spotifyr

Overview

spotifyr is a wrapper for pulling track audio features and other information from Spotify's Web API in bulk. By automatically batching API requests, it allows you to enter an artist's name and retrieve their entire discography in seconds, along with Spotify's audio features and track/album popularity metrics. You can also pull song and playlist information for a given Spotify User (including yourself!).

Installation

Development version (recommended)

devtools::install_github('charlie86/spotifyr')

The development version now imports the geniusR package from Josiah Parry, which you can install with:

devtools::install_github('JosiahParry/geniusR')

(Note that this is separate from the geniusr package currently on CRAN)

CRAN version 1.0.0 (Note: this is somewhat outdated, as it takes extra time to submit and pass CRAN checks)

install.packages('spotifyr')

Authenication

First, set up a Dev account with Spotify to access their Web API here. This will give you your Client ID and Client Secret. Once you have those, you can pull your access token into R with get_spotify_access_token.

The easiest way to authenticate is to set your credentials to the System Environment variables SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID and SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET. The default arguments to get_spotify_access_token (and all other functions in this package) will refer to those. Alternatively, you can set them manually and make sure to explicitly refer to your access token in each subsequent function call.

Sys.setenv(SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx')
Sys.setenv(SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx')

access_token <- get_spotify_access_token()

Usage

What was The Beatles' favorite key?

library(spotifyr)

beatles <- get_artist_audio_features('the beatles')

library(tidyverse)
count(beatles, key_mode, sort = T)
#> # A tibble: 22 x 2
#>    key_mode     n
#>    <chr>    <int>
#>  1 C major     46
#>  2 D major     41
#>  3 G major     38
#>  4 A major     36
#>  5 E major     21
#>  6 F major     18
#>  7 A minor     11
#>  8 B minor     10
#>  9 E minor     10
#> 10 C# minor     9
#> # ... with 12 more rows

What's the most joyful Joy Division song?

My favorite audio feature has to be "valence," a measure of musical positivity.

joy <- get_artist_audio_features('joy division')

joy %>% 
    arrange(-valence) %>% 
    select(track_name, valence) %>% 
    head(10)
#> # A tibble: 10 x 2
#>    track_name                                    valence
#>    <chr>                                           <dbl>
#>  1 These Days                                      0.949
#>  2 Passover - 2007 Remastered Version              0.941
#>  3 Colony - 2007 Remastered Version                0.808
#>  4 Atrocity Exhibition - 2007 Remastered Version   0.787
#>  5 Wilderness                                      0.775
#>  6 Twenty Four Hours                               0.773
#>  7 A Means To An End - 2007 Remastered Version     0.752
#>  8 Interzone - 2007 Remastered Version             0.746
#>  9 She's Lost Control - 2007 Remastered Version    0.743
#> 10 Disorder - 2007 Remastered Version              0.740

Now if only there was some way to plot joy...

Joyplot of the emotional rollercoasters that are Joy Division's albums

library(ggjoy)
#> Loading required package: ggridges
#> The ggjoy package has been deprecated. Please switch over to the
#> ggridges package, which provides the same functionality. Porting
#> guidelines can be found here:
#> https://github.com/clauswilke/ggjoy/blob/master/README.md

ggplot(joy, aes(x = valence, y = album_name)) + 
    geom_joy() + 
    theme_joy() +
    ggtitle("Joyplot of Joy Division's joy distributions", subtitle = paste0("Based on valence pulled from Spotify's Web API with spotifyr"))
#> Picking joint bandwidth of 0.112

Danceability of Thom Yorke

library(magick)
library(lubridate)

tots <- map_df(c('radiohead', 'thom yorke', 'atoms for peace'), get_artist_audio_features)

non_studio_albums <- c('OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017', 'TKOL RMX 1234567', 'In Rainbows Disk 2', 
                       'Com Lag: 2+2=5', 'I Might Be Wrong', 'The Eraser Rmxs')

tots <- filter(tots, !album_name %in% non_studio_albums)

album_names_label <- tots %>% 
    arrange(album_release_date) %>% 
    mutate(label = str_glue('{album_name} ({year(album_release_year)})')) %>% 
    pull(label) %>% 
    unique

plot_df <- tots %>% 
    select(track_name, album_name, danceability, album_release_date) %>% 
    gather(metric, value, -c(track_name, album_name, album_release_date))

p <- ggplot(plot_df, aes(x = value, y = album_release_date)) + 
    geom_density_ridges(size = .1) +
    theme_ridges(center_axis_labels = TRUE, grid = FALSE, font_size = 6) +
    theme(plot.title = element_text(face = 'bold', size = 14, hjust = 1.25),
          plot.subtitle = element_text(size = 10, hjust = 1.1)) +
    ggtitle('Have we reached peak Thom Yorke danceability?', 'Song danceability by album - Radiohead, Thom Yorke, and Atoms for Peace') +
    labs(x = 'Song danceability', y = '') +
    scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(0,.25,.5,.75,1)) +
    scale_y_discrete(labels = album_names_label)

ggsave(p, filename = 'img/danceplot.png', width = 5, height = 3)
background <- image_read('img/danceplot.png')
logo_raw <- image_read('img/thom_dance.gif')
frames <- lapply(1:length(logo_raw), function(frame) {
    hjust <- 200+(100*frame)
    image_composite(background, logo_raw[frame], offset = str_glue('+{hjust}+400'))
})

image_animate(image_join(frames), fps = 5, loop = 0)

Sentify: A Shiny app

This app, powered by spotifyr, allows you to visualize the energy and valence (musical positivity) of all of Spotify's artists and playlists.

Dope stuff other people have done with spotifyr

The coolest thing about making this package has definitely been seeing all the awesome stuff other people have done with it. Here are a few examples:

Sentiment analysis of musical taste: a cross-European comparison - Paul Elvers

Blue Christmas: A data-driven search for the most depressing Christmas song - Caitlin Hudon

KendRick LamaR - David K. Laing

Vilken är Kents mest deprimerande låt? (What is Kent's most depressing song?) - Filip Wästberg

Чёрное зеркало Arcade Fire (Black Mirror Arcade Fire) - TheSociety

Sente-se triste quando ouve "Amar pelos dois"? Não é o único (Do you feel sad when you hear "Love for both?" You're not alone) - Rui Barros, Renascença