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Similar to the problem described in the post Google Hangouts in Debian testing (Buster), the Spotify application for Debian (a package called spotify-client) is not ready to run in Debian testing (Buster) as is.

In this particular case, it seems there is only one problem, and is related to openssl/libssl. The spotify-client package requires libssl1.0.0 while in Debian testing (Buster) we have an updated libssl1.1.

Fortunately, this is rather easy to solve, given the little additional dependencies of both spotify-client and libssl1.0.0.

What we will do is to install libssl1.0.0 from jessie-backports, coexisting with libssl1.1.

Simple steps:

  • 1) add jessie-backports repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
    deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main

  • 2) update your repo database: 
    % user@debian:~ $ sudo aptitude update
  • 3) verify we have both libssl1.1 and libssl1.0.0 ready to install: 
    % user@debian:~ $ aptitude search libssl
[...]
p   libssl1.0.0       - Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - shared libraries                                       
i   libssl1.1         - Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - shared libraries
[...]

  • 4) Follow steps by Spotify to install the spotify-client package:
    https://www.spotify.com/uk/download/linux/

  • 5) Run it and enjoy your music!

  • 6) You can cleanup the jessie-backports line from /etc/apt/sources.list.


Bonus point: Why jessie-backports?? Well, according to the openssl package tracker, jessie-backports contains the most recent version of the libssl1.0.0 package.

BTW, thanks to the openssl Debian maintainers, their work is really appreciated :-) And thanks to Spotify for providing a Debian package :-)