Build Dashboards with Spotify Data in Dundas BI
The CData ODBC Driver for Spotify enables access to live data from Spotify under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with Spotify data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to Spotify data as a generic ODBC Data Provider and create charts, reports, and dashboards based on Spotify data in Dundas BI.
Connect to Spotify Data
- If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can configure the DSN using the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.
Using OAuth Authentication
Spotify uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. You will need to create an application in the Spotify Developer Dashboard to obtain your client credentials.
Setting Up Your Spotify Application
- Visit the Spotify Developer Dashboard.
- Log in with your Spotify account and click Create app.
- Provide an app name, description, and set a Redirect URI (e.g.,
http://localhost:33333
for desktop applications). - Copy your Client ID and Client Secret from the app settings.
Connection Properties
After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:
- AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.
- OAuthClientId: Set this to your Spotify application's Client ID.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to your Spotify application's Client Secret.
- Scope: Set this to the required OAuth scopes (space-separated). The default includes all read scopes needed for the tables in this profile.
- CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI configured in your Spotify application (e.g., http://localhost:33333).
Example Connection String
Profile=C:\profiles\Spotify.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackURL=http://localhost:33333;
Available OAuth Scopes
- user-read-private: Read access to user's subscription details and explicit content settings.
- user-read-email: Read access to user's email address.
- user-library-read: Read access to a user's saved tracks, albums, episodes, shows, and audiobooks.
- playlist-read-private: Read access to user's private playlists.
- playlist-read-collaborative: Read access to collaborative playlists the user follows.
- user-follow-read: Read access to the list of artists the current user follows.
- user-read-playback-state: Read access to a user's player state (device, current track, progress).
- user-read-currently-playing: Read access to a user's currently playing content.
- user-read-playback-history: Read access to a user's recently played tracks.
- user-top-read: Read access to a user's top artists and tracks.
When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.
- Open the Dundas BI interface, open the menu, and click New Data Connector.

- Configure the Dundas BI Data Connector:
- Name the Data Connector.
- Select "ODBC generic" as the Data Provider.
- Check the "Use System DSN" checkbox.
- Select the appropriate System DSN.

Add Spotify Data to a Dashboard
You are now ready to create a dashboard with Spotify data.
- Navigate to the Home page.
- Click Explore Data.
- Expand the appropriate Data Connector.
- Drag the relevant data from the Connector to the panel.
- You can select an entire "table" to add, but you may need to remove Measures/Rows from the Metric Set to build an appropriate visualization. Alternatively, you can select only the fields you wish to include in the visualization.
- With the fields selected, you can add any filters or conditions on the Measures and Rows, further customizing the visualization.
- Click Re-visualize from the menu bar and select the appropriate visualization for the data.
- Click Add To New Dashboard to add the visualization to a new dashboard.
- Configure the dashboard, creating dynamic visualizations of Spotify data.