"I am a fan of Spotify music, but honestly I don't really like the Spotify app. Every time it takes a long time to load up and the playback features are limited. Besides, I feel like my privacy is violated when Spotify posts my listening songs on Facebook. Is there a way to play Spotify through VLC instead? Thanks for any help. " - From Jeremy Torres.
As an incredible media player, VLC is one of the best Spotify alternatives. But as it doesn't support streaming music service, it's not able to directly stream Spotify to VLC. Fortunately, there is still an effective solution to make VLC and Spotify work together. If you are eager to do that, please follow the steps in this article.
VLC media player is one of the all-mighty free media players in the market. Compared to the Spotify app, it makes music playback more simple yet gives users more tools they want. This player works well on all kinds of mobile devices, computers, Linux servers, and much more. In general, you can enjoy different kinds of media files including videos, podcasts, audiobooks, music in the VLC player. As for audio playback in VLC, it usually supports MP3, AAC, Vorbis, FLAC, ALAC, etc.
It's well-known that Spotify is the most popular streaming platform. It has changed the way people enjoy music today. It offers various audios, including podcasts, audiobooks, playlists, music, and more. By paying a $10/month subscription, you can enjoy high-quality songs, and cache songs offline. But all Spotify songs are saved as Ogg Vorbis format under copyright protection. This unique technology limits the tracks within Spotify's ecosystem.
Now, the reason why you can’t get Spotify on VLC is obvious. One is the format compatibility, the other is the DRM protection. So, When VLC wants access to control Spotify, it will be rejected.
To get Spotify music on VLC, what you need to do is to convert protected Spotify songs to VLC compatible files. So is there a tool to do that like magic?
DRmare Spotify Music Converter for Mac/Spotify Music Converter for Windows is the most qualified software. DRmare software supports downloading all kinds of Spotify tracks, playlists, albums, artists. And it can remove DRM from Spotify music. Of course, it's able to convert Spotify tracks to multiple kinds of formats for VLC player with ease. With the help of this tool, you can not only use Spotify on VLC but also other third-party players, including iTunes, QuickTime, and etc.
VLC supports all kinds of video and audio files such as WAV, AAC, MP3, OGG, AIFF, Raw audio, CD. If you'd like stream Spotify to VLC, please choose one of them in DRmare Spotify Music Converter to convert Spotify songs. Now, let's do that on your computer.
Congratulations! Now you are ready to stream Spotify to VLC without having to use the VLC Spotify plugin. This is actually easy, but it is still worth mentioning here as some users may be a newbie to VLC. The instruction is similar for all versions of VLC media players. Let's see how to send audio output from Spotify to the VLC player.
Step 1. Launch the VLC player, you will see the main screen of it.
Step 2. You can click the top menu "File" > "Open File" or "Open Folder" to select the converted Spotify songs. And then they can be imported to VLC to play offline automatically.
Step 3. VLC can control Spotify playback. It's able to control songs, like shuffle, fast forward, backward, increase/reduce volume, show audio waves, set mono/stereo mode, and so on.
Do you still have any questions when playing Spotify through VLC? Just tell us in the comment section below, I will help you out personally.
Harry Zamorski
Staff Editor
Harry Zamorski is a music enthusiast who writes a lot of reviews of hot music and helpful tips for playing Spotify music anywhere.
