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Despotify

The open source Spotify is here.


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STOCKHOLM (Rixstep) -- The Swedish hacker group #hack.se have released an open source version of the Spotify music streaming client. Called Despotify, the software runs on most operating systems including Linux.

Despotify doesn't yet have a graphical user interface but it does connect with the Spotify servers and it does stream music and as an added bonus it skips past the advertising.

The #hack.se group have been working on their product for months, the main challenge being able to hook up to the Spotify servers.

'We haven't used any information from Spotify. We started at the bottom and studied how the Spotify client works', said a representative of #hack.se. 'Once we understood the model we recreated it with our own code.'

No Adverts?

'We have not implemented support for ads since it's pointless in an open source client. Patching away the ad routine is just too simple' says the Despotify site. 'We strongly believe you should pay for the premium service if you want to use the open source client.'

'In addition to this we have added a simple way for Spotify to identify that the open source client is used and we will accept and support if Spotify chooses to limit access using our client to Premium users only.'

Illegal Downloads?

If you can hack the Spotify stream you can download and burn music yourself. Obviously. The #hack.se people say the following.

'First of all, people download music anyway. That's just the way it works, be it legal or not. Live with it.'

'Secondly, there are far better places to download music (with better quality) than Spotify. Downloding/ripping music from Spotify is just as illegal as anywhere else, the main difference being that the bitrate/sound quality is lower in the music ripped from Spotify.'

Indeed. With the world focusing right now on Fleminggatan in Stockholm the one thing no one needs is more of a mess with the whinging media companies.

And it might behoove the Spotify programmers to immediately look into designing a revised system so the adverts are in the stream itself.

See Also
Despotify - The Open Source Spotify Client

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