theotherdavid / sample-playlist-generator

This is a project to generate a Spotify playlist with a few sample songs of a given artist.

sample-playlist-generator

This is a project to generate a Spotify playlist with a few sample songs of a given artist.

Have you ever seen a supporting band for a concert you're going to, and wondered what they sounded like? Has anybody ever given you a list of bands you should listen to? It's easy enough to go to a band's Spotify page and check out their most popular songs, but that can be time-consuming and labor-intensive, because you have to search for each artist individually. With this app, you can enter a comma-separated list of artists, and the system will generate a playlist with 2-3 of each artist's most popular songs.

Happy listening!

sample-playlist-generator's Issues

Use selected tracks to make new Spotify playlist

Take in Playlist Name as a program argument

Take in artist names as an argument

Make it an API

I don't know, why not? Add an API. Then maybe we can add a frontend once I actually learn some React.

Bug: Program does not work for artists with spaces in their name

You probably need to encode it somehow for the URL.

Add ability to execute as a Lambda Function with an event including name and artist list.

Use the string artist name to get the artist Id

Use the Search API.

Retrieve top tracks and apply logic to select the sample tracks

Ideally, our sample playlist would be made up of the most-played song from each of the band's two albums, and the most-played song in total. However, Spotify doesn't make that data very available.
Because the top-tracks endpoint is pretty convenient, I will, if possible, pick three tracks from the list returned, from three different albums. For multiple tracks from the same album, I will choose the one with the highest Popularity (which is generated using some algorithm from the number of plays).
This will, ideally, give us the most popular track from the three most popular albums.

Add separate auth schemes

If using the API, we should force the user to authenticate on their Spotify credentials. If using the CLI app or the Lambda function, we should use the creds with the refresh token that's stored in the env variables.

Add artist match verification

When we resolve the artist name search into the artist ID, do an extra check on the name matching instead of just blindly accepting the first result?

Bug: Not getting the MOST POPULAR songs

We're getting the most popular song for each album, but then we're just randomly choosing from that list. You need to find the three most popular of THOSE. Combichrist is a good example for a band where their top-tracks are from many different albums.