')

joy %>% 
    arrange(-valence) %>% 
    select(track_name, valence) %>% 
    head(5) %>% 
    kable()

track_name	valence
Passover - 2007 Remaster	0.941
Colony - 2007 Remaster	0.808
Atrocity Exhibition - 2007 Remaster	0.787
A Means to an End - 2007 Remaster	0.752
Interzone - 2007 Remastered Version	0.746

Now if only there was some way to plot joy…

Joyplot of the emotional rollercoasters that are Joy Division’s albums

library(ggjoy)

ggplot(joy, aes(x = valence, y = album_name)) + 
    geom_joy() + 
    theme_joy() +
    ggtitle("Joyplot of Joy Division's joy distributions", subtitle = "Based on valence pulled from Spotify's Web API with spotifyr")

Sentify: A Shiny app

This app, powered by spotifyr, allows you to visualize the energy and valence (musical positivity) of all of Spotify’s artists and playlists.

Dope stuff other people have done with spotifyr

The coolest thing about making this package has definitely been seeing all the awesome stuff other people have done with it. Here are a few examples:

Exploring the Spotify API with R: A tutorial for beginners, by a beginner, Mia Smith

Sentiment analysis of musical taste: a cross-European comparison, Paul Elvers

Blue Christmas: A data-driven search for the most depressing Christmas song, Caitlin Hudon

KendRick LamaR, David K. Laing

Vilken är Kents mest deprimerande låt? (What is Kent’s most depressing song?), Filip Wästberg

Чёрное зеркало Arcade Fire (Black Mirror Arcade Fire), TheSociety

Sente-se triste quando ouve “Amar pelos dois”? Não é o único (Do you feel sad when you hear “Love for both?” You’re not alone), Rui Barros, Rádio Renascença

Using Data to Find the Angriest Death Grips Song, Evan Oppenheimer

Hierarchical clustering of David Bowie records, Alyssa Goldberg

tayloR, Simran Vatsa

Long Distance Calling: Data Science meets Post-Rock…, Sebastian Kuhn