ADR-0031: Spotify Is Reported With Its Cover, and Treated as iTunes Is

Context

ADR-0016 reported Spotify without a cover for two reasons. The owner did not want the lights to follow it. And Spotify’s developer pages have a line about not synchronizing its recordings with visual media, which ADR-0012 left to the owner’s judgment; fetching no artwork and lighting nothing stepped around it.

Both have moved.

The first has another answer now. A source can be shown and not lit (ADR-0028): that is how iTunes is, since this morning. Leaving Spotify coverless is no longer the only way to keep the stand off it, and it costs the cover screen and the console their picture.

The second has been judged, by the owner, on 2026-10-13: Spotify gives the album’s pictures in the same answer as the track, to anyone it answers; this is one person’s own account, in their own house, shown to nobody else; and that is within what the pictures are there for. The stand’s one light show for a Spotify track, the scanner (ADR-0030), is included in that judgment.

What prompted it: the theme from Knight Rider played from Spotify does nothing, because a look travels with a cover and Spotify has none.

Options considered

Leave Spotify as it is. Then “any source” in ADR-0030 means “iTunes”.

A cover for the one track with a look, from the catalogs. Keeps Spotify’s artwork untouched and makes one track of a source behave unlike every other.

Stop marking Spotify coverless, and let nowplayd look every cover up. No change to the driver. But the catalogs guess from a title and an artist, and Spotify knows which album it is playing: the player’s own cover is the right one, which is the rule for every source (ADR-0008).

The driver fetches the album’s picture, as iTunes’ does.

Decision

The Spotify driver publishes the album’s picture as the track’s cover. nowplayd treats Spotify as it treats iTunes: shown, and dark, except for a look that is for any source.

• The picture is the one Spotify names in item.album.images, in the answer the driver already asks for. The widest that is not over 640 pixels is taken.
• One request for each album, not each track or each poll: the picture’s address is the album’s.
• The account’s token does not go with it. The pictures are on another host, are public, and are asked for with no Authorization header.
• The scopes do not change. Reading playback was already enough to be told where the picture is.
• A picture that cannot be had is no cover, and nowplayd looks one up, as for any track without one.
• Its requests are counted as spotify-images, apart from the API’s (ADR-0027).
• On the workload, NP_COVERLESS_SOURCES loses spotify and NP_DARK_SOURCES gains it. The setting for a coverless source stays, with no source in it.
• The driver is turned back on on the agent Pi (CHG-0011 turned it off).
• Spotify still takes no commands (ADR-0020). The cover screen shows its sleeve and buttons that do nothing; that is as it was, and is its own question.

Consequences

• The cover screen and the console show what Spotify is playing.
• The stand is dark for Spotify, and scans for the theme.
• Spotify can take the room from iTunes, and from a paused anything, by the arbiter’s ordinary rule. It always could; there is now something to see when it does.
• Only named devices count, as before. Spotify on a phone in the car shows nothing.
• Spotify’s pictures are held as every cover is: one, in memory, on a retained topic until the next.
• The owner’s judgment about Spotify’s terms is recorded here and is the owner’s. If EdS were ever shown to anyone else, or made for anyone else, it would have to be made again.
• ADR-0016’s mechanism has no user. It is kept: the next source that should be known and not seen is a setting away.
• “The stand does not follow Spotify” is still true, for a different reason: it follows nothing but records.

What would settle it

Tested against a stand-in for Spotify: one picture for each album, published with the state that names it; no token sent to the pictures’ host; a picture that is not there; which size is taken.

Not yet shown:

• The driver on the Pi, against the account: a cover fetched, and spotify-images counted.
• The cover screen and the console showing it, the stand dark.
• The theme from Spotify: the scanner.
• That the authorization given on 2026-10-11 still stands. It ends six months after it was given.