I'd love to see the same for public playlists. Example: an anonymous user pastes the URL to a public playlist that someone else made on, say, Spotify. The Web app creates a public playlist on another platform -- or even just spits out a bookmarkable "Playlist equivalent page" that has Songwhip links for each tracks (and the user has to play each one).
Given the number of public Spotify playlists, I'm a little surprised that TIDAL, Deezer, or Qobuz clients don't have native support for pasting URLs to public Spotify playlists. Even if it couldn't authoritatively match the songs and instead played the first search result match (for artist name and song title), it would be right 99% of the time.
There’s actually a web app that does exactly what you are describing. It seamlessly converts playlists between apple music to spotify and vice versa. Check it out https://playlistor.io/ .
Thank you! This is really close. It doesn't solve my personal need but it may work for others.
It only works with Apple Music, which isn't the app I use. Also, when I paste a public Spotify playlist URL (source), it asks for my Apple Music credentials instead of creating a public Apple Music playlist or if that's not possible, generating a page with play links.
Still, it's trying to solve the same problem and may work for others. I appreciate the link.
You are welcome. With spotify to Apple music conversion, your credentials are needed because the Apple music endpoint requires the user to be authenticated to be able to create playlists. Also, after a successful conversion, the links to each platforms playlist is listed on the web app. I thank you for checking it out.
My experience in trying this recently was that https://www.tunemymusic.com/ was able to match more of my iTunes library to Spotify than Playlistor, but YMMV.
I assume because these count as material for which Spotify technically has copyright over, or at least has been assigned a license to use, so importing them into a competitor app is likely to cause litigation.
I’m referring to songs that the other apps also have. As an example, both Spotify and TIDAL have licenses for - and will happily play - the vast majority of the North American catalog. Spotify has more user-created public playlists, but not a ton more music.
I mean collections of songs (ie playlists) are themselves copyrightable. Even if they have the songs licenced, they cannot copy playlists from Spotify without risking legal action.
Spotify actually got sued after some users uploaded playlists that copied ministry of sound playlists, so there is some history of actual litigation in this area.
Would pay for this if you could customise the links on each platform rather than only have the robot suggestions.
While it works fine for 'popular' music, like almost all music platforms and tools it totally sucks for classical music (and I appreciate Songwhip is a free and cool thing, not complaining!). While it'll mostly find the same piece of music on different platforms, often they will be different recordings which isn't appropriate.
I say this because linking to recordings across platforms is a key part of my partner's workflow, and a tool like this (if customisable landing pages could be easily created/curated) would be a game changer!
I love the use of human-readable URL's. The ability to cut the song title out and go to the Artist page (for example) is really neat. Nice work Wilson - I'll be using it!
Great, thanks for the kind words! :) I've been working on the project for almost 3 years, so it hasn't been a quick hack by any means. I came from a front-end background and have had to learn the whole stack.
Two questions:
1. Do you plan to monetize it to aid in the sustainability of this product?
2. Any thoughts on implementing this functionality for playlists?
1. Yes I'm planning on releasing Songwhip Pro (https://songwhip.com/pro) which will be a customizable version of the free product targeted at artists, labels and marketers. It'll allow an artist name to be 'claimed' unlocking write access and pro-only features.
2. I don't have the bandwidth to take on playlist functionality at this time. I'm trying to focus the offering and really nail the original problem before taking on new challenges. I've seen competitors try to spread themselves too thin and end up not doing anything exceptionally.
I'm also curious how you're doing this. One of my apps heavily uses the Spotify API and Spotify has started to get very strict on who uses their API and if/how they are allowed to monetize.
I haven't had any issues from Spotify API yet. I've had days where it's been slammed pretty hard. YouTube has the most strict quotas, but you can apply to have them increased which I've done several times.
I make a small amount of commission through traffic I send to Apple and Amazon. ATM this just about covers my costs. I'm hoping with scale will come some partnership opportunities and I'm also working on a Pro offering (songwhip.com/pro).
Quick sidenote: This was built as a frontend app, no backend, which directly talks to the iTunes API in the browser. As a hack, it uses DuckDuckGo's !ducky feature for links.
For me, two key things with a product like this matter most (other than accuracy):
1. There is a good preview when the link is shared on networks such as Slack, Twitter etc.
2. It’s fast / low latency, the lower the barrier to sharing with others the better and the less something gets in my way the more likely I am to use it.
As a PWA on Android this is great! I can share from Spotify and then it opens a Songwhip link to share. Solves a minor problem I have about sharing music links.
Right before checking HN, I'd spent a few hours thinking about how to approach this very problem!
Where are you fetching or how are you determining the track IDs for each service? Is it a simple metadata search through each API, are you using some of the reference data from Musicbrainz, or is there another good source of these relationships available?
The Echo Nest used to have a great open-access API for cross-referencing track IDs called Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, Spotify discontinued it a few years after acquiring The Echo Nest.
While I understand why the streaming platforms might think it's in their interests to make cross-service track relationships difficult to determine, I'm disappointed that Spotify shut down a useful service that really helped music lovers. From some brief searching earlier today, it looks like no one has taken up the mantle yet.
It would be really nice of the Library of Congress had a simple API so this could just be a thin (even client-side) wrapper around that, and you could easily turn the Library of Congress' URI for the work into a link onto a platform where you could purchase/download/stream the work.
Clean and works well, nicely done! Are you able to pull in embeds from the various platforms as well? You may also want to consider adding analytics to this and charging for it, something along the lines of smarturl.it that many artists seem to use (example: Alicia Keys https://smarturl.it/xALICIAx)
Some feedback - the search doesn't work very well.
If I type 'Gigi Masin Tears of a clown' into the search, I get no results. If I type 'Gigi Masin', then the track appears near the top of the search results.
Given the number of public Spotify playlists, I'm a little surprised that TIDAL, Deezer, or Qobuz clients don't have native support for pasting URLs to public Spotify playlists. Even if it couldn't authoritatively match the songs and instead played the first search result match (for artist name and song title), it would be right 99% of the time.