[Thu Nov 6 16:34:00 CST 2014]

Well, after managing to install the old version of the Spotify client on Debian Wheezy, I now encountered another minor issue: I had to make some changes so that the icon for the application on the GNOME desktop environment could launch my own script, instead of the defaut executable. As in so many other cases, StackExchange to the rescue. Simply edit the following file as root:

/usr/share/applications/spotify.desktop

Look for the Exec variable, and make sure you point it to your script. That will do it. {link to this entry}

[Wed Nov 5 16:53:44 CST 2014]

If you tried running the latest release of the Spotify client on Debian Wheezy, you must have run into errors that look like these:

spotify: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14' not found \
(required by spotify)
spotify: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14' not found \
(required by /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/libcef.so)
spotify: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.15' not found \
(required by /opt/spotify/spotify-client/Data/libcef.so)

The problem is that Debian Wheezy switched to eglibc. Later, they made the decision to switch back to the more standard GLIBC but, for the time being, you won't be able to run the spotify client... well, at least the most recent version.

However, you can still install an older version of the client. Go ahead, and download version 0.9.4 from here. Then, follow these directions. It worked for me. It basically boils down to this:

# apt-get install libqt4-dbus libqt4-network libnspr4-0d

# dpkg --ignore-depends=libssl0.9.8 -i spotify-client_0.9.4*

Then, edit the file /var/lib/dpkg/status, find the entry for spotify-client, then find the Depends: line within that section, and remove the entry for libss0.9.8. This will prevent apt from showing annoying errors when you are trying to install the latest updates.

Next, we need to download the old libssl0.9.8 package for Squeeze from here, and install it with the following options (notice that the actual package name may be slightly different in your case):

# dpkg -x libssl0.9.8_0.9.8o-4squeeze14_amd64.deb /tmp/libssl0.9.8

# mv /tmp/libssl0.9.8/usr/lib /usr/share/spotify/libssl0.9.8

Finally, we need to make sure the older version of the spotify client we downloaded and installed uses the old version of libssl too. In order to do this, simply create a script under /usr/loca/bin with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash

# Add libssl0.9.8 path
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/share/spotify/libssl0.9.8 /usr/bin/spotify $1

Make sure that this script precedes the regular binary in your path, or simply name it something other than just spotify. That should do it. Of course, you can also access the web-based player from your favorite browser. {link to this entry}