This is not only useful when you want to control Spotify from your command line, but also if you bind it to some key shortcuts on your keyboard.
Installation
First you need playerctl, which you probably can directly install when on debian. On Ubuntu you can get the deb-packages for playerctl here and for it’s dependency libplayerctl here. And then install it via dplk -i.
Or in just one snippet:
wget http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/playerctl/libplayerctl2_2.0.1-1_amd64.deb
wget http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/playerctl/playerctl_2.0.1-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libplayerctl2_2.0.1-1_amd64.deb playerctl_2.0.1-1_amd64.deb
Usage
Make sure Spotify app is running and you installed playerctl you can enter playerctl next into your CLI to jump to the next song in the queue, or playerctl play-pause to start or stop a song.
You can also query the metadata of the currently playing song (for example to display it somewhere) like so:
playerctl metadata # Will print quite a set of metadata
playerctl metadata artist # Will print only the artist (works with title as well)