Recording From Spotify
Written on Aug 7, 2026
There are several audio streaming services. The list includes Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music. I don't know why I like Spotify the most. Perhaps it's because the Linux client works so well.
Why do I record from Spotify, you might ask? I record podcasts as well as music. When I'm traveling, I don't always have an Internet connection, especially in the Philippines. Being able to record is the only reason I have a premium account.
While a premium account costs $12.99 per month in the United States, it only costs 169 pesos per month in the Philippines. That's less than $3.00 at the current exchange rate. Spotify has no way of knowing I get paid more than the average Filipino.
I wrote about installing and using the Audio Recorder application back in March 2026, before I left on a trip to the United States. All of the instructions I provided worked perfectly on my computer at the time. I discovered last week that they no longer worked at all.
Testing Audio Recorder on Other Linux Distributions
I followed my own instructions in that article only to find that the Audio Recorder application wouldn't install. I then attempted to download it directly from the launchpad.net repository. The web browser froze while attempting to connect to the launchpadlibrarian.net domain.
Unable to put two and two together, I copied the Debian file (the file I downloaded in March) to the distributions I was testing. The ones I mentioned in my previous article. On the Arch Linux-based distributions, I had to convert the Debian files to Arch Linux files using a script called "debtap".
That script is also available in the Arch User Repository (AUR). The only distribution ("distro") that Audio Recorder wouldn't work on was PikaOS. I had no problem installing it. It just wouldn't open. On the Arch Linux-based distributions, installing it was as simple as "pacman -U [filename]".
I didn't know it at the time, but I just made things harder by doing it that way. Audio Recorder is available in the AUR and it works just fine. I didn't know that, and I wasn't thinking logically.
Using a Virtual Private Network
This is what happened, and it was obvious in hindsight. Sometime between the time I wrote that article and last week, the administrator of the launchpadlibrarian.net domain started blocking my IP address range in the Philippines.
After all that trouble with the Debian file, all I really needed to do was bypass the block with my virtual private network (VPN). Trying to download the file directly didn't work with the first American city I selected with my VPN, but it did with the second one.
Thinking about the original article I wrote, I wrote it with the idea of running an Arch Linux-based application on a Debian-based distro. If I really need to use Audio Recorder and it doesn't work on a Debian-based distro, it's better just to use it on an Arch Linux-based distro directly.
Using a Virtual Machine
The last version of Ubuntu officially supporting the Audio Recorder application is 24.04. The version of Linux Mint I'm using is based on that version. The next version of Linux Mint, due out in December, will be based on 26.04.
The application works on Kubuntu 26.04, installed using the Debian file, so it will probably work on the next version of Linux Mint. If I ever upgrade to a version that doesn't support it, I can always run a version that supports it in a virtual machine.
Image by Cornelia Schneider-Frank from Pixabay