Spotify and Other Music and Podcasts Apps Can Choose to Support Siri in iOS 13

Wednesday June 5, 2019 6:53 am PDT by Joe Rossignol

Hey Siri, play Old Town Road on Spotify.

Ask that now and Siri will tell you that it cannot play songs from Spotify, but that could change soon. Apple is opening up its SiriKit framework to third-party music, podcasts, audiobooks, and radio apps in iOS 13 and iPadOS, enabling users to use Siri to control audio playback in supported apps.

DRAKE

Mockup of Siri support for Spotify

It will be up to developers to enable this functionality in their apps. We've reached out to Spotify, Amazon, Google, Pandora, Tidal, Overcast, Castro, and several other popular music and podcasts app developers to see if they have plans to support Siri, and we'll update this story if we hear back.

Spotify recently accused Apple of anticompetitive business practices, and its inability to integrate with Siri was one of its complaints. "Apple won't allow us to be on HomePod and they definitely won't let us connect with Siri to play your jams," said Spotify. Going forward, the latter is no longer the case.

The first betas of iOS 13 and iPadOS were seeded to developers on Monday, with public betas to follow in July. The software updates will be widely released in the fall, likely alongside new iPhones in September as usual.

Tags: Siri Guide, Spotify, SiriKit

Related Forum: iOS 13

Top Rated Comments

Tapiture

56 months ago

Apple is letting water out to ease pressure on the dam, so to speak. Nevertheless, glad they’re opening Siri up to competitors.

Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)

az431

Or maybe this has been part of the road map all along, and like any other technical endeavor, it took time to implement. Pure speculation either way.
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This just shows how Spotify was right and they had no access to Siri prior to iOS 13.
I guess lawsuits do come in handy.

Next lawsuit, trying to hide the notch in iPhone XS marketing pictures. Maybe they'll get rid of it for good.

No, it doesn't show that at all.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jimothyGator

there needs to be Siri support system wide for every app.
I hate that I can't use Siri for my nest. or deeper Siri commands for lifx bulbs that the developer can add for shortcuts to scenes for their bulbs/led strips.

Nest/Google have decided not to support HomeKit; that's not Apple's fault. For Lifx, I also believe this falls on them to add shortcuts support to their app; I don't know if there's anything missing in iOS 12 from getting this to work.

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

FasterQuieter

Please give us a default music app option! Having to say "on Spotify" every time is so unnecessary and silly.

Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Jsameds

THE. ****. OUT. OF. HERE. I never thought I'd see them do this. If they open up AdBlockers to be system wide again and have PiP for YouTube and Twitch, I will definitely switch back over to iOS.

Not sure about Twitch but I can PiP for YT on iPad. Just use a 3rd party browser, navigate to a YT video and the minimise button appears on the player. I use the feature daily and only use the YT App to browse content now.

Also - there's no ads.

Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)