How to Install Spotify On Fedora Linux

Objective

Install the official Spotify Linux client on Fedora.

Distributions

This was tested with Fedora 25, but it may work with slightly newer or older versions of Fedora.

Requirements

A working install of Fedora with root access.

Difficulty

Easy

Conventions

  • # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
  • $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Introduction

Spotify is probably the most popular streaming music service in the world right now, and it does have a native Linux client. Unfortunately, that client isn’t available in the official Fedora repositories or the Spotify Linux repositories.

The community has come to the rescue, though, and it is available from a popular third party Fedora repository that is even recommended by the Fedora Project.

Add The Repository

Start off by adding the repository to Fedora using dnf.

# dnf config-manager --add-repo=http://negativo17.org/repos/fedora-spotify.repo

When it’s finished, you’re ready to install.



Install Spotify

The repository contains the Spotify client as well as the related Fedora packages needed to make it work. Since Spotify is closed-source, it uses some tools that the Fedora Project doesn’t ship.

# dnf install spotify-client

Accept when it asks about the install and when it asks about GPG keys. The install will take some time because it needs to download Spotify as a large binary.

Run Spotify

Now, you can run Spotify! Just search for it in GNOME, and it’ll be there with its own Linux-friendly icon and all.

Spotify running on Fedora 25

When you first start it up, you will need to either create an account or sign in with Facebook. It won’t ask you to do that again after you’re set up.

That’s it! You can now use Spotify on Fedora!

Closing Thoughts

Because you installed Spotify from a Fedora repository, it will receive regular updates through dnf, so you don’t have to worry about it becoming out-of-date or breaking.

This is a native Linux client, so it should remain stable and function like you’d expect. Spotify just chose to support Debian distributions when packaging.