Control Spotify Playback with Claude

spotify-mcp connects Claude to Spotify, built on top of the spotipy-dev Python API. It covers starting, pausing, and skipping playback; searching for tracks, albums, artists, or playlists; getting detailed info about a specific track, album, artist, or playlist; managing the Spotify playback queue; and managing, creating, and updating playlists. The project is marked inactive as of March 2026, with most pull requests not being merged - it should be evaluated as a community project without active maintenance rather than one receiving ongoing updates.

Setup requires creating a Spotify developer account and app at developer.spotify.com with a redirect URI of http://127.0.0.1:8080/callback - any port is allowed, but the source notes the URI must use HTTP and an explicit loopback address (IPv4 or IPv6). Using the server also requires Spotify Premium, since the developer API it relies on needs a Premium account.

Use this when the goal is controlling Spotify playback, searching the catalog, or managing playlists conversationally through Claude, and a Spotify Premium account with developer API access is available. Because a chunk of Spotify's recommendation-related API features have since been deprecated by Spotify itself, some previously possible functionality is no longer available regardless of how this server is configured - this is an upstream Spotify API limitation, not a bug in the server. Given the project's inactive status, it fits experimentation and personal use more than a dependency a team should rely on for ongoing support.

Running via uvx opens the Spotify authorization redirect on every single tool call, which can get repetitive; running the project locally by cloning the repository avoids this by keeping the authenticated session persistent between calls. Troubleshooting tips include keeping uv updated (version 0.54 or newer recommended), setting execution permissions (chmod -R 755) when running from a local clone, and confirming Spotify Premium is active. The server emits logs to stderr per the MCP spec - on macOS, Claude Desktop writes these to ~/Library/Logs/Claude. It can also be run through the MCP Inspector for interactive debugging via npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector.

The quickest path runs directly from GitHub via uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "spotify": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--python", "3.12",
        "--from", "git+https://github.com/varunneal/spotify-mcp",
        "spotify-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID": YOUR_CLIENT_ID,
        "SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET": YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET,
        "SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI": "http://127.0.0.1:8080/callback"
      }
    }
  }
}

Alternatively, cloning the repository and pointing an MCP config at the local directory with uv --directory /path/to/spotify-mcp run spotify-mcp avoids the repeated redirect-URI prompts that the uvx approach triggers on every tool call.

Spotify Premium subscribers who want to control playback, search the catalog, and manage playlists through Claude, and are comfortable relying on a community project that is no longer being actively maintained.