I wrote about Lineup.fun a few months ago, but now I’ll be sunsetting it.
A few nights ago, thanks to a bug report from my mate Phil, I discovered that Spotify has changed the rules for developing apps. These changes make it impossible to keep Lineup running.
They’ve added some restrictions on users that have really screwed me over. In practice, they make it impossible to ship an app with real users unless you already have a massive audience. They are:
- You can only have 5 registered users.
- You can add more, but they each have to be whitelisted by adding their user ID.
- You can remove these limits, but you need to have at least 250,000 MAUs and be registered as a business.
These rules mean you can’t build anything with Spotify without an existing user base.
Now, anything you build with Spotify, you can’t really publicise it. You can’t post it on Hacker News. You can’t share it with your internet friends on Bluesky. Or, like I did with Lineup, post it in a WhatsApp group of 90 friends who are the ideal users of your product.
I have no idea how anyone is meant to build an MVP under these rules. And so, Spotify’s changes have left Lineup dead.
Like everything else going to shit these days, they’ve blamed AI:
Over time, advances in automation and AI have fundamentally altered the usage patterns and risk profile of developer access, and at Spotify’s current scale these risks now require more structured controls.
Nothing lasts forever I suppose.
Doomcorps
This discovery hit me hard and honestly left me a bit depressed. Lineup doesn’t seem like it does much, but I spent a few weeks on it. It was a labour of love and having to shut it down isn’t what I wanted to do with it.
I loved it, and the playlists generated from it came in extremely handy for my friends and I when researching the lineups for events. I’d even started working on a load of improvements.
But having to shut it down wasn’t the full reason for the depression.
We know that the big websites don’t want you to leave their walled gardens, but Spotify’s effective closure of their API really felt like an admission that weird and silly uses of APIs are no longer allowed. Little projects like Lineup rely on an open web. Without APIs being accessible to individuals like me, countless websites, passion projects, and even art, would never exist.
Honourable mentions
- 🎮 I bought a Steam Deck. I’d been mulling one over for a while and with RAM being bought up for sentient bullshit machines it seemed wise to buy one now rather than later.
- 🎮 And on that Steam Deck I’ve mostly played Skin Deep. A really fun and silly immersive sim about rescuing space cats from space pirates.
- 🎮 Alongside it, I’m playing Dishonored 2. I guess I just love immersive sims.
- 🎮 High On Life 2 has been fun, but I think the joke has worn thin. It has the same problem as the first game - when there’s too much audio going on you miss all the jokes.
- 📖 Consider Phlebas is my first Culture book and honestly, I’m not really sure about it. It’s fun but I wouldn’t say it’s impacting me the way I hear others talk about it. I’ll stick it through to the end at least.
- 📺 I’m catching up slowly on Industry and just got to season 3. The dig at the Deliveroo IPO cracked me up.