Spodcast

Spodcast is a caching Spotify podcast to RSS proxy. Using Spodcast you can follow Spotify-hosted netcasts/podcasts using any player which supports RSS, thus enabling the use of older hardware which is not compatible with the Spotify (web) app. Spodcast consists of the main Spodcast application - a Python 3 command line tool - and a PHP-based RSS feed generator. It uses the librespot-python library to access the Spotift API. To use Spodcast you need a (free) Spotify account. Spodcast only supports the Spotify podcast service, it does not interface with the music streaming service.

How does it work

Spotify hosts podcasts through their proprietary API and does not offer an RSS feed, making it mandatory to use the Spotify (web) app to follow these shows. This makes it impossible to follow Spotify-hosted shows on any device which does not support the Spotify (web) app. Spodcast solves this problem by creating an RSS feed out of data returned through the Spotify podcast API. This feed can be served by any web server which supports PHP. By running Spodcast through a task scheduler (cron on *nix, Task Scheduler on Windows) the feed will be kept up to date without the need for intervention. Have a look at these glorious ASCIIGraphs™ which should answer all unasked questions:

Spodcast regularly queries Spotify for new episodes...

                  --------------
                 |task scheduler|
                  --------------
                        |             ___________
  -------   APIv1   ----V---         /           \
 |Spotify|- - - - >|Spodcast|------>| File system |
  -------           --------         \___________/

You want to listen to an episode using your old, unsupported but still functional phone...

                                           _____         ............
   ___________          ----------        |     | . o O |bla bla bla.|
  /           \        |Web server|  RSS  | YOUR|        ````````````
 | File system |------>|  + PHP   |------>| OLD |
  \___________/         ----------        |PHONE|
                                          |_____|

Thus, by the simple expedient of using a piece of code which produces another piece of code which is used by yet another piece of code to speak to that old, creaky but still functional phone the latter is saved from early forced retirement. You can both feel virtuous for not adding another piece of waste to the pile, provident for not spending funds on a new device which does the same as the old one, smart for escaping the trap of planned obsolescence and whatever other emotion you prefer, including none whatsover.

Installation

Spodcast is available as an installable package on PyPi, just run:

$ pip install spodcast

...and you're set in case you only want to use Spodcast from your own account. Run this command as root to install it globally which makes it available to e.g. the web server user (www-data on Debian and derived distributions), this is necessary if you want to make use of the RSS feed service.

Spodcast can be installed from source by running pip install . (or pip install -e . if you want to be able to hack the code without needing to re-install after every change) from within the package root directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/Yetangitu/spodcast.git
$ cd spodcast
$ pip install .

Once installed this way it can be uninstalled using pip uninstall spodcast if so required. If you're planning to use the RSS proxy and web UI you need to make sure the spodcast command is available to the web server user.

Usage with Docker:

Pre-built images are available at Docker Hub. Refer to documentation below on how to build the image locally if that is desired.

A Note on Environment Variables:

The Spodcast images are built to either be configured exclusively through environment variables OR by passing arguments to the image -- if arguments are passed to the container any environment variables will be ignored.

Here is the list of permitted environment variables with a brief description:

Variable	Default Value	Description
SPOTIFY_PASSWORD	None	Spotify password
SPOTIFY_USERNAME	None	Spotify username
SPOTIFY_PODCAST_URLS	None	URLs of podcasts to download from spotify (separated by space)
CRON_SCHEDULE	0 0 * * Sun	Cron schedule for how often heywoodlh/spodcast-cron will attempt to download content from Spotify
SPODCAST_ROOT	/data	Where all assets will go in the container filesystem
SPODCAST_HTML	${SPODCAST_ROOT}/html	Where HTML content will be places in container filesystem
SPODCAST_CONFIG_JSON	${SPODCAST_ROOT}/spodcast.json	Location of the spodcast config file
SPOTIFY_CREDS_JSON	${SPODCAST_ROOT}/creds.json	Location of the file containing Spotify credentials that Spodcast will use to continue logging in
SPOTIFY_RC_PATH	${SPODCAST_ROOT}/spotify.rc	Location of file containing creds to initially login
MAX_EPISODES	10	Max amount of episodes to download per podcast
LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level of Spodcast
CHUNK_SIZE	50000	Download chunk size
RSS_FEED	yes	Create an RSS feed for a web server
TRANSCODE	no	Transcode to MP3 format (i.e. so iOS devices can play the audio files)
LANGUAGE	en	Language of the content
SKIP_EXISTING	yes	Do not re-download episodes that already exist on filesystem

SPOTIFY_PASSWORD, SPOTIFY_USERNAME, and SPOTIFY_PODCAST_URLS are the only ones that are absolutely required -- everything else has a default value that is considered sane that it will fall back to if left undefined.

Usage with Docker-Compose and environment variables:

The following docker-compose.yml (also available at docker/docker-compose.yml) should work to easily deploy Spodcast, a web server and PHP server:

services:
  spodcast-cron:
    image: heywoodlh/spodcast-cron:latest
    volumes:
      - spodcast_data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - CRON_SCHEDULE=0 * * * *
      - SPOTIFY_PODCAST_URLS=https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk
      - SPOTIFY_PASSWORD=myawesomepassword
      - SPOTIFY_USERNAME=email@awesome.com
      - MAX_EPISODES=1
      
  spodcast-php:
    image: php:7-fpm
    volumes:
      - spodcast_data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped
    user: "101:101"
    networks:
    - spodcast

  spodcast-web:
    image: heywoodlh/spodcast-web:latest
    volumes:
      - spodcast_data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
    - spodcast
    ports:
      - 8080:80

networks:
  spodcast:
volumes:
  spodcast_data:

*Note: if this is the first time running Spodcast, the web server will error out with a 404. That is due to no HTML content having been setup by Spodcast yet. When running this the first time, it would be recommended to set CRON_SCHEDULE to something a bit more aggressive like * * * * * so that way episodes will be downloaded every minute and then once the initial HTML content has been populated change the CRON_SCHEDULE to something less aggressive.

Using the Docker CLI and supplying arguments:

Prepare spodcast directory (this example assumes you will store Spodcast's data in /tmp/spodcast):

mkdir -p /tmp/spodcast

echo 'spotify_username spotify_password' > /tmp/spodcast/spotify.rc

Login to Spotify and configure spodcast initially:

docker run -it -v /tmp/spodcast:/data heywoodlh/spodcast -c /data/spodcast.json --root-path /data/html --log-level info --credentials-location /data/creds.json -p -l /data/spotify.rc

Now run spodcast (this example will download The Joe Rogan Experience to /tmp/spodcast/html on the Docker host):

docker run -it -v /tmp/spodcast:/data heywoodlh/spodcast -c /data/spodcast.json --log-level info --max-episodes 10 'https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk'

Build the image locally:

If you would prefer to build the image locally:

git clone https://github.com/Yetangitu/Spodcast && cd Spodcast

docker build -t spodcast -f docker/Dockerfile .

Docker usage will be exactly the same as the examples above with the exception that you will want to replace the heywoodlh/spodcast image with spodcast.

Usage

To use Spodcast you need a (free) Spotify account, if you don't have one yet you'll need to take care of that first at https://www.spotify.com/signup/ . If you plan to use the RSS proxy feature you'll also need a web server to serve the RSS feed(s), any server which supports PHP will do here. See Web server requirements for more information on how to configure the server.

Here's spodcast displaying its help message:

$ spodcast -h
usage: spodcast [-h] [-c CONFIG_LOCATION] [-p] [-v] [-l LOGIN] [--root-path ROOT_PATH]
                [--skip-existing SKIP_EXISTING] [--retry RETRY] [--max-episodes MAX_EPISODES]
                [--chunk-size CHUNK_SIZE] [--download-real-time DOWNLOAD_REAL_TIME]
                [--language LANGUAGE] [--credentials-location CREDENTIALS_LOCATION]
                [--rss-feed RSS_FEED] [--transcode TRANSCODE] [--log-level LOG_LEVEL]
                [urls ...]

A caching Spotify podcast to RSS proxy.

positional arguments:
  urls                  Download podcast episode(s) from a url. Can take multiple urls.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CONFIG_LOCATION, --config-location CONFIG_LOCATION
                        Specify the spodcast.json location
  -p, --prepare-feed    Installs RSS feed server code in ROOT_PATH.
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -l LOGIN, --login LOGIN
                        Reads username and password from file passed as argument and stores
                        credentials for later use.
  --root-path ROOT_PATH
                        set root path for podcast cache
  --skip-existing SKIP_EXISTING
                        [yes|no] skip files with the same name and size. Defaults to "yes".
  --retry RETRY         retry count for Spotify API access
  --max-episodes MAX_EPISODES
                        number of episodes to download
  --chunk-size CHUNK_SIZE
                        download chunk size
  --download-real-time DOWNLOAD_REAL_TIME
                        simulate streaming client
  --language LANGUAGE   preferred content language
  --credentials-location CREDENTIALS_LOCATION
                        path to credentials file. If a relative path is used the file will be
                        stored in the same directory as the configuration file (-c
                        /path/to/config.json -> /path/to).
  --rss-feed RSS_FEED   [yes|no] add a (php) RSS feed server and related metadata for feed. To
                        manage feeds, point a web server at the spodcast root path as configured
                        using --root-path. Defaults to "yes".
  --transcode TRANSCODE
                        [yes|no] transcode ogg/vorbis to mp3 (where applicable) - only needed
                        for devices which do not support open formats (e.g. iOS). Defaults to
                        "no".
  --log-level LOG_LEVEL
                        log level (debug/info/warning/error/critical)

Using Spodcast to proxy Spotify podcasts to RSS

The following example shows how to use the spodcast command to prepare the feed root directory and add a Spotify account to be used. It specifies the configuration file to create (-c /mnt/audio/podcast/spodcast.json) and the root path where podcasts will be downloaded to (--root-path /mnt/audio/spodcast). The -p option tells spodcast to prepare the RSS feed server in the root directory which will also be used to store the credential file created by the -l spotify.rc command. That spotify.rc file is a plain text file containing the username and password (separated by a single space character) to use to login to Spotify. It is only needed to create the stored credentials file(s) so it can be deleted once Spotcast is up and running. If one or more of your preferred listening devices does not supports open audio codecs - e.g. because it runs iOS - you can use --transcode yes to enable transcoding of such streams to mp3. Transcoding is performed using ffmpeg which needs to be available on your Spodcast host. It can take a considerable amount of time depending on the hardware you're using to run Spodcast so only enable this option when there are no other options.

spodcast -c /mnt/audio/podcast/spodcast.json --root-path /mnt/audio/spodcast -p -l /home/exampleuser/spotify.rc

Configure the Web server using the path given as root path (in this example that would be /mnt/audio/spodcast) as web root, making sure to exclude files with .json and .info extenstions to avoid leaking your Spotify credentials (even though these are stored in hashed form using hashed file names). Now point a browser at the site you configured for Spodcast and you're ready to add the first show or episode. This is done easily by entering the Spotify show/episode url (e.g. https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk for The Joe Rogan Experience for the whole show, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rYwwE7hcpgsDo9vRVHxAI?si=24fb00294b7f40db for a specific episode, notice the show and episode parts of these links) and either hitting Enter or clicking the Add button. Spodcast will now create a directory under the given root path, add the .index.php RSS feed generator script and the index.info show info URL used by that script and the RSS manager script and whatever episode(s) you decided to sync.

Once the initial feed has been created it can be kept up to date by enabling the feed update service found in the Settings menu. Select the update frequency and the start time and click Update, this will create a cron job for the web server which will run the Spodcast manager script to update feeds. If the system scheduler can not be used for some reason - e.g. because the web server user is not allowed to create cron jobs or because the web server is run from a Docker container which does not support cron jobs - you can use the webcron endpoint to initiate update runs. Just point any web client at SPODCAST_URL/?action=update_shows to run an update and get a json-encoded report on what has been updated. By running a command line web client - curl and wget are good options - as a user cron job at regular intervals the feeds can be kept up to date.

While the update frequency is configured for all shows simultaneously this is not the case for the number of episodes to sync and the number to keep in cache, these can be configured individually for each show. The idea here is that some shows may publish more than one episode between update intervals so by fetching the last X episodes on each update nothing will be missed. Episodes which have already been synced will not be synced again so no time or bandwidth is wasted. In the same vein the number of episodes to keep can be configured to make sure your RSS clients have the opportunity to download these before they are rotated out of cache. Once more than X (being the value chosen for keep) episodes have been downloaded the oldest episodes will be deleted to keep the total no more than X.

Point your RSS clients at the Spodcast feed URL for this show and you should see new episodes appear after they were published on Spotify and subsequently picked up on the next update. For the example given in the Web server requirements example that URL would be http://spodcast.example.org/The_Joe_Rogan_Experience.

Here's what the Spodcast feed manager looks like:

...and on smaller screens it looks like this:

The settings screen is simple and concise:

Each show has its own sync and keep settings. Use the Delete button to, well, delete the show. Use Refresh to retrieve the last [sync] episodes, skipping those which have already been synced.

Using the Spodcast CLI command to download a single episode

Spodcast can also be used stand-alone (without the need for a web server) by either just ignoring the feed-related files (.index.php, index.info plus a *.info file for every episode) or by disabling the RSS feed using --rss no on the command line. Instead of using the -l spotify.rc command to add Spotify credentials it is possible to point Spotcast at a single credentials.json file (which will be created if it does not exist yet), spodcast wil ask for the username and password when needed. To get single episode links use the Spotify web app and select Share->Copy Episode Link from the episode menu (three dots in the top-right corner of the episode block). The following example shows (an already configured instance of) spodcast ready to download a single episode:

spodcast -c ~/.config/spodcast/spodcast.json --credentials-location ~/.config/spodcast/credentials.json --rss-feed no https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rYwwE7hcpgsDo9vRVHxAI?si=24fb00294b7f40db

Like in the previous example Spodcast will create a directory under the root path with the same name as the show from which the episode is downloaded. The episode will be downloaded into this directory under a SHOW_NAME_-__EPISODE_NAME.[ogg|mp3] name. Point a mediaplayer of choice at this file to play the episode. In "manual" mode Spodcast does not do anything by itself, feeds can be kept up to date by running Spotcast with the required settings for --max-episodes (which is the value used for sync in the web UI) and the show URL. Here's how to update the The Joe Rogan Experience show using the spodcast CLI command, syncing the last 3 episodes:

spodcast -c ~/.config/spodcast/spodcast.json --rss-feed no --max-episodes 3 https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk`

Web server configuration

Spodcast places a hidden .index.php file in the root path and each show directory. The one in the root directory is used to manage feeds while those in the show directories produce RSS feeds based on the information found in all *.info files in that directory. Configure the server to serve those .index.php files as index to make things work as intended. Don't forget to block all web access to files ending in .json and .info to make sure you Spotify credentials (which are stored in hashed form in files named spodcast-cred-MD5_HASH_OF_SPOTIFY_USER_NAME.json in the root path) can not be accessed. Especially when using the transcoding feature (--transcode yes) on less powerful hardware (Raspberry Pi etc.) it can be necessary to increase the timeout for php-fpm/proxy/fastcgi requests. For nginx the following should suffice to produce an unencrypted (HTTP) feed under the domain name spodcast.example.org given a feed root directory (as configured using --root-path) of /mnt/audio/spodcast with php-fpm 7.4 listening on unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock, using a 5-minute timeout for fastcgi requests:

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name spodcast.example.org;

        root /mnt/audio/spodcast;

        index .index.php;

        fastcgi_read_timeout 300;
        fastcgi_send_timeout 300;	

        # these files should not be accessible
        location ~\.(json|info)$ {
                deny all;
                return 404;
        }

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        }
}

Examples for other web servers can be found elsewhere, this is basically a default PHP configuration with the only difference being that .index.php is a hidden file.