Request Spotify dossiers and evaluate them with Go and R
Programming Snapshot – Go and R

© Lead Image © bowie15, 123RF.com
Spotify, the Internet music service, collects data about its users and their taste in music. Mike Schilli requested a copy of his files to investigate them with Go.
Streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music dominate the music industry. Their extensive catalogs now cover the entire spectrum of consumable music. Relying on artificial intelligence, these services introduce users to new songs they'll probably like, as predicted by the services' algorithms. Traditional physical music media no longer stand a chance against this and gather dust on the shelves. Of course, this development also means that anonymous music consumption is a thing of the past, because streaming services keep precise records of who played what track, when, and for how long.
On request, Spotify will even hand over the acquired data (Figure 1). If you poke around a bit on their website, you'll find the buttons you need to press to request a copy of these files in Account | Privacy Settings, but Spotify takes their sweet time to respond. From the time of the request, it takes about a week for their archivist to retrieve the data from the files in the Spotify basement, compress them, and post them as a ZIP archive on the website for you to pick up. After receiving Spotify's email notification, you can then download the data for two weeks and poke around in it locally to your heart's content.

[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.