spotify-mcp 🎧 — maintained fork

Connect Claude (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client) to Spotify. Ask for a playlist in plain language and it builds it in your account — search, playback, queue, and full playlist create/edit.

Why this fork?

The excellent original by @varunneal is no longer maintained, and in February 2026 Spotify changed its Web API in ways that broke every write: creating a playlist or adding songs started returning 403 Forbidden. This fork fixes that (plus a login/token-persistence bug) so playlists work again — and it's actively maintained with issues and PRs welcome. All credit for the original project goes to Varun; this just keeps it running.

Features

• 🎵 Create, edit, and manage playlists (the part the Feb-2026 API broke — fixed here)

• 🔍 Search tracks, albums, artists, and playlists

• ▶️ Start / pause / skip playback and manage the queue

• ℹ️ Get details about any track / album / artist / playlist

Related MCP server: Apple Music MCP Server

Quick start

1. Create a Spotify developer app

1. Go to the Spotify dashboard and Create app.

2. Set the Redirect URI to exactly http://127.0.0.1:8080/callback (must be http, loopback IP 127.0.0.1, not localhost).

3. Check Web API under the APIs/SDKs question, save, then copy your Client ID and Client secret from Settings.

A Spotify Premium account is required for the developer API to create/modify playlists.

2. Add the server to your MCP client

Add this under "mcpServers" (e.g. ~/.claude.json for Claude Code, or your Claude Desktop / Cursor config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "spotify": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--python", "3.12",
        "--from", "git+https://github.com/jmbluhm/spotify-mcp",
        "--with", "pydantic<2.10",
        "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"
      }
    }
  }
}

Requires uv (brew install uv or the install script).

3. Connect & authorize (one time)

Restart your client (or /mcp reconnect in Claude Code), then ask "what are my Spotify playlists?". A browser window opens — click Agree. Your login is saved to ~/.spotify-mcp-token.json and persists across restarts.

Now try: "Create a private playlist called Long Run with 15 upbeat ~170 BPM songs."

What's different from upstream

This fork is a drop-in replacement. Changes:

• Spotify February 2026 Web API migration — the breaking change that made the original return 403 on all writes:

  • POST /users/{id}/playlists (removed) → POST /me/playlists

  • playlist items: /tracks → /items, and the item payload key track → item

  • reads now use GET /playlists/{id}/items

• Persistent OAuth token — saves to ~/.spotify-mcp-token.json with show_dialog, so write scopes actually grant and survive restarts (the original could silently re-mint a read-only, non-persistent token).

• Honest errors — add/remove operations now raise on failure instead of silently swallowing them.

• heal-auth.sh — one-shot helper to clear local token state if auth ever gets stuck.

Troubleshooting

Logs go to stderr. For Claude Desktop on macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Claude.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome — that's the point of keeping this alive. If Spotify changes the API again, or you hit a bug, open an issue with what you ran and the error. Small, focused PRs are easiest to review. See CONTRIBUTING.md for a beginner-friendly walkthrough.

Credits & license

Original project by Varun Neal Srivastava, built on spotipy. This fork is maintained by @jmbluhm and keeps the original MIT License (see LICENSE). Thanks to Varun and all the original contributors.