Spotify is perhaps the least keyboard friendly music player ever made. I spend so much time clicking around in this app trying to find something to listen to and it just feels so… slow. That's why I love spotify-player, which goes in the extreme opposite direction. It's a full-featured interface for Spotify that you control entirely from the command line.

Yes, I realize this is ridiculous. I tried it for a few days in the hopes of writing a funny article, but now I've actually used it. And I wanted to list all the things you can do in Spotify's desktop app that you can't do in Spotify Player, but after using it for a few days, the only things I've noticed are that podcasts and audiobooks aren't offered (which I consider a plus) and I can't get the AI DJ to start. Everything else – creating and managing playlists, radio stations, browsing or searching for playlists – works if you take the time to figure it out. If there's anything else missing, I haven't found it.

This application requires a Spotify Premium account and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. To install and use it, you’ll need at least a little familiarity with the command line. The easiest way is to grab a binary. On Windows, you can just launch it directly and it will open, which is an easy way to try it out. On Mac, I recommend installing it with Homebrew, a tool that any Mac user interested in this app should probably have set up anyway. (Linux users know more about how to install this on their operating system than I do, so I won’t try to give a clunky summary. You got this.)

Once the application is installed and running, you will be asked for your Spotify username and password. Provide these and you will be taken to your Spotify library.