New Albums

A python script to update a Spotify playlist every day with all the songs from any significant new albums. It shouldn't include single-only releases. Anything older than a month should be deleted.

Installation

Before you can run the New Albums script, there are some pre-requisites that are assumed.

Spotify Developer Account

The script will need a Spotify Client Id and Client Secret to interact with Spotify's Web API.

Register for a developer account on Spotify. A free account is sufficient for a developer account. After registering, create a new app through the dashboard.

Once you create a new app, a Client Id and Client Secret will be generated and available on the page for your new app. You will need these in later steps.

Additionally, the New Albums script uses an Authorization Code Flow. Due to this, you will need to set a redirect URL for your app.

To add a redirect URL, open your new app's settings via the developer dashboard. Add https://localhost:8080 as a redirect URI. You may also specify a different (or multiple) local redirect URIs, but you will have to make sure to set the correct URI as an environment variable as explained below.

Spotify Playlist Id

The script will need the unique ID for one of your playlists. To get the ID for a playlist, in Spotify, right-click on the playlist > Share > Copy Share Link. The link will contain the playlist ID. It is the string between playlist/ and ?si=.

This string will be used for the NEW_ALBUMS_PLAYLIST_ID environment variable explained below.

Environment Variables

The following environment variables are mandatory:

• SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID
• SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET
• SPOTIFY_USER
• NEW_ALBUMS_PLAYLIST_ID

A redirect URI may be set with the optional envvar SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI - this defaults to https://localhost:8080 if unset.

.env

The recommended way for setting these environmental variables is to use a .env file.

A .env file is a file in the root directory of this project or at the root of your home directory that lists the environment variables above. For example:

SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID=id
SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET=secret
SPOTIFY_USER=userid
NEW_ALBUMS_PLAYLIST_ID=playlistid

Windows

FIRST SET UP ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES ON YOUR COMPUTER, SEE HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS.

To set all 4 in a one-liner on Windows:

set SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID=xxx && set SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET=xxx && set SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI=http://localhost:8080 && set NEW_ALBUMS_PLAYLIST_ID=xxx && set SPOTIFY_USER=xxx

To view all currently set environment variables, use the command set.

Unix (*BSD, Linux, MacOS)

To set all 4 in a one-liner on Linux: (Instructions)

 export SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID=xxx && export SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET=xxx && export SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI='http://localhost:8080' && export NEW_ALBUMS_PLAYLIST_ID=xxx && export SPOTIFY_USER=xxx

Note that there is a space before the first export. This is intentional and should not be removed: a leading space in most terminals instructs the terminal not to lodge the command in the history file, leaving fewer traces of your environment keys in side effecting channels.

To view all currently set environment variables, use the command env. You can filter down to just the above using env | egrep '(SPOTIFY|PLAYLIST)'

Set which genres to Reject

You can add a custom "reject.txt" file in one of these locations:

• new_albums folder
• XDG_CONFIG_HOME/new_albums for Linux, Mac, and other Unixes
• APPDATA/new_albums for Windows.

The script will reject any album on which the primary artist's first genre matches any of the genres in your reject list. For example, if you have "dance pop" in your reject list, then the script will reject Beyoncé's 'RENAISSANCE' album, because her first genre is dance pop. (Her genres are ['dance pop', 'pop', 'r&b']).

Set which genres to Accept regardless of Genre rejects

You can add a custom "accept.txt" file in one of the following locations:

• new_albums folder
• XDG_CONFIG_HOME/new_albums for Unix
• APPDATA/new_albums for Windows

Create a Virtual Environment (optional)

These steps are not necessary, but recommended for build environment isolation. You could use virtualenv (and virtualenvwrapper) or just the built-in venv.

New Albums also supports poetry, a modern dependency management and virtual environment tool. You will need to install poetry as explained on its site to use it with New Albums.

Install dependencies

Installing the package resolves and builds the dependencies required to run New Albums. There are two ways to install the dependencies. You may use the traditional setup.py method or poetry.

Traditional:

pip install .

Or poetry:

poetry install

Local development

The package can be installed in developement (editable) mode to allow you to make changes locally.

Traditional:

pip install -e .

Poetry automatically installs dependencies in development mode.

Running

Once you have completed all the installation steps, run New Albums script by running either:

Traditional:

py -m new_albums

Poetry:

poetry run python -m new_albums

Add to rejects.txt or accept.txt with command line args

• py -m new_albums -r "florida rap": will reject any album with the primary artist's first genre as "atlanta rap"
• py -m new_albums -r "Kodak Black": will add any album by the artist's even if their first genre is in your reject list

Filter by country

By default, the script will only pull new releases from the United States. To filter by specific countries, you can pass the --country flag followed by one or more country ISO codes, e.g. py -m new_albums --country JP

Options:

• py -m new_albums: filters by US
• py -m new_albums -c us jp: filters by US and JP
• py -m new_albums --country GB: filter by GB
• py -m new_albums --country list: list all available Spotify country codes.
• py -m new_albums --country all: worldwide

-c can also be used as an abbreviation for --country, e.g. py -m new_albums -c all

Filter by top genres

By default, the script will not filter by top genres. To enable this filter, you can pass the --top-genres flag, e.g. py -m new_albums --top-genres

-g can also be used as an abbreviation for --top-genres, e.g. py -m new_albums -g

Specify an fiat file

New Albums defaults to using _default_fiat as a fiat file. The option --fiat or -f for short allows using an alternative fiat file.

For example, to run New Albums with prog_fiat as a fiat file:

poetry run python -m new_albums -f prog_fiat

Or:

py -m new_albums -f prog_fiat

Logging granularity

The --log or -l argument can be used to specify the logging level.

Valid levels:

• debug
• info
• warning
• critical
• error

Usage:

poetry run python -m new_albums -l critical

Limit releases

Use the --limit or -m argument if you'd like to limit the amount of new releases returned. Defaults to 20 and must be > 0 or <= 50.

poetry run python -m new_albums -m 50

Timeout

--timeout or -t sets the amount of seconds to wait for a response before failing. Defaults to 20.

poetry run python -m new_albums -t 5