spotify-mcp MCP server

MCP project to connect Claude with Spotify. Built on top of spotipy-dev's API.

Features

• Start, pause, and skip playback
• Search for tracks/albums/artists/playlists
• Get info about a track/album/artist/playlist
• Manage the Spotify queue

Demo

Make sure to turn on audio

Configuration

Getting Spotify API Keys

Create an account on developer.spotify.com. Navigate to the dashboard. Create an app with redirect_uri as http://localhost:8888. (You can choose any port you want but you must use http and localhost). I set "APIs used" to "Web Playback SDK".

Run this project locally

This project is not yet set up for ephemeral environments (e.g. uvx usage). Run this project locally by cloning this repo

git clone https://github.com/varunneal/spotify-mcp.git

Add this tool as a mcp server.

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

  "spotify": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/path/to/spotify_mcp",
        "run",
        "spotify-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID": YOUR_CLIENT_ID,
        "SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET": YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET,
        "SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI": "http://localhost:8888"
      }
    }

Troubleshooting

Please open an issue if you can't get this MCP working. Here are some tips:

1. Make sure uv is updated. I recommend version >=0.54.
2. Make sure claude has execution permisisons for the project: chmod -R 755.
3. Ensure you have Spotify premium (needed for running developer API).

TODO

Unfortunately, a bunch of cool features have now been deprecated from the Spotify API. Most new features will be relatively minor or for the health of the project:

• tests.
• adding API support for managing playlists.
• adding API support for paginated search results/playlists/albums.

Deployment

(todo)

Installing via Smithery

To install spotify-mcp for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @varunneal/spotify-mcp --client claude

Building and Publishing

To prepare the package for distribution:

1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:

uv sync

2. Build package distributions:

uv build

This will create source and wheel distributions in the dist/ directory.

3. Publish to PyPI:

uv publish

Note: You'll need to set PyPI credentials via environment variables or command flags:

• Token: --token or UV_PUBLISH_TOKEN
• Or username/password: --username/UV_PUBLISH_USERNAME and --password/UV_PUBLISH_PASSWORD

Debugging

Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging experience, we strongly recommend using the MCP Inspector.

You can launch the MCP Inspector via npm with this command:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory /Users/varun/Documents/Python/spotify_mcp run spotify-mcp

Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.