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Spotify Pauses Plans to Add AirPlay 2 Support to iOS App [Update: Spotify Clarifies]

Rychiar said:
I still don't know why any iPhone people have Spotify over Apple Music
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I switched two years ago (roughly) because I preferred Spotifys playlists and genre stations. I’d be keen to give AM another go though.

After their song and dance, it’s BS that Spotify hasn’t added addition support.

edit: Seems Apple want me to, I’ll take the two months!

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hagar said:
Seems like Spotify wants to drive as many iPhone users as possible towards Apple Music.
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Maybe they want to simplify their audience! (Android-only)

But yeah, it's really disappointing and, I would dare to say, unacceptable.
 
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Invisible Elf said:
12 years of playlists is going to be annoying to transfer. Also the app and discoverability is pretty, except stupid issues like this
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There are playlist transfer apps and Apple Music did a really good job of analyzing my tastes within the first month of use and it’s only gotten better. Transferring all of those playlists will give its algorithm a very good head start.
 
mungo2k said:
Definitely not better for the artists who get around half the revenue per play from Spotify as they do from Apple Music.
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It's not hard for Apple , when you get billions of dollars from iPhone and Macs ans other devices , to pay artists ( a bit) more.
Spotify doesn't make any money for now , so I can't see how they could pay more...
 
GSWForever8 said:
I disagree. Spotify keeps putting ads everywhere and sends you emails to use premium. And they add music for you on the mobile app, which is why I rarely listen to music on the go compared to before.
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That's not a fair comparison given there is no free version of Apple Music.
 
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Rychiar said:
I still don't know why any iPhone people have Spotify over Apple Music
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For me it comes down to several reasons: Look and feel/user interface, the super quick speed of switching from song to song (as if their entire catalog was on my local device), and playlist generation such as weekly new stuff, end of year playlist, summer rewinds, etc. etc. Spotify just gets me. It’s very good about presenting music I like to me. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s bundled in with my Hulu subscription. So I’m not planning on going anywhere. I love Spotify.

Now, their reasoning for the delay isn’t really true obviously, and is what leads to my biggest negative of Spotify: They are extremely slow to roll out new tech. They took years to add Chromecast support even though many were asking for it. At times it seems like their IT department is one person working out of their garage. I’m sure that’s not the case. But they give the impression that it is. But I am sure it’s not as robust as it could or should be. And I think that is what leads to delays. They have their own agenda and timelines and don’t seem to have the manpower to change course or deviate from established plans and roadmaps.
 
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Companies like Spotify and Epic only like to complain, and when it comes to supporting new APIs they suddenly disappear
 
Shelll said:
by the way, spotify still haven't M1 support, only beta with some glitches
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Yeah that has to be intentional on Spotifys part. Or they are just lazy. Or incompetent. Or both 😆

rictus007 said:
Is there’s a migration tool? Like to migrate my playlists from Spotify to Apple Music?
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I have seen both SongShift and TuneMyMusic recommended lately. It's been a year or two since I have used any of these myself so don't know how they work right now.

Edit: Sorry, TuneMyMusic I have not tried personally but FreeYourMusic. Got myself mixed up.
 
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Belvoire said:
What? Spotify doesnt support Airplay 2? I can stream my music to 2 speakers, or what does mean „support Airplay 2“?
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AirPlay2 added support for “buffered” audio which is where it basically hands off a URL to the speaker and the speaker handles the stream. Once playback is started the phone is no longer needed other than to be a remote control. Spotify only supports the legacy “real-time” audio where the phone does all the streaming and must stay connected the whole time. It drains the battery, waists bandwidth and has a 2sec lag. So yes, Spotify works with AirPlay2, it just doesn’t take advantage of everything AP2 offers.
 
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brilliantthings said:
No there isn't. They're all Sonos speakers and I can Sonos stream, Spotify connect or Airplay 2 to them all.
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Yes, there is a 2sec lag with Spotify over AirPlay excuse it only supports real-time audio. You only get lag free controls if you support buffered audio which is what Spotify decided they are unwilling to do.
 
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Is this because AVFoundation doesn’t support OGG? I’ll have to read up. I’m not sure if Spotify is even using OGG anymore.

Hmm, did a quick search and it looks like AVFoundation supports just about every common codec, even some uncommon codecs, but not OGG. I suspect this is the roadblock. The whole point of buffered audio is so the device can simply hand off the stream URL to the speaker. If the stream is in a format that AVFoundation doesn’t support then you would need to transcode. So you would need to to do server side transcoding. I guess Spotify doesn’t want to take on the additional server resources for that. So the only reasonable solution would be Apple adding OGG support to AVFoundation. I doubt Apple will go out of their way for a company that is actively suing them. This is all my own personal speculation, I could be way off.

All I know is I’m supper bummed about this because I love Spotify and now that shairport-sync supports AirPlay2 I’m really wishing Spotify supported buffered audio. This will most likely cause me to switch back to Apple Music.
 
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Rychiar said:
I still don't know why any iPhone people have Spotify over Apple Music
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The only reason I have Apple Music is because it comes in the package. Spotify playlists are better curated, search is better, artist info is better, it plays nice with non Apple devices, it has socials tied to it, the selection is more unique, even though Apple has a larger library, the suggested music algorithm is also better on Spotify.

So, with all of that, I don’t know why you would choose Apple Music over Spotify other than cost of music being included in Apples packages.
 
Whatever, you can still AirPlay from the control panel. There’s just no button in the Spotify app itself. Big deal.
 
Rychiar said:
I still don't know why any iPhone people have Spotify over Apple Music
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Your universe must be really small then.

Let's say you live in any of the majority of European countries where Apple still hasn't rolled out HomePod. Those are likely to be the same countries where Google pretty much owns the smart speaker market (since Amazon are dragging their feet just like Apple). Conversely, in pretty much the same countries you can't yet use Apple Music on Google devices, only Spotify or YouTube Music.

So in Scandinavia for example, even as an Apple fanboy, you're likely to have a mix of Google and Apple in your home, otherwise you can only do a fraction of all the Smart Home stuff you need. Now Spotify fits right into that because it's so ubiquitous and works across all your devices: Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple TV, Google Nest devices, Google Chrome devices, Samsung TVs etc etc etc etc. And you can fling those streams between them in all sorts of combinations. Tell your Nest Audio speakers to play music on Spotify, move it to your iPhone w/ AirPods, anything you want (except Apple Watch where Spotify is only a remote control). Switch from Spotify to Apple Music aaaaand... music playback is cut off from your smart home stuff and sent 5 years back in time: iPhone with headphones and not much else, except maybe the odd speaker w/ AirPlay (Sonos, Sony etc, not so much smart home but more like glorified bluetooth speakers). Add to this the fact that a lot of EU providers offer Spotify Premium at reduced price as part of their plans. And the fact that Spotify has podcasts and music in the same app, and that they now have exclusive deals with Rogan, Armchair Expert etc.

I live in Sweden and I use Apple Music _only_ because I need it synced independently to my cellular Apple Watch. Everything else about AM is just a very long list of disadvantages where I live. A comparison table where Apple's column has 95% red X's, basically.
 
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