ShareMyPlaylists launches an API for developers to tap its Spotify playlist data

ShareMyPlaylists has carved a niche for itself in the online music space, becoming known as the preeminent go-to for those wishing to share their Spotify playlists.

Way back in early 2009 we first reported on how ShareMyPlaylists was a pretty useful tool for music-lovers. Then, two weeks after Spotify announced its platform for third-party apps last year, the company rolled out its very own music discovery and playlist-sharing Spotify app, while its iOS app relaunched in May to offer a new way to experience Spotify on the move.

Then last September, ShareMyPlaylists showed there was life after playlists with the launch of a bespoke Spotify app development studio. So what could possibly come next? An API, of course.

From playlists to APIs

This weekend, ShareMyPlaylists is sponsoring Music Hack Day Stockholm, held in Spotify’s main Swedish office – and the company’s also using the occasion to launch its API.

It has been interesting watching ShareMyPlaylists evolve since its launch more than three years ago, and in that time it has amassed a tonne of data, which bodes well for third-party developers.

Consider the 120,000 playlists, constituting twenty million tracks. And all those playlists have metadata attached to them, including the number of plays (and thus popularity), related playlist recommendations, featured artists, genres, who created them and more.

Then there’s chart data, which includes top 50 playlists, tracks and artists. Playlist reviews can also be accessed via an API.

“We hope that by making all this available, we will encourage third party developers to use our data in their websites and apps,” says Kieron Donoghue, founder of ShareMyPlaylists. “There is a lot of really interesting information around popularity and music trends that we think people will find useful.”

To access the API, developers are encouraged to sign up for a regular ShareMyPlaylists account, then click here for an API key. And you can see the full API documentation here too.

Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock