I’ve made a couple of systems using Volumio with NAS for myself, which have been great. I want to build players for my daughter who uses Spotify.
I’ve got music playing using both available plugins but not sure whether they’re working correctly as they behave differently.
With Spotify Connect 2, v0.7.4, I can find the Volumio as a device and play music using the Spotify app on my phone but Spotify isn’t available in the Volumio browser.
With Spotify plugin for Volumio 2 v1.3.5 I can access Spotify and play music through the Volumio browser, but Volumio doesn’t show up as a device in the phone Spotify app.
Is this as it should be or is it possible to have ‘two-way’ access, i.e. be able to select Volumio as a device from the phone’s Spotify app and also be able to browse Spotify in the Volumio app?
Yes, this is exactly how I use Volumio. You have to install and enable both plugins in your system.
Anyway you cannot do both things at the same time, due AFAIK to Spotify account limitations. For example, while using the connect function and another device as a controller, the Volumio web interface only shows the album art and metadata of the track currently playing but cannot control it and vice versa.
This is exactly the expected behaviour of these plugins.
The Spotify Connect plugin allows send music to a device via the Spotify app. Exactly how Spotify describes it:
The Spotify plugin is designed to integrate Spotify in the Volumio browser. You can look for Spotify in the Volumio app/browser, but the navigation works differently the Spotify app. You cannot browse Spotify this way. But, if you search for a song, album or artist, it will do a Spotify search and show the results as well - and is able to play these directly.
Note that this plugin requires a Premium account to function.
So it depends what you want. If you simply want your daughter to be able to play music via the Spotify app on her phone, the Spotify Connect suffices. (Volumio basically works like a Chromecast Audio then). If you want to combine playback of local music and Spotify, it is easy to have both plugins running side-by-side depending on how you/your daughter wants to use it.