Emulate a Spotify Connect device

[nagyrobi]

Have MA configured players show up in Spotify apps as "Speakers" (Spotify Connect devices).

[erkr]

I'm not sure, but this seems a totally another concept to me, as MA controls what is played to existing players.
This is conceptually much closer to the Spotify Connect add-on: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-community-add-on-spotify-connect/61210. which will allow you to play your Spotify music on the Pi, but offers only local speakers connected to HA. I suggest raising a feature request there.
Best Eric

[Ulrar]

That add-on only works with local speakers as far as I can tell, wheras MASS lets you cast to whatever device which is great.
LMS can expose all it's speakers regardless of protocol as spotify connect devices, which is really handy, I'd love to see something like that in MASS. It'd let you use the spotify app as usual to control playback but still cast to non spotify enabled speakers that MASS supports and controls already

[cdrfun]

Plus you'd get the notifications right just by using the mass speakers. It would also be an option or alternative to emulate google cast devices (https://developers.google.com/cast/codelabs/cast-receiver#0).

[pyrker]

I'd also love to see MA "emulate" a Spotify Connect device as It'd not only let you use the spotify app as usual to control playback - but with MA's added fuction to crossfade! Which is a big issue for all Spotify Connect Devices. Spotify does not allow to crossfade via Spotify Connect. But MA does this. Although it's kind of pointless for me to use MA since I cannot control it via my Spotify apps what I mainly do...

[erkr]

Thanks for this feature requests, it’s moved to the discussions.

[jp8311]

+1 for this feature request

[nagyrobi]

What this component could do, is to emulate a Spotify Connect device (just like the addon does for RPi's local soundcard) for each media player configured in MA.

That would allow us to extend functionality of any media player with Spotify Connect, even ones not directly supported by Spotify.

[nagyrobi]

I've just tested Logitech Media Server. It has a plugin, "Spotty", which allows enabling Spotify Connect to any slimproto/squeezelite/etc player you have. These will appear in Spotify's mobile apps as individual speakers. The stream will go through the server for each instance.

That's what we need here, to add Spotify Connect Speaker functionality to any media player behind MASS, platform independently.

[marcelveldt]

Yes I know (they borrowed that idea from me actually years ago) and this is also something I have in mind for MA but first focus on getting all basics covered before I go implementing this as its not that easy to get it 100% right.

[CalamarBicefalo]

That's exactly what I have been looking for too :)

@marcelveldt is there a way to get involved in this?

[marcelveldt]

A few weeks of patience please because I need to fix some basics in V2 first but then this can be added with relative ease

[lasttry]

+1 for this feature request

[ministryofsillywalks]

Any news on this? I'm thinking about switching from LMS to MA, but being able to control playback from the spotify app is a major part of the high WAF

[marcelveldt]

We have a feature freeze now, working out the bugs so we can (finally?!) release 2.0 stable.
After that, the spotify connect feature is one of the first new features for 2.1

[DerPicknicker]

I am not part of the amazing team from MA. But please be a bit more patient. These guys do all this stuff in their free time. I think MA is by far the most impressive thing in the home-music distribution.

Thank you all around @marcelveldt for doing such a great job and saving us a lot money to stay away from ROON ;-)

[OnFreund]

Congrats on the release of 2.0 @marcelveldt! Hope we'll get to see Spotify connect support soon

[crhbetz]

@marcelveldt is it still planned for 2.1? I see there's release candidates, but I couldn't find anything in the change logs regarding this feature, searching for "spot".

I'm happy whenever it comes, just trying to find out what I can plan for.

[OzGav]

No it is not and I doubt 2.2 either but we will see

[danielnil]

+1 would love to see this now after 2.0

[ctjameson]

This last piece of the puzzle would completely let me yank all of my Sonos out today. Airplay would be a great bonus, but I can live without that. Can't wait to see this get implemented!

[jfdid]

Awesome. Totally agree with this. I've been running LMS and picoreplayer but the Spotify Connect aspect falls off the network at times. This feature would let me drop down from several Pi's to squeezlites and make my wife very happy lol.

[Gtwizzy]

+1 for this feature please. To be able to create speaker groups in MA that are individually addressable directly from Spotify would be AMAZING this way I would not have to use Google's jank@ss speaker group feature that works like 12% of the time.

[firstchair]

This would be amazing!

[gmcmicken]

I'm confused as to how the playback is handled currently because it seems to circumvent the "only one stream" limit of the account... I was expecting to find the spotify app or web ui show me what was currently playing but it didn't and it allows me to listen to two separate things at the same time?

[jonasjeeliasson]

This! This is the best part of MA, that you can have multiple streams for spotify. If it would be implemented like a Spotify Connect device wouldn't that stop working then?

[she11sh0cked]

I guess you could have a Spotify Connect per speaker group?

[OnFreund]

Spotify and Spotify Connect can be two distinct music providers. Adding Spotify Connect shouldn't have any effect over the Spotify music provider.

[fuslwusl]

Tidal connect works Like Spotify Connect - so it would be great If Tidal Connect was also supported!

[nimbling]

With the official Spotify Auth flow now in place, I'm hoping this is now close?

Fingers crossed, thank you Home Assistant Team! <3

[nimbling]

To think out loud, because I can see it would be challenging to make up how Spotify Connect control would work within a Music Assistant Queue.

How about a "Spotify placeholder"? - no, don't run, hear me out! :D

So, instead of specific songs in the MA queue, we let a user fiddle with Spotify Connect, and play songs controlled by a Spotify Connect app, etc. But after a configurable amount of seconds of no playback the MA queue picks up again.

This could either 1) be a "fake track" that waits its turn in the queue, or 2) interrupt MA playback right away when there is a Spotify (or apple music?) Queue, OR 3) Always be the next "spot in the queue", so when MA is playing things, it detects a Spotify Queue filling, and will inset those tracks in the queue after the currently playing track.

TLDR: Spotify Connect should:

1. Fake a MA "Track" (waiting it's MA defined place in the queue)
2. Interrupt rudely (Play now)
3. Interrupt subtly (be the next MA place in the queue)

What are your thoughts?

[janstadt]

I believe @marcelveldt implemented the spotify connect feature for LMS years ago so im guessing he has a good idea of how itll be developed. Just gotta find time is my guess.

[nimbling]

Do you recall how that implementation interacted with the native queue?

[marcelveldt]

I implemented it for Kodi and it has become the inspiration for LMS indeed back then. But I'm not going to do it liek that again with the fake tracks. That was a bad design decision. Instead I will just redirtect the sound of the spotify connect player itself to a player(group) of choice, treating the spotify connect as a input source.

What @nimbling is proposing above is how it works/worked on Kodi and LMS (my previous take on this) and I'm never ever going to do that again, its a minefield.

So what you will get is that you can add one or more spotify connect players - you give them a name of your liking and attach a player or playergroup. Once you start playback to that player from spotify, it will feed that audio to the player you choose. Simple and effective.

[nimbling]

@marcelveldt thanks for the clarification, and good to know the “fake track” stuff is not an option, and thanks for letting us in on why 😅.

I see weaving Spotify / SoundCloud tracks is a distinct enough use case from Plain Spotify Connect to just have them be separate things. Smart 🙏🏻

[Auram]

+1 for this! Would solve issues I have with MA's queuing system working differently than Spotify's (namely being able to add an album sequentially to the top of the queue while in radio or 'don't stop the music' mode).

[OzGav]

Spotify Connect in early beta form is available in 2.4.0b14+

[OzGav]

Spotify Connect is simple function to allow you to stream directly to a player known to MA via the Spotify App. It doesn't turn the Spotify App into MA. If you want to play Spotify on your AirPlay speakers then why not just do that directly.

[sherbibv]

Spotify Connect is simple function to allow you to stream directly to a player known to MA via the Spotify App. It doesn't turn the Spotify App into MA. If you want to play Spotify on your AirPlay speakers then why not just do that directly.

I can chime in on this. It's often that I am not at home and want to change music or whatever and airplay dosent work over vpn.
So spotify connect would be great in my usecase.
Having MA inside my network acting as a coordinator for its local speakers would help me with this.

[OzGav]

Sure then that is what it does. Early release bugs aside

[proohit]

Yes, not all devices support AirPlay + Spotify and it's hard to setup all devices to support both. That's where the magic of MA comes into play here, because it does exactly that: It provides a single interface for several different protocols and services.

[OzGav]

Yep just don't expect much more magic besides routing the Spotify app to the selected speakers. Just trying to keep expectations in check.

[GentleHoneyLover]

@OzGav, thanks for this! I wasn't able to make it work. I have three different AirPlay speakers and I cannot play audio through them anymore (with or without Spotify Connect plugin) — something must have broken.

I tried initiating playback from MA and from Spotify (it pretends to be playing when initiated from Spotify and MA sees the track but no audio comes out). I deleted the Spotify Connect plug-ins and still no audio when I try to play through AirPlay (which worked fine prior to beta 14).

The logs don't seem to give away the problem:

2025-01-15 10:55:05.477 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Starting Music Assistant Server (1258f6afe9c2452986e6f634904c1f41) version 2.4.0b14 - HA add-on: False - Safe mode: False
2025-01-15 10:55:05.485 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.cache] Initializing cache controller...
2025-01-15 10:55:05.542 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.music] Using a sync interval of 720 minutes.
2025-01-15 10:55:05.554 ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant.metadata] Error while updating metadata for library://artist/76: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_artist_details_by_resource_url'
2025-01-15 10:55:05.661 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Detected ffmpeg version 7.1 with libsoxr support
2025-01-15 10:55:05.661 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Starting server on  0.0.0.0:8097 - base url: http://10.0.20.7:8097
2025-01-15 10:55:05.665 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.webserver] Starting server on  0.0.0.0:8095 - base url: http://10.0.20.7:8095
2025-01-15 10:55:06.158 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded metadata provider The Audio DB
2025-01-15 10:55:06.159 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded music provider Music Assistant
2025-01-15 10:55:06.159 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded metadata provider fanart.tv
2025-01-15 10:55:06.159 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded metadata provider MusicBrainz
2025-01-15 10:55:06.160 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded player provider Playergroup
2025-01-15 10:55:06.168 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded plugin provider spotify_connect
2025-01-15 10:55:06.168 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded plugin provider spotify_connect
2025-01-15 10:55:06.188 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded plugin provider Home Assistant
2025-01-15 10:55:06.522 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify] Successfully logged in to Spotify as <redacted>
2025-01-15 10:55:06.523 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded music provider <redacted> Spotify
2025-01-15 10:55:06.529 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant] Loaded player provider Airplay
2025-01-15 10:55:06.886 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Player registered: ap542a1bdba9ce/living room sonos (Airplay)
2025-01-15 10:55:07.008 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Player registered: ape45f01942891/office yamaha (Airplay)
2025-01-15 10:55:07.010 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] Starting Spotify Connect background daemon Office Yamaha
2025-01-15 10:55:21.754 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Player registered: apeec0726fe465/Kitchen HomePod
2025-01-15 10:55:21.755 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] Starting Spotify Connect background daemon Kitchen HomePod
2025-01-15 10:55:47.597 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Start Queue Flow stream for Queue Office - crossfade: False
2025-01-15 10:56:05.558 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Start Queue Flow stream for Queue Office - crossfade: False
2025-01-15 10:56:19.257 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant.metadata] Error while creating playlist image: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/data/.cache/collage_images/https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d00001e024ab2a0a54694d6d271306b64'
2025-01-15 10:56:29.202 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Start Queue Flow stream for Queue Office - crossfade: False
2025-01-15 10:56:42.347 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant.metadata] Error while creating playlist image: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/data/.cache/collage_images/https://image-cdn-ak.spotifycdn.com/image/ab67706c0000d72c08fd334a616f170c11caaa69'
2025-01-15 10:57:37.113 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Start Queue Flow stream for Queue Office - crossfade: False
2025-01-15 10:57:44.111 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] Spotify Connect background daemon stopped for Office Yamaha
2025-01-15 10:57:44.111 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] Starting Spotify Connect background daemon Office Yamaha
2025-01-15 11:00:11.577 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Received unhandled POST request to /spotify_connect--9tdxMy5Z from 10.0.20.7
headers: <CIMultiDictProxy('Accept-Encoding': 'identity', 'Content-Length': '322', 'Host': '10.0.20.7:8097', 'User-Agent': 'Python-urllib/3.12', 'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8', 'Connection': 'close')>

2025-01-15 11:00:11.590 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] Spotify Connect background daemon stopped for Office Yamaha
2025-01-15 11:00:18.968 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Start Queue Flow stream for Queue Office - crossfade: False
2025-01-15 11:00:43.091 INFO (MainThread) [music_assistant.streams] Start Queue Flow stream for Queue Office - crossfade: False

[GentleHoneyLover]

I also confirm that!

[proohit]

Although the delay is pretty hard. When skipping to the next song from Spotify, it takes forever to update MA (and vice versa, as far as I register)

[noambav]

Still not working for me, not only does the Spotify connect function doesn't play any sound , I am also unable to play from MA beta to my devices (working fine in regular version) - also it fails to detect my Homepod as an airplay device at random .

[bpawel10]

Although the delay is pretty hard. When skipping to the next song from Spotify, it takes forever to update MA (and vice versa, as far as I register)

Same for volume change or pausing, but I think it's still less than 20 seconds. But once it's paused it'll start playing again after another delay.
Also when I play something on my computer first and then switch to MA device it stops playing and resets the player.

[GentleHoneyLover]

Although the delay is pretty hard. When skipping to the next song from Spotify, it takes forever to update MA (and vice versa, as far as I register)

Yes, I confirm a long delay for any action initiated from Spotify (play, pause, skip, etc). Also, the volume slider does not have an impact.

Hope this could be improved in the subsequent versions! But that’s a start ;)

[bpawel10]

@OzGav thanks a lot, it works great! However, there are no metadata on dashboard now, would it be possible to fix that?

[GentleHoneyLover]

When playback is triggered from Spotify, I can see metadata shown on the Spotify player card... (it's a little out of sync with what's actually being played, though.

When playback is triggered from MA, then Spotify pretend that nothing is playing...

[OzGav]

If I understand you correctly, the Spotify App has no visibility of what MA is streaming to MA's players?

[noambav]

Not sure if this is what @GentleHoneyLover is referring to , but i also have a problem with what you described , I have an automation set for playing music using MA and in order to stop the music I have to do it through Home Assistant as Spotify wont display anything being played.

[OzGav]

Correct because when you start playing music with MA that isn't using Spotify Connect. Spotify Connect doesn't turn the Spotify App into a universal remote. This is the same as if you start playing music on a Google Home by voice (so nothing to do with HA or MA), you can't control that with the Spotify App either,

[GentleHoneyLover]

If I understand you correctly, the Spotify App has no visibility of what MA is streaming to MA's players?

Correct. If I play from MA through one of the AirPlay speakers (which I have a Spotify Connect plugin installed for), the Spotify App doesn't know that something is being played...

[hjaltij]

I' moving from SpotConnect/spotraop (https://github.com/philippe44/SpotConnect) which is quite snappy but doesn't seem to be maintained anymore.

It might be a source for inspiration.

[GentleHoneyLover]

Same here. SpotConnect is essentially a custom OwnTone container with default librespot replaced by librespot-java. This setup gives good Spotify/Airplay/multi-room experience but it's clunky, hard to setup and is not well-maintained.

I was hoping MA would become a replacement for it eventually.

What OwnTone + librespot-java does well (IMHO) is the following:

• It creates a single OwnTone server Spotify Connect device (always available to be selected in Spotify App).
• This OwnTone server has a HA integration and exposes a media player entity.
• The OwnTone server itself allows you to toggle your AirPlay speakers (also could be done through HA integration) but the play queue stays within the OwnTone server Spotify Connect device and is not linked to a particular speaker. This makes "transferring" the queue from one speaker to another very easy (as it essentially is continuously playing and you are simply turning speakers off and on as you see fit).
• The playback can also be triggered and controlled from the Spotify App (just select the OwnTone device and go to town)
• Whatever is played is seamlessly synced between the OwnTone media player in HA and Spotify. And there's bi-directional control (you can play/pause, skip tracks, etc. both, from OwnTone media player in HA or Spotify in parallel)
• There's hardly any lag or delay — you pause or skip track in Spotify App — it is immediately paused or skipped in OwnTone Server. What comes out out of the speaker will naturally be delayed a bit (due to AirPlay) but the lag is very small.

I believe Spotify Connect implementation in MA could borrow a lot of inspiration from this. I think a lot of AirPlay+MA+Spotify users are after exactly this kind f experience...

[Cenedd]

That very much sounds like what I'm trying to achive - use Spotify as a source, SpotifyConnect to connect it to HA (or an add-on within it) and be able to then pipe that music to any of the speakers that are connected to it: Sonos, Arylic (LinkPlay), Android boxes/TV, Pioneer Amp, future stuff.
Hell, if I'm going to be laying out my ideals :D , it would be nice to run two instances so I can connect to one (and pipe my music to where I want it) and my wife can connect to another (and pipe her music to where she wants it). That would be perfect!

[iVolt1]

@GentleHoneyLover Great write up on what I think is what most of us want in Music assistant, Spotify Connect with metadata tied to multi-room audio through a compact front end in the HA dashboard. I hope the devs are thinking along those lines also.

Rather than SpotConnect , it sounds like what you are describing is the slightly misnamed (works with any airplay devices, not just HomePods) HomePod Connect HA addon which I have used for a few years now and have found nothing comparable to replace it. Installation and configuration are easy.

HomePod Connect is solid and although sparsely supported, the author recently updated the librespot-java version. The libraspot-java author has pretty much moved on to their librespot-go project, but did provide some recent fixes to librespot-java. So, moving to all MA for Spotify Connect multi-room audio would be great.

As an example of what I m trying reproduce with MA, here is the card and card configuration I use for HomePod Connect using custom:mini-media-player. The last two outputs are the MA version the first two outputs I added although they don't work with Owntone of course. I had to hide a lot more things in the MA outputs to get it to look and behave how I wanted. I'm not sure if it is exactly there yet.

square: false
type: grid
columns: 1
cards:

• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_server_2
  group: true
  icon: mdi:spotify
  artwork: material
  hide:
  name: true
  volume: false
  source: true
  power_state: false
  artwork_border: true
  scale: "1.4"
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_haos_spdif
  group: true
  name: Yamaha TV
  icon: mdi:home-assistant
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
  background: black
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_ba_790
  group: true
  name: BA790 TA
  icon: phu:tuenaero
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_haos_cmedia
  group: true
  name: Basement West Onkyo CD
  icon: mdi:home-assistant
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_haos_audio_8
  group: true
  name: Basement East
  icon: mdi:home-assistant
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_haos_pnp
  group: true
  name: Basement Room
  icon: mdi:home-assistant
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_basement_office
  group: true
  name: Basement Office
  icon: null
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_onkyo_cd_living_room_2
  group: true
  icon: phu:onkyo
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
  name: Living Room Onkyo CD
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_stellarlabs_f5ec
  group: true
  name: Attic Onkyo CD
  icon: phu:onkyo
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_shower_3
  group: true
  name: Shower
  icon: phu:nest-mini-alt
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_onkyo_cd_living_room
  group: true
  name: Living Room Onkyo CD
  icon: phu:onkyo
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.owntone_output_frontporch
  group: true
  name: MBR
  icon: phu:nest-mini-alt
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.haos_spdif_airplay
  group: true
  name: Yamaha TV MA
  icon: mdi:home-assistant
  toggle_power: false
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
  prev: true
  next: true
  info: true
  progress: true
• type: custom:mini-media-player
  entity: media_player.ba_790_airplay
  group: true
  name: BA790 TA MA
  icon: mdi:home-assistant
  toggle_power: false
  hide:
  play_pause: true
  mute: true
  power_state: false
  prev: true
  next: true
  info: true
  progress: true

[proohit]

Something broke in 2.4.0b17. Controlling the Spotify Connect player from MA works without problems, but Spotify itself is bugged out. If the player is selected in Spotify, playing anything shows it's playing, but no sound is hearable.

I couldn't see anything relevant in the logs other than this warning:

[2025-01-18T09:27:53Z WARN librespot_audio::fetch::receive] Throughput 1 kbps lower than minimum 8, setting to minimum

[iamrizzle]

Hey OzGav and Team,

I'm on b19 and still having the same issue, I can see the speaker appear as a Connect-compatible device in Spotify (Samsung - Android), it looks like music is playing but no sound.

Last debug line is:

2025-01-23 10:54:38.414 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.player_queues] PlayerQueue Home Assistant Voice 0941a4 Media Player played item spotify_connect--H4rvxSL5://plugin_source/spotify_connect for 0 seconds - fully_played: False - progress: 0

Huge thank you for your time on this btw! There will be donations incoming once I find the link!

[OzGav]

See if any of this applies to you esphome/home-assistant-voice-pe#260 (comment)

[iamrizzle]

No custom firmware on the Voice PE, everything's stock.

[OzGav]

Did you try deleting and re-adding it?

[iamrizzle]

Yes, I have also tried deleting and re-adding.. I see the same message as the above poster:

2025-01-23 13:32:46.969 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] [2025-01-23T13:32:46Z WARN librespot_audio::fetch::receive] Throughput 1 kbps lower than minimum 8, setting to minimum

[marcelveldt]

It seems that there is a lot of expectations around Spotify Connect where people see to think that MA can be the replacement of the existing solutions. It is not and will never be. Music Assistant is in its core a library manager/music catalog on its own that can output to many different device/speaker types. It is never designed to be a spotify connect target or forwarder or whatever you are all looking for.

SPOTIFY CONNECT IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE THE MAIN FOCUS FOR THIS PROJECT !!!

So, expectations set very clear. Spotify connect will be another "source of audio" for Music Assistant for INCIDENTAL listening, just like a record player, or some other aux source. The entire core of MA is not built towards some of the things I see mentioned in this thread, most important because we are universal to so many player types. If you only have to forward a single stream to airplay players, things are easy and can be super low latency (well as low as airplay can get) - we cant do that because we need to account for buffers. For instance a Chromecast player requires at least 30 seconds of buffer before it even begins to output any audio.

The way I see it is that this will be useful for the occasion where you want to quickly pop out your phone to seek that one song and stream it to one of your MA players (which can be anything, also groups) but the main control will still be MA. If that is not what you are seeking for, move on. MA is not for you.

What we will do is try to find a way to make the latency as less as possible while keeping our flexibility. Currently we forward the entire audio stream to players but that means that the any controls from spotify app will also be delayed by the amount of buffer in the player, currently about 30 seconds. Maybe we can get that down to about 10 seconds. Or some other idea is to just start the playback from spotify app and then fill the MA queue the regular way, making the spotify app basically just a UI for MA.

What I wanted to say is what we have now in beta is a very first iteration on which we will slowly but steadily make improvements but dont set the expectations too high already, this will take some time. And at the same time I guess I want to say that MA is so much more than just a stupid spotify connect router, that is not the goal of the project and if you are only look for that, I think you will have other options.

Also, if you truly only want spotify connect and nothing more, consider buying hardware hardware with actual spootify connect support. That experience is never going to be beaten by some software based workaround.

Just my 2 cents so everybody has the right expectations ;-)

[potelux]

Would it be easier to only use the Spotify Connect aspect for controls and then the actual audio is grabbed from the current Spotify provider (rather than getting the audio from Spotify Connect which means you run into buffer problems)?

I believe that is what Marcel meant when he said:

Or some other idea is to just start the playback from spotify app and then fill the MA queue the regular way, making the spotify app basically just a UI for MA.

[marcelveldt]

Exactly

[mullerch]

Sorry to chime in on this, but when I first saw this issue, and considering the versatile and evolving genius of MusicAssistant, I was expecting to see the arrival of a plugin system for "smart remotes" (aka UI with controls and informations). The first implementations (providers) could be the web controller, HomeAssistant integration, and Spotify Connect. Just leaving this idea here for the future, not sure if it could work this way. In any case, thank you! I’m excited to see this new feature and congratulations on your work.

[freakshock88]

For me (and I think for many others and their partners), having the Spotify app act as a remote UI for MA which performs the actual playback is a perfect solution. I guess it's also the only solution that will be okay from a performance/responsiveness angle. So if the current implementation has to switch to that approach, I'm okay with that.

[DanSkipper]

Agreed, if we can use the Spotify app as a controller for MA, regardless of where the music comes from, then I'll be a very happy user.

[GentleHoneyLover]

I think that initiating a playback from MA (like you normally would today) and then being able to control playback from Spotify App is exactly what a lot of people are looking for ;)

[potelux]

Agreed. I am not sure how this would work with local libraries or other sources of audio, but it still seems like the best idea. I don't think the end users cares about where the audio is technically coming from. They care about choosing a song and it playing quickly.

[gmcmicken]

Yes and the added benefit of having Spotify "see" this activity and therefore have a proper listening history for "recently played" and other statistics that help to curate playlists etc

Right now it's annoying to hear something I like then later say while being in the car try to find it and resume but there's no record if it!

[nytafar]

I like how this is implemented in the plugin beta. Simply setting up spotify connect endpoints in the MA interface, linking them to players or groups. In my deployments at home and at the office. This was my high hope, no more no less.

So far, I can set it up with no errors, spotify connects and plays, the track is showing in the designated player inside MA and logging is all green. However, no sound is coming out of the speakers. Let me know if I can provide any more context, I did not find an issues tracker in the server repo.

[ministryofsillywalks]

exactly the same behaviour for me. (using an airplay speaker)

[potelux]

Virtually all of the challenges of using Spotify for playback are resolved if it acts as a controller only. Marcel's earlier comment seems to imply he will attempt that.

[cptkirki]

Thank you for implementing Spotify Connect in this beta. I see the same picture as described above. I can set it up without errors, spotify connects and plays, the track is displayed in the designated player in MA. Also for me, no sound is coming out of the speakers. But I see some errors in the log of the docker container where my music assistant server is running.

music-assistant-server | 2025-02-07 13:34:56.934 ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant] Error doing task: Task exception was never retrieved music-assistant-server | File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/providers/spotify_connect/__init__.py", line 224, in get_audio_stream music-assistant-server | raise MediaNotFoundError(f"Librespot not ready for: {streamdetails.item_id}") music-assistant-server | music_assistant_models.errors.MediaNotFoundError: Librespot not ready for: spotify_connect

provided the full log in attachement, Hope this is helpful for the developers.
music-assistant-server errors.txt

Cheers,
Kirk

[lz-er]

I tried to do some naive investigations and found this commit from 2 weeks ago:
music-assistant/server@23d3249#diff-89f93d28c360fd4aa4edc006450f02fef3dad9178e45fde887e40421b5bd2630R1147
It seems to me that this optimization change introduced a bug (at least for me) that causes the player to crash with this error:

ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant] Error doing task: Task exception was never retrieved
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/player_queues.py", line 1543, in _enqueue_next_item
    next_item = await self.load_next_item(queue_id, current_item_id)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/player_queues.py", line 1130, in load_next_item
    if next_item is None:
       ^^^^^^^^^
UnboundLocalError: cannot access local variable 'next_item' where it is not associated with a value

Since if the cur_index is None in the first iteration of the while loop, it will break before initializing the next_item variable, which is then checked at the end of the function.
I'm very new to this project and do not work with python often, so there might be a greater lurking somehwhere.

[piit79]

You are right. Fortunately this has already been fixed just yesterday: music-assistant/server@7fb5658 (With a strange commit message "fix small typo", which it certainly was not :) )

[lz-er]

Yea, i tested this version and still have the same issue as mentioned above, even without the python error. So i guess the exception was unrelated.

[OzGav]

Beta 29 has improvements to Spotify Connect. Please give it a try.

[potelux]

We don't have access to the sound output itself so we have to rely on the player specific transport itself.

Are you still considering changing the implementation so that Spotify just acts as a remote/UI?

[OnFreund]

I can definitely understand a delay, but 3 seconds sounds very high. Volumio is also using librespot, and while the delay is very noticeable, it's probably less than 1 second. Maybe there's something there that can help understand how to reduce this?
(disclaimer, I have not been able to test the beta myself yet, so it's not a side by side comparison)

[marcelveldt]

Are you still considering changing the implementation so that Spotify just acts as a remote/UI?

Yes, but not for the 2.4 release - now with the latest changes it works pretty well so there is no pressure to add this in.
I'll look again at this once 2.4 has been released to stable.

[marcelveldt]

I can definitely understand a delay, but 3 seconds sounds very high. [Volumio is also using librespot]

You can not compare volumio with Music Assistant because Volumio (and most other implementations that have librespot) have direct control over the audio output or even the soundcard. They can decide what the buffer will be, often super short.

Music Assistant is compatible with many different player types and in many cases, the connection between MA and the actual output device is buffered outside MA's control! So if the player retrieves the stream and has some internal rule/logic that is MUST buffer 5 seconds of audio before the playback starts, the delay of spotify connect will be that.. 5 seconds. Even if we want to, we can not change that.

If you want realtime control of spotify connect, buy a device that supports spotify connect directly because it will skip the intermediate step. Otherwise I think 3 seconds delay is unbelievable great considering there is an entire path in between.

Also, the 3 seconds is maybe a worse case scenario. For example airplay, slimproto and snapcast start within 1.5 seconds.
I consider this a big win for a feature that is just a "side feature" for MA.

[OnFreund]

Music Assistant is compatible with many different player types and in many cases, the connection between MA and the actual output device is buffered outside MA's control! So if the player retrieves the stream and has some internal rule/logic that is MUST buffer 5 seconds of audio before the playback starts, the delay of spotify connect will be that.. 5 seconds. Even if we want to, we can not change that.

Makes sense, thanks!

[karlandreasa]

Hi! Seems like it's broken in the latest beta. If i read the logs correctly, The speakers doesn't receive an audio-stream at all.

This is when i try connecting it to a sonos speaker:

2025-02-18 11:17:35.616 ERROR (MainThread) [aiosonos.api] Received unhandled error: {'namespace': 'playback:1', 'householdId': 'Sonos_h44eR5rCaqbNFdegfb2V9xvf83.dz5BKs7ye3hGBJix2mj1', 'locationId': 'lc_9b7ce9b3be484db187a2eb7a2b0945a1', 'groupId': 'RINCON_38420B91A2DA01400:1370350940', 'name': 'playbackError', 'type': 'playbackError'}: {'_objectType': 'playbackError', 'errorCode': 'ERROR_PLAYBACK_NO_CONTENT', 'reason': 'ERROR_NO_CONTENT', 'serviceId': 0, 'trackName': 'Music Assistant'}

This is when i connect it to an Arplay-speaker:

2025-02-18 11:18:02.973 ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant.airplay] Stream error: 'async for' requires an object with aiter method, got str

If i don't restart the Music-assistant completely after the first try, i get no error at all, no sound, no playback updates. Connecting the app to spotify connect stops working aswell.

[karlandreasa]

Will do! Thanks for the tip!

[flob1234]

@marcelveldt
Thank you
casting to a single speaker works now.
Casting to a universal group is also working, but casting to a sync group is not working and throws the flowing error:

Spoiler warning

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 721, in select_source
    raise PlayerCommandFailed(f"Player {player.display_name} is currently grouped")
music_assistant_models.errors.PlayerCommandFailed: Player hifi-esp32s3 is currently grouped
2025-02-21 16:54:36.541 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.spotify_connect] [2025-02-21T15:54:36Z ERROR librespot_playback::player] Unable to read audio file: Symphonia Decoder Error: Deadline expired before operation could complete { wait timeout exceeded }
2025-02-21 16:54:43.609 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.webserver] Handling command players/cmd/power
2025-02-21 16:54:43.611 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_power for player test
2025-02-21 16:54:43.611 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_stop for player test
2025-02-21 16:54:43.814 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_power for player hifi-esp32s3
2025-02-21 16:54:43.814 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_ungroup for player hifi-esp32s3
2025-02-21 16:54:43.814 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Detected ungroup command to player hifi-esp32s3 which is a sync(group) leader, all sync members will be ungrouped!
2025-02-21 16:54:43.816 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_ungroup for player Dachgeschoss_Bad
2025-02-21 16:54:43.818 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant] Exception in task Task-581 - target: <coroutine object PlayerController.cmd_ungroup at 0x7feeb2768ae0>: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 99, in wrapper
    await func(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 874, in cmd_ungroup
    await group_provider.cmd_ungroup_member(player_id, group_player.player_id)
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/providers/player_group/__init__.py", line 688, in cmd_ungroup_member
    raise UnsupportedFeaturedException(
music_assistant_models.errors.UnsupportedFeaturedException: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 101, in wrapper
    raise PlayerCommandFailed(str(err)) from err
music_assistant_models.errors.PlayerCommandFailed: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test
2025-02-21 16:54:43.821 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_power for player Dachgeschoss_Bad
2025-02-21 16:54:43.821 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_ungroup for player Dachgeschoss_Bad
2025-02-21 16:54:43.823 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant] Exception in task Task-582 - target: <coroutine object PlayerController.cmd_power at 0x7feeb2768ae0>: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 99, in wrapper
    await func(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 874, in cmd_ungroup
    await group_provider.cmd_ungroup_member(player_id, group_player.player_id)
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/providers/player_group/__init__.py", line 688, in cmd_ungroup_member
    raise UnsupportedFeaturedException(
music_assistant_models.errors.UnsupportedFeaturedException: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 99, in wrapper
    await func(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 371, in cmd_power
    await self.cmd_ungroup(player_id)
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 101, in wrapper
    raise PlayerCommandFailed(str(err)) from err
music_assistant_models.errors.PlayerCommandFailed: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/music_assistant/controllers/players.py", line 101, in wrapper
    raise PlayerCommandFailed(str(err)) from err
music_assistant_models.errors.PlayerCommandFailed: Adjusting group members is not allowed for group test

[marcelveldt]

Instead of troubleshooting here in a feature request I think it woud be good to open dedicated issue reports if something is not working for you. This is getting hard for me to track. In my end its working for various player types I tested so we're now in bug and edge case territory. Step 1 is that you confirm that regular playback from MA works as expected.

Please use our support repo to create an issue report (every problem/user its own report please)

[flob1234]

wil do
thanks

[zecoj]

@zecoj @flob1234 please test again with RC7 - these should be fixed

Thanks @marcelveldt. Issue still persists with RC7. I'll open an issue separately for Airplay players shortly.

[rwjack]

Am I getting something wrong here? When I add the Spotify Connect Plugin provider for a speaker/group, and then open the app on my phone, I should be having that device available as a spotify connect device, right? I'm not seeing anything.

I am on the same network as MASS, the Spotify provider is working as it should, and unrelated, I have a librespot instance running alongside snapcast, and it works even outside the same network.

[rwjack]

I see just the IP address here^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yep, I do too, just redacted it. That's all fine. The standard MA setup with snapcast works in my case, I'm just not seeing the spotify connect device that's supposed to show up with the plugin: https://www.music-assistant.io/plugins/spotify-connect/

---

I don't know why you say this though

how come my librespot connect device shows up on any of my subnets, and even outside my network

Let me try to clarify. Snapcast and Librespot are separate. When I run librespot, it appears as a Spotify Connect device, then I can play music on my phone in the spotify app (or any other device), select the Librespot device as the playback one (HA_Snapcast as I've named it), and I have music everywhere. Snapcast configuration is irrelevant at this point, as everything works.

So if I understood correctly, when I add the Spotify Connect Plugin Provider, I should have a Spotify device available, as seen here with my Librespot device?

As I said, even when I leave my home, or when I'm on any other network, I can still select this device in Spotify and play to it.

---

Edit: I just started a browser tab with snapcast and set it to Spotify Connect and it worked first go (after the expected short delay)

How do you mean? I'm not having problems with the snapcast source selection, MA does that automatically, right? The problem is I don't see the Spotify Connect device at all, from within any spotify app, desktop, phone, laptop, etc.

[OzGav]

What I’m saying is that the functionality works fine. I set it up with a Snapcast browser tab to test and played for a couple of hours. So yes likely you have some network complexity that is causing your problem

[rwjack]

Got it, thanks for clarifying.

To continue, reading this from the docs:

Try logging into the device using your Spotify credentials and you should be able to see it in the Spotify app even if it isn’t on the same WiFi.

Why not simplify the process and use existing spotify credentials on the plugin, so the "virtual device" can be accessed even when not at home?

[OzGav]

Because MA is not using the Spotify cloud service. Everything must be on the same WiFi network.

[rwjack]

Right. I managed to get the connect device working, but it does not fit my use case the way it's implemented.

I do not want to stream from any of my end-devices. I just want to use my end devices to control the spotify stream, and the streaming should be self contained within HA/MA.

The way I have it configured right now works perfectly for me. HA can control Spotify start/stop using Spotcast -> That connection goes to the Librespot Spotify Connect device, which is the actual source of the stream, and final audio is then sent to Snapcast devices. That means I can start/stop from HA, or from any of my devices, whether I'm on my network or not.

I wish MA could be jammed somewhere there in the middle, so I can use other streaming services with Snapcast, but not be forced to use the MA UI.

[Dieghito72]

Hi! Just discovered and configured the Spotify Connect plugin for my Yamaha AV receiver that works great with MA via Airplay.

I have a free Spotify account, the MA player is correctly discovered in the Spotify app on the phone, but I cannot select it as player since it's grayed out stating that a Premium Account is needed to play on the "device".

Since I didn't find anything in the documentation, can someone confirm that a premium account is required also for the Spotify Connect plugin?

[potelux]

The table at the bottom of this page shows that it is NOT "Subscription Free". So yes, it requires a premium account.

[Dieghito72]

That table refers to music providers, I know that Spotify music provider is only for premium accounts.
It seems that Spotify Connect is a different story and some devices doesn't require a premium account, so my hope was that MA Spotify Connect was one of those 😊.

[bradley-rose]

Question

Anyone run into a bug where Spotify will establish a connection to the Music Assistant-based Spotify Connect player, but it won't play any music?

My current (previous?) setup

I currently run a Snapcast Server external to Music Assistant as my setup predates the existence of Music Assistant altogether. Here is my configuration:

stream = spotify:///librespot?name=Multiroom&bitrate=320&devicename=Multiroom&params=--zeroconf-port%206969

The above loosely translates to the following logic:

• Name of stream for Snapcast: Multiroom
• Bitrate: 320kbps
• Name of Spotify Connect target: Multiroom
• Port to establish connection between Spotify application and Snapserver's Spotify Connect device: TCP/6969.
  • I did this so that I could harden my firewall to explicitly permit TCP/6969 between my client subnet and my IoT subnet where the Snapcast Server lives.

Trial of Music Assistant's Spotify Connect plugin

• I enabled the Snapcast plugin on Music Assistant, and pointed my Snapclients to this Snapserver. They established a connection no problem, and Home Assistant picked them up as players immediately.
• I created a Player Group in Music Assistant, called it Multiroom, and included my two Snapclients.
• I configured the Spotify Connect plugin provider and linked it to this Player Group called Multiroom.
• I temporarily modified my firewall to permit all traffic destined for Home Assistant / Music Assistant across any port, as well as all traffic sourcing from Home Assistant to egress the network (Internet, Spotify, etc.).

With the above setup, my clients can see the Spotify Connect target, and when I click on it, they can establish a connection to it. Spotify does select it as a target and sits idle waiting for a song to be selected. Once I select a song, every song sits at 0s, and nothing will buffer despite all communication from Music Assistant being permitted to traverse where it so pleases.

I'm not sure what to make of this, so I had to revert back to my standalone setup with a dedicated LXC container for Snapcast Server.

[DrVic2r]

The voice PE is up to date, and HA/MA and voice PE are on the same WiFi without any firewalls or routing. I don’t see any errors in the logs. I will try some more and if no luck open an issue and upload logs etc.

[OzGav]

Make sure you work out what does work. That is, is this only an issue with the Voice PE

[bradley-rose]

Does a single snap client play ok?

No, I did expose Spotify connect plugin to a single snapclient as well instead of the group entity, and even that would just make Spotify sit at 0s.

Does Music Assistant generate logs somewhere that I can evaluate?

[OzGav]

You can find a link to the logs in MA settings>>Core

[DrVic2r]

Make sure you work out what does work. That is, is this only an issue with the Voice PE

Seems my issue was mostly related to Voice PE, now I got a Sonos speaker connected and that works other Spotify connect through MA. Will have to look inte to voice PE more to figure out what’s the issue there, but probably not a MA issue then.