A Macintosh SE/30 Spotify Music Player

Modern internet music streaming services like Spotify have made it possible to listen to your music library on just about any internet-connected device. Spotify’s API also makes it possible to control the music playing on another device on your network. Over on the 68kMLA forums, user Ants has taken advantage of that to turn a vintage Macintosh SE/30 into a Spotify Connect music player.

The Macintosh SE/30 was released in 1989 — long before WiFi was a thing — so the first step was to get it online. That’s a fairly common SE/30 mod which can be done with a Macintosh Ethernet card and an OpenWRT router, and Ants updated the MacWifi Extension to include SSL tunneling in order to meet the HTTPS communication requirements of the Spotify API. Because Spotify uses OAuth for logins, which only works in modern browsers, Ants also setup a process for delegating the login to another device, like a modern smartphone.

With the Mac SE/30 successfully connecting to the Spotify API, Ants was able to program a custom Spotify Connect app. The app lets them play songs, adjust the volume, and do everything else Spotify normally allows. But, the music doesn’t actually play from the Mac. Instead, it’s simply controlling the music playing on a set of internet-connected speakers sitting nearby. That could, of course, be done with a smartphone. But, this is a much cooler retro solution, and Ants has provided the code for you to install it on your Macintosh SE/30.