This guide will help you to install spotifyd on a Raspberry Pi and have it always running.

Download

1. Download the latest ARMv6 from https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd/releases (use wget)
2. Unzip the file: unzip spotifyd-*.zip You will now see a file called spotifyd. You can run it with ./spotifyd --no-daemon

Systemd daemon file

Create a systemd service file and copy the config from https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd/blob/master/contrib/spotifyd.service into it. Change ExecStart to where you unzipped the spotifyd binary.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/user/spotifyd.service

if you want to run as user instead of root or have some Failed to get D-Bus connection: Connection refused, you define spotifyd.service in your home directory:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/
nano ~/.config/systemd/user/spotifyd.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload

Config file

Create your config:

mkdir ~/.config/spotifyd/
nano ~/.config/spotifyd/spotifyd.conf

Input the following data. Change the username, password, device_name, and the bitrate.

[global]
username = "USER"
password = "PASS"
backend = "alsa"
device = alsa_audio_device # Given by `aplay -L`
mixer = "PCM"
volume-controller = "alsa" # or alsa_linear, or softvol
#onevent = command_run_on_playback_event
device_name = "name_in_spotify_connect"
bitrate = 96|160|320
cache_path = "cache_directory"
volume-normalisation = true
normalisation-pregain = -10

Start the service

systemctl --user start spotifyd.service

Now see if you can find it in the normal Spotify client (Devices in right bottom corner). Retry the above steps if you can't find it.

Starting spotifyd at boot

sudo loginctl enable-linger <username>
systemctl --user enable spotifyd.service

The first command is required to enable your user to run long-running services. Without it systemd would kill the spotifyd process as soon as you log out, and only run it when you log in. Now spotifyd is always running on the Pi, so you can use it as a listening device remotely!