Weekly Spotify new release watchlist digest in Slack
Every Monday at 8am, check your watchlist of artists for music released in the past week and post one grouped digest to Slack, with nothing sent on quiet weeks.
Spotify
Slack BotMarketingOperationsResearch & MonitoringDaily DigestsNotifications & AlertsEvery Monday at 8am, check a watchlist of Spotify artists for music released in the last seven days and post a single grouped digest to Slack. Use a cron trigger, since Spotify does not send outgoing webhooks.
Keep the watchlist as a configurable list of Spotify artist IDs, for example 4Z8W4fKeB5YxbusRsdQVPb or 06HL4z0CvFAxyc27GXpf02. This workflow runs off that configured list, not off my library or listening history.
For each artist ID, call Spotify's Get Artist's Albums with the album groups limited to albums and singles. Page through the results until you have everything recent, then keep only entries whose release date falls within the last seven days relative to the run. Some releases carry a coarse release date precision of month or year rather than a full day. Treat those as in scope only when the month or year clearly matches the current window, and never guess a day.
Before enriching anything, read the recent history of the destination Slack channel with Slack Bot's Get Channel History, scanning roughly the last fifty messages, and collect every Spotify album ID that appears in a previously posted link. Drop any candidate whose album ID is already in that set. This is the record that stops the same release being announced twice, and it means a release sitting near the edge of the seven day window will not resurface in the following week's digest.
Enrich every surviving release. Call Get an Album for the release details, Get Album Tracks for the tracklist and its total count, and Get an Artist for the artist name so the digest reads with real names rather than IDs. Cache each artist lookup so you call it once per artist rather than once per release.
Label each release. Anything with an album type of album is an album. Anything with an album type of single is an EP when it has four or more tracks, and a single otherwise. Do not reference popularity scores, audio features, related artists, recommendations, or preview clips, because Spotify no longer exposes them.
Write a short digest grouped by artist. Under each artist name, list their releases with the label, the track count, the release date, and the Spotify link for the album. Keep it skimmable rather than wordy, order artists by how many releases they have and then alphabetically, and use Slack mrkdwn formatting, meaning single asterisks for bold and angle bracket links.
Send the digest with Slack Bot's Send a Message to the configured channel, defaulting to #music-radar. If no release survives the date filter and the deduplication check, send nothing at all. Do not post an empty digest or a message saying there was nothing this week.
Pace the Spotify calls and respect rate limiting. If Spotify returns a 429, wait for the interval it asks for and retry. If a single artist ID fails to resolve, skip that artist, carry on with the rest of the watchlist, and note the skipped artist at the end of the digest so the list can be corrected.
What does this prompt do?
- Checks every artist on your watchlist each Monday morning and keeps only the music that came out in the last seven days.
- Groups the finds by artist and labels each one an album, EP, or single, with the track count, release date, and a link to open it in Spotify.
- Remembers what it already announced, so the same release never shows up in the channel twice.
- Stays quiet on weeks when none of your artists put anything out, instead of posting an empty update.
What do I need to use this?
- A Spotify account to connect. Any plan works, including free.
- A Slack workspace and a channel for the digest, such as #music-radar.
- The list of artists you want to watch, copied from their Spotify artist page links.
How can I customize it?
- Change the day and time. Some teams prefer Friday morning, right after the main release day.
- Widen or narrow the lookback window, or watch full albums only and skip singles.
- Point it at a different channel, or split A&R and sync watchlists into two separate digests.
FAQs
Do I need Spotify Premium for this?
How do I add an artist to the watchlist?
What happens on a week when nobody releases anything?
Will the same album ever get announced twice?
How many artists can I watch at once?
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Stop checking artist pages one by one.
Put your whole watchlist on autopilot and let Monday morning bring the new releases to you.