Spotify Reverses Course, Says AirPlay 2 Is Coming — But When?

Following a community forum post last week that appeared to close the door on Spotify’s app ever gaining AirPlay 2 support, it appears that the company may have misspoken. At the very least, it’s now backpedaling on that earlier statement.

The news that Spotify had given up AirPlay 2 originally appeared in a long thread on Spotify’s community forums, where many users had been requesting the feature since early 2019.

A status update last week suggested that it had run into a wall due to “audio driver compatibility issues” and that AirPlay 2 support was being put on hold as a result.

The Spotify representative added that users were welcome to continue adding their comments to the thread, but that AirPlay 2 wouldn’t be coming “in the foreseeable future.”

Following a spate of responses from upset users, however, a Spotify rep updated the thread on Saturday, apologizing for the confusion and saying that “Spotify will support Airplay 2.”

We apologize for any confusion we have caused. To clarify, Spotify will support Airplay 2.

Spotify

While that statement sounds promising for Spotify users with HomePods and other smart speakers and smart TVs that support AirPlay 2, reading between the lines it’s not clear if much has actually changed.

Late Friday evening, Spotify told The Verge that it was still “working to make [AirPlay 2] a reality,” and said the community forum post contained “incomplete information.”

A post on one of Spotify’s Community pages contained incomplete information regarding our plans for AirPlay2. Spotify will support AirPlay2, and we’re working to make that a reality.

Spotify, in a statement to The Verge

Key to all of this, however, is the fact that Spotify still hasn’t said anything about when AirPlay 2 support might be coming, and it seems like many of the company’s most vocal fans have picked up on this subtle distinction.

So one update says, “we will not add buffered audio support in your lifetime” and the next update says, “we will add buffered audio, just not in your lifetime”.

Noel18, Spotify Community Forums

In fact, many still feel that this is “collateral damage in the Apple wars,” and questioning whether it’s Spotify’s legal department that’s telling it to drag its feet on AirPlay 2 support to avoid compromising its ongoing antitrust case against Apple.

Spotify’s Slow Adoption of Apple Features

Since Spotify supports the original AirPlay protocol, this isn’t so much of an issue for users who simply want to stream audio to a single speaker — even a HomePod. You’ll experience some delays doing this, but the real problem happens when you’re trying to stream to a stereo pair of HomePods, or multiple AirPlay devices around your home.

This is where AirPlay 2 comes in, and without this support, Spotify becomes largely useless as a whole-home audio solution — unless of course users are willing to invest in a dedicated home audio system like Sonos, which includes native Spotify support.

Regardless of the reasons, however — and we’re trying not to be cynical here — Spotify takes its time when it comes to adopting any new features in the iOS ecosystem.

An Apple Watch app didn’t appear until 2018, even though there was nothing preventing Spotify from releasing an app from day one. Even then, it took two more years before it was anything more than a glorified remote control for the iPhone app, and another six months to gain offline playback.

To be fair, some of this may have been a result of DRM issues in watchOS. Apple apparently didn’t give third-party developers access to DRM features until watchOS 7, which was the version when native playback support came to Spotify on the wearable.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that Spotify acquired a third-party app known as Snowy to serve as the basis for its Spotify watchOS app, and that app did originally support direct streaming and offline playback, yet they mysteriously disappeared when Spotify acquired the app and released it under its own name.

Unfortunately, while Spotify has complained loudly about how Apple is holding it back, it’s never offered any specifics, which has left many people guessing as to the company’s reasons — whether there really are technical limitations, whether Spotify is really just that slow, or whether there’s another agenda at work here.

No matter what the reasons are, however, it’s fair to say that Spotify does not have a good track record when it comes to rolling out support for Apple features, and we’re skeptical that’s going to change. Apple unveiled AirPlay 2 back in 2018, and Spotify users have been requesting it since early 2019.

Last week’s response was the first indication that Spotify was paying attention to the requests at all, and the response still isn’t promising. Spotify’s users are still left with the difficult choice of whether to abandon their favourite music streaming platform just to get better home audio support, or abandoning Apple in favour of other whole-home audio systems like Sonos.