Regarding the API, Spotify does allow free access, but some content and features are restricted to the official apps. For example, personalized playlists such as Weekly Discovery, release radar, daily mixes and the like are not available and return an error. Rate limiting is ok for a personal use case with a custom api key, and maybe some small apps can stay under the limit; developer agreement is also quite restrictive, so they have a bunch of reasons to block you.

Source: I’ve used the API before and built a small tool to help me export my top listened songs and some recommendations to a list, nothing heavy but still made sure to read the docs needed just in case. Still managed to hit the rate limit with a few tens of requests in a minute, though the way they do limiting is weird and difficult to account for.

In recent times the developer has been showing some serious miscommunication and other issues regarding their apps. Just look at their terrible handling of the vulnerabilities found in their file manager’s pdf reader (See his responses to the report)

Since around that time, I’ve been looking for alternatives to their apps, but I’ve kept using some of them because I couldn’t find anything that feels as good to use. I guess now I’m forced to really look for those alternatives, or see if there’s any serious fork that still gets actively maintained weeks from now.