Spotify is the most popular music streaming service, with millions of free and paid customers worldwide. It includes a collection of millions of songs with high-quality sound. It offers apps for desktop, mobile, and tablet platforms. While you may listen to music on its online interface, it is preferred to utilize a specialized app or a desktop client since it provides extra capabilities such as listening to local audio files and downloading music for offline play. Spotify has apps and desktop clients for all major platforms, including Windows, Linux, and macOS desktops, as well as Android, Windows, and iOS smartphones and tablets.
In this post, we will show you how to install Spotify on Linux using two different methods. You can select the source from which you wish to install it. The command line is used in both installation techniques.
- Using the Snap package
- Using the Spotify archive
On a Debian 10 operating system, we ran the commands and processes described in this article.
Install Spotify Through Snap package
Spotify can be installed on any Linux distribution via a snap package. It is the quickest way of installing any application on Linux. Snap package is a self-contained application bundled with all their dependencies to run on all major Linux distributions from a single build.
To install Spotify via snap, follow the below steps:
Step 1: Launch Terminal
Launch the Terminal application. For that, go to the Activities tab in the top left corner of the desktop. Then in the search bar, type terminal. When the Terminal icon appears, click on it to launch it.
Execute the below command in Terminal to switch to root account:
$ su
Step 2: Install snap
In this step, we will install snap. To do so, execute the below command in Terminal:
$ apt install snapd
Step 3: Install Spotify
Next, we will install the Spotify snap app executing the below command in Terminal:
$ snap install spotify
Uninstall Spotify
In case you want to remove the Spotify that was installed using the snap package, execute the below command in Terminal:
$ snap remove spotify
Install Spotify from the Spotify repository
In this method, we will install Spotify using a repository. Follow these steps to do so:
Step 1: Launch Terminal
First, open the Terminal by going into the Activities tab in the top left corner of the desktop. Then in the search bar, type terminal. When the Terminal icon appears, click on it to launch it. Then execute the below command to switch to the root account:
$ su -
Step 2: Add the repository
Now enter the following command to add the Spotify repository to your system. Use the right-click menu to copy-paste this command to your Terminal.
$ echo deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list
You will see the output similar t below:
Step 3: Update repository index
The next step will be to update your system’s repository index with the new repository. To do so, execute the below command in Terminal:
$ apt-get update
When you execute the update command, you may get this error:
“The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY XXXXXXXXXXXX”.
This error occurs when packages are being installed from repositories that are not trusted.
In this case, we will have to add the repository key. This will allow the system to trust the packages being added from the repository. To add the key, run the below command with the key at the end.
$ apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 4773BD5E130D1D45
You will note that the key id is the same that we have got in the above error message.
Now that you are done with adding the key, again run the update command:
$ apt-get update
Now it will be completed successfully.
Step 4: Install Spotify
Now run the apt-get command in order to install Spotify to your system:
$ apt-get install spotify-client
When the system prompt with a y/n option to continue the installation, enter Y to continue with the installation. It will take a while depending on your internet speed after that Spotify will be installed on your system.
Remove Spotify
In order to uninstall Spotify from your system, execute the below command in your Terminal:
$ apt-get remove spotify-client
Enter y on the y/n prompt and the Spotify will be completely removed from your system.
If you also want to remove the repository through which you installed Spotify, run the following command:
$ rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list
Check Spotify version
Run the below command to check the version number of your installed package and to ensure that the application is installed on your system.
$ spotify --version
Launch Spotify on Debian
Once installed, you can access Spotify from the Debian application search. For that, click on the Activities tab on the top left corner of your desktop, Then in the search bar, type spotify. When its icon appears, click on it to launch it.
Alternatively, just type spotify on your Terminal:
$ spotify
The application opens in the following view by default.
Click on LOG IN if you already have a Spotify account enables otherwise create a new account using the SIGN UP FREE button.
So these were the two methods that you can use to install Spotify on your Debian OS. You can use any one of these methods that you find more convenient.
