The latest version of the spotify client for linux (0.4.8) has added partial mpris support.

This is great as it means controlling spotify via D-bus is far easier than the previous hacks using wmctrl and xvkbd.

I’ve updated the screensaver toggle script to use spotify’s D-bus interface to play/pause spotify. This also means that I’ve been able to de-couple the script from having to run the screensaver which a big improvement on the old version.

To run it just add the script to your start-up items.

Here’s the code, which is a lot more concise compared to the previous version.

Updated to use Mpris2 as of revision 9 for v0.4.8.306…

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""
Title: Spotify Screensaver Toggle
Author: Stuart Colville, http://muffinresearch.co.uk/
License: BSD

Requires Spotify Linux Preview.

Usage:

 * Save the script
 * Ensure it is executable: chmod +x /path/to/script
 * Add the script to your start-up items. 

"""

import dbus
import gobject
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop

class SpotifyScreenSaverPause(object):
    """This pauses and plays spotify when the screensaver is activated"""

    def __init__(self):
        """init class."""
        dbus_loop = DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
        self.bus = dbus.SessionBus(mainloop = dbus_loop)
        self.loop = gobject.MainLoop()
        self.start_listen()
        self.was_playing = 0
        self.loop.run()

    def start_listen(self):
        """Listen to screensaver ActiveChanged events from dbus."""
        screensaver = self.bus.get_object('org.gnome.ScreenSaver',
                                                  '/org/gnome/ScreenSaver')
        screensaver.connect_to_signal("ActiveChanged", self.play_pause)

    def play_pause(self, *args, **kwargs):
        """Toggle play/pause."""
        try:
            spotify = self.bus.get_object("org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify", "/")
            spotify_iface = dbus.Interface(spotify, dbus_interface="org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer2")
            if self.was_playing:
                spotify_iface.Play()
                self.was_playing = 0
            else:
                if spotify_iface.GetMetadata():
                    self.was_playing = 1
                spotify_iface.Pause()
        except dbus.exceptions.DBusException, e:
            # Ignore exception caused by spotify not being started.
            if e.get_dbus_name() != 'org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown':
                raise

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ss = SpotifyScreenSaverPause()

See the latest version of the code here Spotify Screensaver Toggle

If you want to investigate what’s possible with D-bus and spotify, D-feet is an excellent tool for investigating D-bus:

Click for a larger version.

Further Examples

Here’s an example to get the metadata from a track currently playing. (Note: if Spotify isn’t playing this will be an empty dictionary.)

>>> import dbus
>>> bus = dbus.SessionBus()
>>> spotify = bus.get_object("org.mpris.spotify", "/")
>>> spotify_iface = dbus.Interface(spotify, dbus_interface="org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer")
>>> spotify_iface.GetMetadata()
dbus.Dictionary({dbus.String(u'album'): dbus.String(u'Getz/Gilberto #2', variant_level=1), dbus.String(u'title'): dbus.String(u"Here's That Rainy Day", variant_level=1), dbus.String(u'artist'): dbus.String(u'Stan Getz', variant_level=1), dbus.String(u'year'): dbus.Int32(1964, variant_level=1), dbus.String(u'location'): dbus.String(u'spotify:track:1RIfT0Y0TwP2M38pLLfDeJ', variant_level=1), dbus.String(u'time'): dbus.UInt32(242L, variant_level=1), dbus.String(u'tracknumber'): dbus.Int32(4, variant_level=1)}, signature=dbus.Signature('sv'))
>>> print spotify_iface.GetMetadata().get("title")
Here's That Rainy Day
>>> print spotify_iface.GetMetadata().get("location")
spotify:track:1BTO5gV9xSAB7EOBKSlcFY
>>>

With the latest Spotify update to use MPRIS2 (0.4.8.306.xxx) – the TrackChanged signal has gone and there’s no PropertiesChanged signal as per MPRIS2 spec http://www.mpris.org/2.0/spec/ I’ll update the notification example script below as soon as that is rectified. It was there all along. I’ve updated the code to reflect the use of PropertiesChanged

To take that example further here’s a demo that listens to the TrackChangedPropertiesChanged event. It uses the notification id so we can replace the notification details as you move through the tracks. This avoids waiting for the timeout before displaying the current track information.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""
Title: Spotify Notification Demo
Author: Stuart Colville, http://muffinresearch.co.uk
License: BSD

"""

import dbus
import gobject
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
import pynotify

class SpotifyNotifier(object):

    def __init__(self):
        """initialise."""
        bus_loop = DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
        bus = dbus.SessionBus(mainloop=bus_loop)
        loop = gobject.MainLoop()
        self.spotify = bus.get_object("org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify", "/org/mpris/MediaPlayer2")
        self.spotify.connect_to_signal("PropertiesChanged", self.track_changed)
        self.notify_id = None
        loop.run()

    def track_changed(self, interface, changed_props, invalidated_props):
        """Handle track changes."""
        metadata = changed_props.get("Metadata", {})
        if metadata:
            if pynotify.init("Spotify Notifier Demo"):

                title = unicode(metadata.get("xesam:title").encode("latin1"))
                album = unicode(metadata.get("xesam:album").encode("latin1"))
                artist = unicode(metadata.get("xesam:artist").encode("latin1"))

                alert = pynotify.Notification(title,
                                 "by %s from %s" % (artist, album))
                if self.notify_id:
                    alert.props.id = self.notify_id
                alert.set_urgency (pynotify.URGENCY_NORMAL)
                alert.show()
                self.notify_id = alert.props.id

if __name__ == "__main__":
    SpotifyNotifier()

Note this notification demo assumes spotify is running to set-up the listener, so it’s not something you can just set running at start-up unless you use it to wrap the start-up of spotify.

Both scripts are BSD licensed so feel free to use and adapt to your own purposes.

The good new is that this is already possible! I asked a question on Get Satisfaction and a Spotify employee Emil Hesslow answered straight away that this feature already exists. Here’s some examples:

• Check out George Benson’s guitar break: Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey 4:04
• A Nice hammond organ break from Greg Rolie: Toussaint L’Overture 0:46

You can also use the spotify protocol:

e.g: spotify:track:39Bi2scq80BWdgnxz2llWT#04:04

The format for the link is just a simple fragment identifier added to the end of the link in the format #mins:secs e.g: #4:04

From using this (I’m running Spotify under wine) I’ve found you need to URLencode this in the “http://open.spotify…” links for it to work so #4:04 becomes %2304%3A04.

Amazon’s Mp3 store is now available in the UK which is great news. They seem to have a lot of tracks and albums available and track pricing is variable but seems tio start at the 69p which undercuts Apple’s iTunes music store by quite a bit.

Amazon’s tracks are DRM free tracks which means that you will always have access to your music. Whereas DRM tracks could become unplayable should the DRM service be switched off in the future. Think it won’t happen? Sadly there’s been several cases of DRM services being shutdown. MSN and Yahoo have both shut-down DRM based services in the past so it’s a big problem potentially. Clearly if Amazon can negotiate their way around the DRM problem companies like Apple should be able to just as well. (Granted apple does have the iTunes Plus tracks which are DRM free but this is a Minor subset of their overall catalogue.)

Album pricing seems to start at around £3.00 which is surprisingly aggressive, and it’s good to see major players like iTunes getting some decent competition. Also right now there seems to be lots of recently released albums available for £3.00 such as the Kings Of Leon album – Only By The Night. Can’t really complain at paying £3.00 for that. It’s £7.99 on the iTunes store.

The bit-rate is 256 kbps and whilst this is ok it would be good to see this upped in the future. Also I’d personally love to see the addition of open lossless formats such as flac. Though I can see that this possibly has a limited audience.

To download the tracks a software downloader is required but crucially this is available for OSX, windows and Linux. Purchasing a track is straight forward enough – a download of a .amz file is triggered which you open with the downloader and it proceeds to download the tracks.

Provided their music catalogue continues to grow to match their CD market I’m pretty sure Amazon’s UK mp3 offering will be a success. And Apple needs to start to wake up to this competition – whilst alternative mp3 services such as 7Digitial might not be widely known to the average Joe – Amazon is well known and anyone who uses amazon is likely to find the mp3 store pretty quickly if they’d not already heard of it.