Spotify has introduced a useful little improve for its iPhone customers – a brand new widget that permits you to leap straight into the app out of your lock display screen. However whereas that is a pleasant little quality-of-life improve, it is also a reminder of the numerous unfixed points which might be nonetheless protecting me at Apple Music.
The friction between Spotify and Apple is not any secret – the large inexperienced streaming large even launched an internet site known as Time to Play Fair (opens in new tab) that listed Apple’s apparently anti-competitive practices. So getting any new options on iOS, even a lock display screen widget, is one thing to have fun.
To put in Spotify’s new widget, simply be sure you’re on iOS 16 and have up to date to the newest model of the Spotify app. Then do a long-press in your lock display screen, faucet the Customise button, faucet Lock Display screen, Add Widgets, and scroll right down to the Spotify possibility. You may now have the ability to open Spotify with out unlocking your telephone first.
Sadly, that is all it presents – there isn’t any stay or glanceable data, so it is successfully only a shortcut. And as somebody who lately moved from Spotify to Apple Music, there are another options and fixes which might be clearly extra pressing.
The Spotify wishlist
It is fairly clear that Spotify’s present technique is extra, moderately than higher. It needs extra listeners to have the ability to take heed to Spotify for longer in an ever-increasing variety of locations. Its new built-in participant inside Strava is an instance of that, and this new iPhone widget successfully acts as just a little everlasting nudge to maintain listening to Spotify.
There’s nothing notably flawed with that technique. However there are no less than three options {that a} vital minority of its long-term customers would really like much more, if it is ever going to retake high spot in our record of the very best music streaming providers.
Firstly, there’s assist for AirPlay 2. Spotify has been promising so as to add in-app assist for Apple’s wi-fi streaming format to its iPhone and iPad apps for over 18 months, but it surely nonetheless hasn’t materialized.
You should utilize Spotify with the primary model of AirPlay, or use Spotify Join as a substitute, although AirPlay 2 would nonetheless be preferable for units just like the Apple HomePod. Speaking of which, there’s additionally nonetheless no native Spotify assist for the Apple HomePod 2 or Apple HomePod Mini – and it does not sound like that is coming quickly both.
Spotify lately instructed Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman (opens in new tab) that there hasn’t been a “vital quantity” of complaints in regards to the absence of HomePod assist, despite the fact that a thread about the topic (opens in new tab) on the streaming service’s boards has over 6,000 likes.
Lastly, there’s the long-promised, however still-missing, Spotify HiFi. In idea, this can ultimately convey a Lossless and Excessive-Res music choice to the streaming service, however we’re not satisfied Spotify HiFi is ever going to reach. Spotify is solely extra all for getting you to pay attention for longer and in additional locations, and its new iPhone widget is one other instance of that.
One course
Spotify’s course could be extra palatable if it was merely open and clear about it, moderately than persevering with to vow options like AirPlay 2 and Spotify HiFi with out ever delivering them.
There is not any doubt that its music suggestion engine stays the very best round, and that is why I needed to assume lengthy and laborious about ultimately switching from Spotify to Apple Music. However its transfer in the direction of being extra of an audio app, moderately than a music one, plus its persevering with friction with Apple, satisfied me to make the transfer.
Maybe the arrival of a brand new iPhone lock display screen widget suggests there it hasn’t fully closed the door on working extra seamlessly with Apple tech. And perhaps we are going to sooner or later see the arrival of AirPlay 2 and HomePod assist.
However for now, Spotify’s new TikTok-style homescreen and lack of options like Excessive-Res music and spatial audio might result in extra of longstanding supporters leaping ship.
