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At the office I share a space with three people. We have a very decent set of speakers, and each day whomever comes in first switches the speakers' cable to his computer. This person runs Spotify on his own PC and controls the music for the day, for better and for worse.

What I'd prefer though is that we hook up the speaker set to a fourth PC. This PC would run Spotify and play music, and we'd all be able to change what's playing from our own PC, possibly also from our mobile devices.

In summary, I'm looking for (a combination of) software that:

Must have…

…the ability to have Spotify on one machine be controlled directly (as in: no Remote Desktop or similar solution, but an app on my PC, or a web interface) by several other PCs, specifically:

  • Change the volume either of Spotify or the remote PC itself;
  • Use the controls like stop/pause/play/next/previous;
  • Change the play queue (add/remove single/multiple songs or albums) from other PCs;
  • Browse and search the available Spotify songs;
  • Browse (public) playlists from users (our own accounts, mostly);
  • Fast UX: all this is preferably not noticeably slower than using Spotify on your own PC;
  • Good UX: it must be on par with using Spotify directly;
  • Gratis (or failing that, at least cheap): I wouldn't mind spending a few bucks on this but not much more / preferably not as it's just a convenience thing. (To clarify, "Gratis" is a "Should-Have", and "Cheap" is a "Must-Have".)

All PCs will be running Windows 8.1 or up so the software must work on those OSes.

Nice to have…

…in order of importance:

  • As many of the above "must haves" as possible controlled from Android devices;
  • Basic features "readily" available on our own desktops (e.g. basic controls via task bar tray icon, or keyboard shortcuts);
  • Ability to start artist radios;
  • Ability to sign in a Spotify user remotely; (this is bottom of the list, as I'm totally fine with having one of us Remote Desktop to the other PC once a day to log in to Spotify)
  • As many of the above "must haves" as possible controlled from iOS and Windows Phone devices;

Not important…

…is how we'd sign in a user on that fourth PC. I'm perfectly fine with RDP or a remote powershell session to sign in into Spotify at the start of the day.

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  • 1
    I am using SpotCommander myself (code.google.com/p/spotcommander) but I find it lacking in some aspects. It controls the GUI hence Spotify must be open on the remote computer and you cannot be using it at the same time (I think), but it is web-based and so allows me to control the server from any device on my router. The UX is nowhere near that of Spotify, and I don't think it does playlists well though, so I don't feel this qualifies as an answer. Rather, I +1ed, and am following any responses with interest.
    – CompuChip
    Jun 30, 2014 at 20:38
  • @Jeroen: If my answer was helpful to you, then please consider marking it as the accepted answer so others may more easily find it in the future.
    – Andrea Lazzarotto
    Jan 7, 2017 at 19:10
  • @AndreaLazzarotto I appreciate the time you took to respond, and your answer was useful, so I upvoted it. But alas, I have not and will not accept it though, as it does not solve my problem (because of the reasons mentioned in my comment to your answer).
    – Jeroen
    Jan 8, 2017 at 11:42
  • Alright. :) I thought you could get around that by using a brand new account just for work and share that with your colleagues, but in any case I left the comment just in case you might have forgotten about this Q.
    – Andrea Lazzarotto
    Jan 8, 2017 at 14:04
  • Doesn't have features like browsing. You can connect to that PC if it's on the same Wi-Fi as your android device and control some aspects of Spotify: community.matricapp.com/deck/193/spotify-remote Initially you have to manually pair devices.
    – wast
    Aug 2, 2020 at 20:06

1 Answer 1

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Currently, these features are available from Spotify itself. They call it "Spotify connect".

The ability to control Spotify on one computer from an Android tablet is particularly good.

However, all devices must be on the same account, as far as I know.

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    Thanks for your answer. However, an implicit must-have (based of the context in my first paragraph: it's a setup with colleagues) would be that I do not want to share my Spotify credentials with others. - As such I cannot accept this answer as the final solution (though I have upvoted it as it's a useful suggestion for other, similar contexts).
    – Jeroen
    Apr 29, 2016 at 10:47
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    I understand your point. Nevertheless, you might consider setting up a "burner" account just for work.
    – Andrea Lazzarotto
    Apr 29, 2016 at 10:49

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