The top 10 Spotify web apps.
artwork by Jai Daniels.
I love Spotify. I am a firm believer in Spotify supremacy (sorry, Apple Music lovers); I mean, what more could you possibly want from a music app? They provide special “Spotify Sessions,” where your favorite artist performs a live version of one of their songs and a cover (this is my shameless plug for my all-time favorite Spotify Session: MAX’s cover “Buy U a Drank” by T-Pain), present all the super embarrassing songs you listened to over the course of a year in a cute little story called “Wrapped,” and let you see what all your friends are listening to at all times — what’s not to love?
However, some of Spotify’s coolest features don’t come from Spotify itself, but from some cool web developers who wanted people to interact with their music in new ways. So, I have scoured the internet far and wide in order to find the best interactive Spotify websites and apps that all users of the superior music streaming service can enjoy.
1. PokéPlaylist
Did you collect Pokémon cards as a kid, play Pokémon Yellow on your DS, or constantly try to convince everyone Team Instinct was the best team on Pokémon Go (it was definitely Team Mystic, but okay)? If so, this is definitely the Spotify Web App for you. PokéPlaylist takes your Spotify information and turns it into Pokémon cards! It’s so cute and lets you display your top artists in a fun way!
2. musicScapes
This Spotify web app creates landscapes based on the mood of your music taste! You connect your Spotify to the app, and it creates a cute little landscape based on the tempo, mood, and “color” of your music! You can save the picture and use it as a lock screen — honestly, this one may be one of the most aesthetically pleasing ones of the 10.
3. Boil the Frog
This one is one of my favorite web apps because I have incredibly varied music tastes, and am always looking for ways to blend my music taste together without sounding like a 6th grader’s GarageBand project. Boil the Frog takes from the old adage about the boiling frog not realizing that it’s being boiled alive until it’s too late; the program allows you to put in any two artists (seriously, any two; I put in One Direction and Frank Ocean in, and it worked perfectly) and it will create a playlist that blends the two artists together! This is a really good tool if you want to get your friends into your music taste, but your friend’s music taste is nothing like yours.
4. Record Player
This web app marries the Spotify API and the Google Cloud Vision API. Basically, users upload a photo and the Google Cloud Vision API will try and guess the image, and then it will search Spotify with Google’s guess and give you a song. With this program, you could create some of the craziest playlists based on the photos on your camera roll.
5. Obscurify
Obscurify is the perfect Spotify web app for all fellow music snobs. You connect your Spotify to this and it tells you how obscure your music taste is in comparison to other Spotify users, country by country. The lower your score is, the less obscure your music taste is; with that being said, my Obscurify score is a lot lower than I would like it to be. However, I am still higher than the majority of my friends, which does make me cooler.
6. Glitch
Do you like to know everything about the music you listen to? Glitch allows users to type in any song they want and, in a cool colorful display, it shows you the sections, bars, beats, segments, and tatums as the song plays. This app also lets you remix the song you choose in its Glitch mixer at the bottom of the page.
7. Favourite Music Guru
If you hate waiting until the end of the year to get your Wrapped or want to figure out what you have been listening to for a long time, then this is the best web app on this list. This app, while it has a pretty boring interface, shows users their 50 most listened to artists and songs over the short-term (4 weeks), medium-term (6 months), and long-term (over years). Personally, I am constantly checking this app throughout the year so I can anticipate all of the embarrassing music that will be on my Wrapped.
8. Whisperfy
Whisperfy uses “whispers” (or little snippets) of songs in your library and allows you to take little quizzes of the songs in your library or your playlists! You can take it with your friends to see how well they know (or don’t know) your music taste, and it allows you to see your most recent Spotify stats!
9. Discz
Okay, so Discz is not a web app, but it is a literal app and it's basically like Bumble, but for music! You download the app on your smart device, connect your Spotify, and adjust settings based upon what kind of music you’re looking for (do you want music you can dance to or cry to? How many BPM?), and start swooping! Discz plays a small snippet of the song and allows you to make the decision to swipe right or left, and also compiles all the songs you swipe right on into a playlist on your Spotify.
10. Mixtapr
This simulates the process of making a mixtape for someone as close as it can on Spotify. Basically, you decide who the mixtape will be for, select songs that you want to put on the mixtape, “record them” (listen to it for 30 seconds), “record” two sides of the mixtape, and then you can send it to whoever you want! It’s nostalgic, and I suppose it's a cool way for Gen Z to do the aesthetic things from the 90s that they have always dreamed of.
Edited by Tobias Abelmann, editor of Lists
Cover art by Jai Daniels