Spotify makes it easy to share playlists between users. And websites like www.spotifylist.com help you find playlists from people you don’t know.
By default, the Linux version of Spotify doesn’t add the necessary url-handlers to let you simply click on Spotify URLs on the internet and launch them automatically.
Modern distributions will send urls to xdg-open which on a GNOME desktop, in turn, uses gnome-open to try and launch the correct default application. (See also the Alternate Solution below which works for other Desktop Environments too).
Typing the following lines in a terminal will make sure you’re good to go.
gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/spotify/command 'spotify -uri "%s"' gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/spotify/enabled true -t bool gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/spotify/needs_terminal false -t bool
You can confirm that these have been set correctly in gconf-editor.
And you can test the set up from the terminal like this:
gnome-open "spotify:user:sharpblue:playlist:33FQ0bK3GVtRC98WsB8hE4"
Good luck!
Found on ubuntuforums.org here (from user fresta):
Create (as root) a file /usr/share/applications/spotify-uri.desktop (or as a user ~/.local/share/applications/spotify-uri.desktop) with:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Spotify
GenericName=Spotify
Comment=Listen to music using Spotify
Icon=spotify-linux-512x512
TryExec=spotify
Exec=spotify -uri %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Qt;AudioVideo
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/spotify
NoDisplay=true
And then run:
sudo update-desktop-database
This has worked for people who had no luck with the gconf keys method, and should work on non-GNOME desktops too.