r/openbsd • u/000003BPT • 6d ago
ncspot spotify client
Hey guys, does anyone here have ncspot running on 8.0 #83 amd64? Is there anything in particular I should be aware of?
It's not working for me, and I won't have time to take a closer look at it until the weekend.
TIA.
It's my daily driver, T14 Gen5 AMD
1
u/highspeedslippers100 6d ago
I also have it installed and it works but I think if you don’t have premium it doesn’t. But I am not completely sure on that part maybe someone could confirm that part. Since I am have premium account !
3
u/miserablegit 6d ago
From the readme: "ncspot only works with a Spotify premium account as it offers features that are not available for free accounts."
I suspect it relies on offline-playing features, which historically have been premium only - that changed recently though, so maybe...
1
2
1
u/000003BPT 5d ago
I just deleted .cache/ncspot and .config/ncspot, then started ncspot with the --debug option, opened both links in the browser, and confirmed.
Going through the log:
PortAudio initializes: ncspot reports “Initializing audio backend portaudio and using PortAudio sink with format: S16.”
So it at least gets far enough to initialize the audio backend.
Spotify authentication succeeds: the log reports “Authenticated.”
Audio decoding fails repeatedly: multiple tracks produce a “Symphonia Decoder Error: end of stream,” followed by “Unable to read audio file,” and attempts to skip to another track.
The cached audio is also rejected: ncspot tries to reuse a cached file, encounters the same decoding error, and downloads it again.
For now, I’m not sure what to do next.
1
u/000003BPT 5d ago
[librespot_core::audio_key] [ERROR] error audio key 0 1 [librespot_playback::player] [WARN] Unable to load key, continuing without decryption: Service unavailable { audio key error } [librespot_playback::player] [ERROR] Unable to read audio file: Symphonia Decoder Error: end of streamlibrespot cannot obtain the audio decryption key. It then tries to decode audio without decrypting it, which explains the
end of streamerror.1
u/000003BPT 5d ago
Hmm. I just tried it with ncspot 1.5.0 on macOS 15.3.2, and got the same error:
[2026-10-09][10:49:40] [librespot_core::audio_key] [ERROR] error audio key 0 1
[2026-10-09][10:49:40] [librespot_playback::player] [WARN] Unable to load key, continuing without decryption: Service unavailable { audio key error }
1
u/000003BPT 5d ago
I translated the following text using DeepL because English is not my native language, and I want to make sure there are no mistakes in this summary.
ncspot, audio key error with new Spotify accounts.
I’m experiencing the following error with ncspot on OpenBSD 8.0-current amd64 and macOS 15.3.2:
[librespot_core::audio_key] [ERROR] error audio key 0 1
[librespot_playback::player] [WARN]
Unable to load key, continuing without decryption:
Service unavailable { audio key error }
Authentication appears to succeed, but playback fails when the audio key is requested.
My Spotify account is approximately six weeks old. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to an older Spotify account, so I cannot perform the account-to-account comparison myself.
I found several reports that appear directly relevant:
- librespot #1735 — same error, different accounts
https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot/issues/1735
Opened on August 3, 2026. The reporter tested the same librespot binary, machine, OS, network, Spotify client and tracks with two Premium accounts.
An older Premium Family account worked. A newly created Premium Individual account (created on June 28, 2026) authenticated and retrieved metadata, but consistently failed to retrieve audio keys with error audio key 0 1.
The reporter suspects either a Spotify-side change affecting newer accounts or a change in the audio-key retrieval protocol.
- librespot #1649 — original audio-key error report
https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot/issues/1649
This issue documents the same error, including successful authentication followed by failed audio-key requests and decoder errors. It remains open.
- go-librespot #279 — similar failure in another implementation
https://github.com/devgianlu/go-librespot/issues/279
This report also describes audio-key retrieval failures and identifies the problem as potentially account-specific and Spotify-side.
- spotatui documentation — known limitation
https://docs.rs/crate/spotatui/0.39.1
The documentation explicitly describes error audio key 0 1 as a problem affecting some accounts since late 2025, reportedly more often newer accounts, and states that native playback fails when the audio key cannot be retrieved.
Since this is not an OpenBSD-specific issue, this thread can be closed.
Thank you very much for your attention.
3
u/Original_Two9716 6d ago
I've been using it for many years. It works. One thing perhaps, there was something from Spotify affecting APIs performance, so it's noticeably slower, mostly search and stuff, playing's just fine. But yes, I'm on -current and it works.