cliamp-plugin-autoplay

Endless similar-track playback for cliamp, like Spotify's autoplay.

When your queue is about to run out, autoplay asks Last.fm for songs similar to what's playing, finds them on Spotify, and queues them, so the music keeps going.

Why Last.fm

Spotify removed its recommendations and related-artists APIs for apps registered after November 2024, so a cliamp setup with its own Spotify client ID can't ask Spotify what's similar. Last.fm's similarity data is free, needs only an API key, and covers music from everywhere.

Example

What one top-up queues for a few different songs:

Playing	Autoplay queues
Daft Punk – Get Lucky	Avicii – Wake Me Up · Breakbot – Baby I'm Yours · David Guetta – Titanium
Bad Bunny – Tití Me Preguntó	Daddy Yankee – Gasolina · KAROL G – LATINA FOREVA · Rauw Alejandro – Qué Pasaría...
Radiohead – Karma Police	Pixies – Where Is My Mind? · Foo Fighters – Everlong · The Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
Burna Boy – Last Last	Fireboy DML – Peru · 1da Banton – No Wahala · Wizkid – Joro

Install

cliamp plugins install gaurabxkc/cliamp-plugin-autoplay

Already have it installed? Remove it first, because plugins install will not overwrite an existing plugin:

cliamp plugins remove autoplay
cliamp plugins install gaurabxkc/cliamp-plugin-autoplay

Then add this to cliamp's config.toml. It lives beside the plugins folder cliamp just printed: ~/.config/cliamp/config.toml on Linux and macOS, %APPDATA%\cliamp\config.toml (for example C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\cliamp\config.toml) on Windows, not C:\Users\you\.config\cliamp.

[plugins]
allowed_binaries = "cliamp"   # lets autoplay run `cliamp remote call`

[plugins.autoplay]
api_key = "your-last.fm-key"  # free, instant: https://www.last.fm/api/account/create

Restart cliamp and play a song from Spotify.

Use

• It works on its own: when fewer than 5 songs are left, it fills the queue back up in one go (at least 3 songs at a time).
• Ctrl+T turns it on or off.
• To try it right away: cliamp plugins call autoplay test "Artist" "Title"
• To see what it is doing: cliamp plugins call autoplay status

Settings

All optional, under [plugins.autoplay]:

Key	Default	What it does
keep	5	Top up when fewer than this many songs are left
add	3	The minimum number of songs to queue each time
enabled	true	Start with autoplay on
binary	cliamp	Full path to cliamp, if it isn't on the player's $PATH

How it works

1. Spotify's own radio first, where the player offers it. If the playing track is on Spotify and the player serves remote call provider.radio, autoplay asks for the station Spotify itself would play next and queues from that. Those tracks already carry their Spotify IDs, so nothing needs searching. cliamp does not offer provider.radio today, so on cliamp this step fails quietly and autoplay moves on to Last.fm. After a failed call it waits ten minutes before asking again.
2. Otherwise, Last.fm track.getSimilar for the playing song. If that has nothing new, it falls back to similar artists' top tracks.
3. Candidates are mixed so one top-up doesn't come from a single artist, and anything played in the last hour is skipped.
4. Last.fm candidates are looked up with cliamp remote call provider.search, then everything is queued with track.queue.

Searching and queueing both happen inside cliamp with its own Spotify login. The plugin never reads your credentials.

Troubleshooting

Start with cliamp plugins call autoplay status: it reports whether autoplay is on, whether the Last.fm key is set, which binary it calls, how many songs are ahead, and any wait it is in. Then check plugins.log in your cliamp config directory.

• cannot run cliamp: add cliamp (or the full path you set in binary) to allowed_binaries.
• last.fm rejected the API key: the key is wrong, or the account is suspended. Autoplay goes idle rather than asking again on every track; status shows REJECTED with Last.fm's own message. Get a key at https://www.last.fm/api/account/create, replace api_key, and restart cliamp.
• config.toml edits seem to do nothing on Windows: check the path. %APPDATA%\cliamp\config.toml, not ~/.config/cliamp. cliamp plugins call autoplay status echoes the settings it actually loaded.
• Nothing is queued for some songs: Last.fm has no similar tracks for them, and autoplay tries again on the next song.
• Nothing happens right after you edit a playlist: a round that just ran holds a short cooldown, and one that found nothing waits 90s. Autoplay re-checks by itself when the wait ends.

License

MIT