Spotify Remote Discord Bot (name tbd)

This is a self-hosted Discord bot that allows users to stream to it as if it was a Spotify player on your local network. Any user can start a stream to the bot, /play_spotify it, and start playing music in their voice channel.

Getting started

1. Create a Discord app and bot.

2. Run the receiver Docker image either locally or on a server, such as via: $ docker run -p8080:8080 -e DISCORD_TOKEN=<your-token> TODO_image_name, or via docker-compose, k8s, etc. It is intended to run as a persistent service. The image supports x86_64 and arm64 architectures.

   • NOTE: if you end up exposing this service over the internet, it's strongly recommended to use https! And while you're at it, maybe put it behind a reverse proxy with HTTP basic auth.

3. Invite the bot to your server. Make sure it has sufficient permissions to join voice channels, speak, send messages, do slash commands, and read message contents.

   • TODO: nail down which these are specifically

4. Run the forwarder binary from your local machine, and point it at the server you started, such as with $ ./forwarder -a http://localhost:8080

   • The forwarder binary is available in the latest github release. Currently binaries are built for Linux, Mac, and Windows (x86_64; if you want to run it on arm64, such as Mac M1/2, you'll need to compile it yourself for now).

5. Open Spotify and connect to the virtual device (the default name is danube)

6. forwarder will connect to the server and output a connect code. In Discord, run /play_spotify <code> to finish the connection.

7. You should now be able to play music through the bot, using Spotify normally.

How it works

The forwarder binary emulates a Spotify Connect device by advertising itself over mDNS. When you have Spotify connect to it, it's provided with an access token to use to play music. It then sends an HTTP(S) request to the receiver, which is both an HTTP server and a Discord bot, containing the token. The receiver stores that token in its memory, and when you request playback for the id that the forwarder provided and associated with the request, the receiver joins your server and starts playback. When you stop playback, the receiver leaves the voice channel and discards the token.

Compiling yourself

This is a Rust project, so once you're set up with Rust and Cargo, cargo build --release should suffice. See the Dockerfile for build and runtime dependencies for the receiver (or just use the provided docker image).