How to Add Spotify to OBS

Add an Application Audio Capture (BETA) source in OBS and pick Spotify to capture only its audio (Windows 10 2004+ or Windows 11, OBS 28+). To show what’s playing, add a Window Capture of the Spotify app and crop it to the player bar. Before you do: Twitch’s Music Guidelines say a Spotify subscription doesn’t give you the right to play that music on stream, and Spotify’s own rules prohibit broadcasting it.

Read this first: music rights

Playing Spotify on stream is a copyright risk, not just a technical setup. Twitch’s Music Guidelines say subscribing to a music streaming service “typically does not grant you rights to share that music on Twitch.” Spotify’s User Guidelines list broadcasting and making content available to the public among the things you may not do with its service.

What can happen: rights holders can send takedown requests under the DMCA, Twitch can mute VODs and remove clips its audio recognition flags, and enforcement against your channel can go up to account termination. Twitch also explicitly bans radio-style streams of recorded music without a live visual performance, and DJ sets of recorded music unless you have the rights.

The safe choices are music you made yourself, music licensed for streaming (many royalty-free and creator music libraries offer this), or no background music at all. The steps below are still useful for those sources, for podcasts, or for local listening while you set up.

Capture only Spotify’s audio (Windows)

OBS 28 and newer can capture a single app’s sound on Windows 10 version 2004 or later and Windows 11. That keeps Spotify on its own volume slider, separate from your game and alerts.

1. Open the Spotify desktop app and start playing something.
2. In OBS, click + under Sources → Application Audio Capture (BETA), name it “Spotify” and click OK.
3. In Window, pick the Spotify entry (it shows Spotify.exe).
4. Set Window Match Priority to Match title, otherwise find window of same executable. Spotify’s window title changes with every song, and matching by executable keeps the capture working anyway.
5. Click OK. A Spotify slider appears in the Audio Mixer; set it well below your mic.

If you also use the global Desktop Audio source, Spotify gets captured twice and echoes. OBS recommends disabling Desktop Audio in Settings → Audio when you use Application Audio Capture sources, then adding one for each app you want (game, browser, Discord and so on).

If you’d rather not touch Desktop Audio, you can keep it and simply mute or lower Spotify in the Windows volume mixer instead, but then you lose the separate slider in OBS.

Show the Spotify player on stream

1. Click + under Sources → Window Capture, name it and click OK.
2. In Window, choose the Spotify window. Set Window Match Priority to match by executable, as above.
3. If the preview is black, change Capture Method to Windows 10 (1903 and up). Spotify’s app is built on web technology, which the older BitBlt method often can’t capture.
4. Click OK, then hold Alt and drag the edges of the source to crop it down to the player bar at the bottom, which shows the cover art, song title and artist.

Window Capture has a Capture Audio (BETA) checkbox (OBS 30.1 and newer). Tick it and this one source carries Spotify’s picture and sound, so you don’t need the separate audio source. Use one or the other, not both, or the audio doubles.

On a Mac, use macOS Screen Capture with the window or application method instead; OBS’s old Window Capture is deprecated on macOS 13 and newer.

Show the song title as text

OBS can’t read Spotify’s current track by itself. The common workaround is a small third-party “now playing” tool that writes the current song into a text file, which OBS then displays:

1. Set up a now-playing tool of your choice to save the track name to a .txt file.
2. In OBS, add a Text (GDI+) source (on Mac and Linux it’s called Text (FreeType 2)).
3. Tick Read from file and select the file under Text File (UTF-8).
4. Style the font, color and outline, then position it. The text updates whenever the tool rewrites the file.

Browser-based widgets that log in to your Spotify account work too, added as a Browser source. Any of these tools are third-party, not made by Spotify, so check what account access they ask for before you connect them. Cropping the Window Capture as above shows the title with no extra software at all.

Keep music off your Twitch VODs

If you play licensed music that’s cleared for live use but not for VODs, OBS’s Twitch VOD Track lets you send different audio to the VOD:

1. Connect your Twitch account in Settings → Stream.
2. In Settings → Output, enable the Twitch VOD Track option (in Simple output mode it appears after you tick Enable Custom Encoder Settings (Advanced); in Advanced mode it’s on the Streaming tab).
3. In the Audio Mixer, click the gear icon → Advanced Audio Properties. Leave your music source on Track 1 (live) and untick Track 2 (VOD).

This only changes the archived VOD. It doesn’t make unlicensed music on the live stream OK.

Sources: OBS Knowledge Base: Application Audio Capture Guide · OBS Knowledge Base: Window Capture Sources · OBS Knowledge Base: Twitch VOD Track Guide · Twitch: Music Guidelines · Spotify User Guidelines