Sorry, Spotify Fans, AirPlay 2 Support Is Not Coming Any Time Soon

By now it’s pretty common knowledge that Spotify is almost as slow as Google is when it comes to embracing new iOS features, but if you’ve been waiting for the ability to stream your favourite Spotify playlists to your HomePods, you’re going to have to keep waiting.

In a seven-page community thread where Spotify fans have been clamouring for the feature to be added since early 2019, Spotify finally added a status update this week letting users know that it has for all intents and purposes abandoned its plans for AirPlay 2 entirely — at least for now.

The response cites “audio driver compatibility issues,” noting that it’s a bigger project than Spotify’s developers had anticipated, so it won’t be coming “in the foreseeable future.”

To be fair, Spotify hasn’t ruled out the possibility of revisiting AirPlay 2 at some point down the road. However, at the rate at which it typically adds new iOS-related features, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for this one.

For example, it took until 2018 for Spotify to roll out its first Apple Watch app — a full three years after the wearable first debuted. The initial attempt also wasn’t much to write home about, as it was little more than a way to control playback of Spotify on your iPhone. It would take two more years for direct streaming to arrive on the Apple Watch, and another six months after that before it gained offline playback.

Similarly, after Apple introduced the ability for third-party music apps to use Siri in late 2019, with the release of iOS 13, Spotify took almost a year to get with the program — despite vociferous complaints about Apple not playing fair by “locking Spotify and other competitors out of Apple services such as Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch.”

That was a claim that always seemed odd to us, considering that, despite its limitations, Spotify’s Apple Watch app was actually in first place on the App Store for Apple Watch Music apps at the time. It’s always felt like Spotify’s slow uptake of features that Apple readily makes available to third-party developers is more about Spotify than it is about Apple.

Still, we can’t pretend to understand all the challenges that software developers face, especially when dealing with legacy code, so when it comes to AirPlay 2 support, it’s only fair to take Spotify’s complaints about “audio driver compatibility issues” at face value.

In fact, this may explain Spotify’s relatively slow uptake of many Apple features. Since Apple provides a well-documented SDK for AirPlay 2, and it’s supported by a wide range of other apps and even devices from speakers to smart TVs, we have to assume that Spotify’s app is such a mess internally that it faces considerable obstacles in adapting its features to the iPhone and other Apple devices.

Why This Matters

To be clear, Spotify does work with AirPlay, but it’s using the original AirPlay protocol, not Apple’s lower-latency AirPlay 2.

This means that if you simply want to stream music to a single speaker or smart TV, you’ll probably be fine. You can turn on AirPlay from the iOS Control Centre, and while there’s a bit of a lag when it comes to starting, pausing, and skipping tracks — something that was typical of the original AirPlay — it will generally work fine.

AirPlay 2 was designed to solve this lag problem, and reduce the latency such that you could stream to multiple speakers with the audio in sync. Playing audio from Spotify to multiple speakers using AirPlay will result in a frustrating listening experience, as many users on Spotify’s Community Forums have explained.

Without AirPlay 2 support, using Spotify over AirPlay results in random flakiness, skips, and stuttering over my home wifi network as I move around the house into dead spots or hop between access points.

blakegentry4, Spotify Community Forums

In fact, it’s such a serious problem that some users are resorting to slightly insane workarounds to stay with Spotify, but it seems that even these avenues are being blocked.

For years now, my workaround to get my music working into my stereo HomePods, have been to sync my playlists to Apple Music using SongShift, as Spotify refuse to implement AirPlay 2 so the speakers stay in sync. However, today I got news that Spotify have contacted the developer of SongShift and prohibiting them from syncing playlists in the outbound direction.

j_lundqvist, Spotify Community Forums

Many others are simply abandoning Spotify entirely in favour of Apple Music, which of course works just fine with AirPlay 2.

Already got an Apple Music Subscription just because of Spotify’s arrogance/avoidance implementing AirPlay 2. I will keep both for a brief period of time but will cancel my Spotify subscription just because of this. It‘s beyond ridiculous.

xbeny, Spotify Community Forums

Of course, it’s not just Apple Music that gets AirPlay 2 support right. In fact, Spotify is the only major streaming service that doesn’t. Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal, iHeartRadio, are all on board. Spotify is really the only major holdout in this area.

Comment

It feels as though Spotify actively neglects adopting features that are important to Apple users, due to Spotify’s ongoing tantrum with Apple over App store commission. If this is the case, please stop. It’s frustrating, especially seeing as many users signed up outside of the App Store in support of Spotify’s stance. Spotify neglecting these features doesn’t change how users feel about Apple, it just creates frustration towards Spotify.

WillSkinnr, Spotify Community Forums

While we’re willing to give Spotify the benefit of the doubt here, it seems there many of Spotify’s most loyal fans are running out of patience, and some are beginning to suspect that the company is deliberately dragging its heels on many Apple features to help bolster its long-standing case that Apple is anti-competitive.