A Minimalist Display Showing What’s Playing on Spotify

There is no denying that streaming services like Spotify are the most convenient way to listen to music. Sure, the sound quality may not be lossless and you don’t get the tactile sensation of putting on a record, but having almost all of history’s music at your fingertips is nothing to scoff at. To make that experience even more pleasant, Redditor Radsrocket built this high-resolution AMOLED Spotify “now playing” screen.

Spotify provides a handy API (Application Programming Interface) that lets developers create programs that can access a user’s music library and playlists. With that API, it is possible to build custom music player devices that take advantage of Spotify’s massive catalog. Such devices usually incorporate controls for skipping songs, selecting playlists, pausing music, and so on. But Radsrocket’s device is simpler. All it does is display the current song title, artist, album name, and album art. It’s a quick and easy way to see what’s playing on their Spotify account at a glance.

This minimalist device only required a few hardware components, including a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer, a 5” Waveshare AMOLED touchscreen with case, and a power supply paired with a 90-degree USB-C cable. It takes advantage of Jon Ashcroft’s Nowify app, which pulls the user’s “now playing” information from the Spotify API. Ashcroft built Nowify on the Vue JavaScript framework and it provides a simple, yet beautiful, screen. By Hackster community standards, this is a pretty basic project. But it is a great demonstration of what makers can pull together in an afternoon in order to improve their day-to-day lives.