As of June 29, 2026: neither Spotify nor TIDAL appears to offer a simple public “sandbox music test account” you can just create. For real playback/ integration smoke tests, assume you need real accounts with subscriptions, gated behind env vars and never in CI by default.
- Create a Spotify developer app in the Spotify Developer Dashboard (https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard).
- Development-mode apps require the app owner to have Spotify Premium, and only allow up to 5 authenticated users.
- Add testers through Dashboard → app → Settings → Users Management → Add new user.
- Each tester needs their own Spotify account/email, likely Premium for playback paths.
- Spotify’s docs also say wider access now requires extended quota mode, and as of May 15, 2025 they accept extension applications only from organizations, not individuals.
Source: Spotify quota modes docs: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/concepts/quota-modes
- Use the TIDAL Developer Portal (https://developer.tidal.com/) to register/request app access.
- For our purposes, plan on a normal paid TIDAL account in the target market.
- If you need a non-personal test account or partner credentials, you’ll likely need to request that through TIDAL directly/partner support; I don’t see a public self-serve sandbox account flow.
- For local smoke tests, use env vars like TIDAL_CLIENT_ID and TIDAL_ACCESS_TOKEN, or go through the device-code auth flow we just made more testable.
Use two tiers:
- CI/default: mocked provider APIs, no real credentials.
- Manual/live: real throwaway paid accounts, small sample reads only, env-gated:
- SOTF_TIDAL_LIVE=1
- TIDAL_CLIENT_ID
- TIDAL_ACCESS_TOKEN
- SOTF_SPOTIFY_LIVE=1
- SPOTIFY_USERNAME
- SPOTIFY_PASSWORD
For security, create dedicated “sotf qa” accounts, don’t reuse personal accounts, don’t store tokens in repo/config snapshots, and assert logs never include tokens/passwords.