When to use it
Album artwork and vinyl inserts, gig posters, café playlists on a chalkboard, wedding playlists on a table card, a podcast’s flyer, a shop that wants to share its in-store music. A QR code works where a Spotify Code does not: with the phone’s own camera and with people who are not already in the app.
The example code on this page points at getqrstudio.app, because we do not encode third party accounts here. Yours will follow the pattern above.
How it behaves on phones
iPhone: the Camera app shows a banner naming open.spotify.com. Tapping it opens the Spotify app on the track, album or playlist if installed, through the universal link. Otherwise Safari opens the web player.
Android: most Android scanners open the link and Android routes it to the Spotify app. Without the app, Chrome shows the web player with a preview and an install prompt.
Common mistake
Screenshotting a Spotify Code from the app and printing it as if it were a QR code. It is not one. Phone cameras ignore it, and only someone who already has Spotify open on the search screen can scan it. Encode the share link as a QR code instead.
Gotchas
Spotify Codes are proprietary. The wavy bars encode a short reference that Spotify’s servers resolve. They are handy inside the app but invisible to every other scanner. Read more about formats that look like QR codes but are not in other 2D codes.
Tracking parameter. Share links end with ?si= and 16 characters. It records that the link was shared and adds nothing for the listener. Strip it. https://open.spotify.com/track/ plus a 22 character ID is 53 characters and fits version 4 at level M, 33 modules wide; with the tracking it needs version 5.
Playlists change; tracks do not. A track or album link is permanent as long as the rights holder keeps it on Spotify. A playlist link stays the same while its contents change, which is ideal for a café or shop.
Regional availability. Some tracks are not licensed in every country. The link opens but shows “not available in your region”. Nothing in the code can fix that.
Other services. A Spotify link does nothing useful for someone on Apple Music. For a release, consider a landing page with links to every service, and put that URL in the code instead.
Try it in QR Studio
QR Studio has a Spotify type. Paste any share link and it strips the tracking, keeps the item type and ID, and offers the Spotify green as a colour preset that still scans.
Print advice
Level M, Q with a logo. A vinyl insert or table card is scanned up close at 2.5 to 3 cm. A gig poster read from 2 m wants 20 cm. Spotify’s brand green on black is a common request; a dark code on a light background scans best, so use the green as an accent around the code rather than as the module colour.
Try it yourself
Try Spotify green as the module colour on white and on black and see which one a camera can read.