Spotify cancels plans to support AirPlay 2, frustrating iPhone users

IPhone users have been asking Spotify to add support for AirPlay 2 for ages, but yesterday Spotify told users they shouldn’t expect the feature to be added anytime soon. .

AirPlay 2 was added to iOS over three years ago and users have been asking Spotify to support it for many months. It offers lower latency, multi-room support, and Siri integration. Apple provides ways for developers to connect experiences to it, and sometimes works directly with leading app developers looking to implement it. Many other major audio apps on iPhone support it. AirPlay 2 has also become available in several non-Apple products, such as recent TVs from manufacturers such as Samsung and LG.

In a discussion thread requesting the feature on Spotify’s official community discussion boards (originally spotted by MacRumors), a Spotify representative posted the following message:

Hello everyone,

We have discussed this idea internally and while we work to support AirPlay2 appropriately, we have decided to shut it down for now.

The reason is that due to audio driver compatibility issues, this seems like a bigger project that we won’t be able to complete in the foreseeable future.

Please continue to add your votes and comments here and as soon as we have something new to share, we’ll come back with an update.

If you’ve been following Apple and Spotify over the past few years, you might not find this surprising news. Apple Music and Spotify vie fiercely for dominance in the streaming music market, and Spotify has filed antitrust complaints against Apple, claiming that Apple imposes limitations on its devices and software that promote its own services, and that Apple promotes its own applications compared to competing alternatives in the App Store.

In the past, it would not have been possible for Spotify to support many of the iPhone’s platform-specific features, as they were restricted to Apple’s own services or selected partnerships. But Apple has since lifted many of those restrictions and provided tools and documentation to help third-party apps work closely with features in the Apple ecosystem like Siri, AirPlay, and HomePod.

Users can still use the original version of AirPlay from Spotify. And if they use an Apple device to run Spotify, they can use AirPlay 2 support at the operating system level to access some of the potential benefits of AirPlay 2 with web, mobile, or desktop apps. from Spotify.