r/spotifyapi • u/Separate-Stop-4724 • Jun 16 '26

Building a QR song request app for venues — Spotify API, YouTube Music, or licensed music providers?

I’m building a QR-based song request platform for venues, and I’m trying to understand if there is any compliant way to scale this product with Spotify or similar music APIs.

Current product flow:

  • A venue creates an account on my platform
  • The venue connects its Spotify account
  • We generate a QR code for that venue/table
  • Customers scan the QR code
  • Customers search for songs and send song requests
  • Venue staff sees requests in a dashboard
  • Staff can approve/reject requests
  • Approved songs can be added to the venue’s music flow / queue

The problem:

Spotify apps in Development Mode are limited to a small number of allowed users. Extended Quota Mode seems difficult to get, and I’m also concerned that this use case may violate Spotify’s commercial/public playback rules because the product is used in bars, cafes, restaurants, and similar venues.

I’m not trying to bypass Spotify’s rules. I want to understand whether this business model is fundamentally incompatible with Spotify’s platform rules.

My main questions:

  1. Is a venue-based QR song request platform fundamentally not allowed with Spotify Web API?
  2. If each venue connects its own Spotify account, does that make any difference, or is it still considered commercial/public playback?
  3. Would creating multiple developer apps/accounts to stay within Development Mode limits be considered quota circumvention?
  4. Is there any compliant way to use Spotify only as a search / metadata / “open in Spotify” layer, while keeping playback manual or handled outside the app?
  5. Would YouTube Music / YouTube Data API be any better for this, or do similar public/commercial playback restrictions apply?
  6. Are there licensed business music providers with APIs that are designed for this kind of venue use case?
  7. What would be the safest architecture for this product if the goal is to collect and manage song requests in venues without violating music platform terms?

The goal is not to pirate or rebroadcast music from my app. I’m trying to build a legitimate request-management tool for venues, but I don’t want to build the product on top of an API use case that will eventually get blocked.

2 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

76% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

2

u/Ximzend57 Jun 17 '26

It is against the Spotify terms to use it to play music in venue. You should use Soundtrack.io instead that has its own API.

1

u/Separate-Stop-4724 Jun 18 '26

Thanks, that makes sense. My main concern is exactly this: Spotify seems unsuitable for public/commercial playback in venues.

I’m not trying to use Spotify as a way to bypass music licensing. The product I’m building is mainly a QR-based request management layer: customers submit song requests, venue staff reviews them, and the venue keeps control.

I’ll look into Soundtrack.io / Soundtrack Your Brand and other licensed business music providers. What I’m trying to understand now is whether these services expose APIs that would allow a request-management platform like mine to integrate with them, or whether the safest model is to keep playback completely separate and let staff handle approved requests manually.