Recently my old spotify install from 2018 broke, it was using a free account with blocked stuff in the host-file.
So i had to do a little digging to get this working again and i thought i share the result here.
I know you could simply pay for it and call it a day, but Spotify take quite a big share from the money coming from the subs and artists get nothing. So why not use it for free and donate or buy stuff on bandcamp from the artists you love?

Here is what we need:

1) We need SpotX, it patches an old Spotify build (via powershell script), so we get a Spotify build with premium enable even our account has only free status. This will prevent the Spotify software from playing ads and from showing ads inside the GUI. This is almost as good as premium. We wont however have better audio quality, but for listening and working something this should be okay.
For HQ Download of FLAC or mp3 files you could get a premium account on deezer or other services, if you really desire to download files. There are no Spotify downloaders, which do not record the audio stream and reencode it to the formate you have selected. (If you have LQ spotify stream, the endresult will always be youtube quality for music.)

I cant link directly to the repo (read board rules), but go to https://www.github.com and search for amd64fox and SpotX and on his repo click the release link on the right side of the page, this will get you to the last SpotX version.

2) SpotX requires for you to have a certain Spotify build installed, so run/open in the release page the file Install_Prem.bat, that will load a ps1 file (thats a powershell 1 script), which will ask you to do the necessary.
Here is also a list of old spotify builds: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wztO1L4zvNykBRw7X4jxP8pvo11oQjT0O5DvZ_-S4Ok
(those download from spotify directly. Spotify seems to have defunct to a certain build/version number to prevent the host-file blocking - yes they check the hostfile now for spotify and fastly - This reminds us a bit on the behaviour Tone2 showed. Legal software shouldnt do that. But anyway.)

There is also a way to get the old Spotify Theme back for those who download that tiktok theme, for that run the script Old_Theme.bat on the release page.

3) If 2) fails, then go and clean your Host-file for all the spotify stuff which you might had blocked. See this link here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/All-spotify-features-no-longer-work/td-p/4515752

Future Edit:

Spoiler

It looks like Spotify has retired desktop builds and wants you now to get their APP from the Microsoft Store. So it could be that at some time in the future everything stops working and we are forced to use their crappy Windows Store app, which could be far harder to patch. BUT as long as you keep not logging out of the desktop build (get new notebook or desktop pc), you will be able to use it.

I hope this will help a few people here to enjoy music again with the ever growing ads on youtube, twitch and spotify. BUY Music directly and support the artists you love that way and not some companies, which force ads on you.

 

Last edited: Jun 3, 2023