It’s been three years since Apple allowed the integration of third-party services into the HomePod, and Spotify not only hasn’t done it yet, but it doesn’t even consider it important because “its users have not complained too much.”
Some of us still remember the letter from March 2019 in which Spotify cried bitterly before the European Commission accusing Apple of enjoying a privileged position thanks to its App Store and of discriminating against other services, not only by charging them the famous 30% fee but by blocking access to their own products, such as the HomePod. At that time, the only service that could be used directly on the HomePod was Apple Music, and any other service had to use AirPlay to be able to listen to it on the Apple speaker. In the words of Daniel Ek, the company’s founder, “Apple deliberately limited choice and prevented innovation at the expense of user experience.”
Since then Apple has been making decisions that are opening its “closed garden” to other companies. In Cupertino they know that the battle against their “exclusive” App Store depends on making it appear that they are not abusing any privileged position, and for this to open up their ecosystem is essential. Starting in 2020, music streaming services other than Apple Music can be integrated into HomePod, so Any user can ask Siri on the Apple smart speaker to play their favorite music from Deezer or Pandora, but not from Spotify. And worst of all is that three years after this possibility exists, it seems that what was previously a reason for crying on Spotify now does not interest them in the slightest. Worse still, not even Spotify users enjoy AirPlay 2 in their application, although they have promised that it will arrive, we don’t know if before or after Hi-Fi music.