Spotify and Apple are never going to be the best of friends. The twobiggest music streaming serviceson the planet understandably don’t want to give a direct rival any noticeable advantage, and whilst that’s great for their bottom line, it’s not always so good for consumers.
For example, theApple HomePodoffers support for third-party music streaming services to be played directly from the smart speaker, and even allows you to set a third-party service as the default. However, there’s still no native support for Spotify. It is possible toAirPlay Spotify from your iPhoneto your HomePod, but it’s an awkward workaround.
Thankfully, this workaround has got much easier to do, with a new feature in iOS 17 that lets you get your HomePod to do all the hard work. Here’s how to play Spotify directly from your HomePod.
Does HomePod offer native support for Spotify?
The answer to this question is still no. Currently, it’s not possible to ask Sirion your HomePodto play music from Spotify and have this happen when your iPhone is switched off or connected to a different network. This is possible with some other music services, such as Pandora, which can stream directly from the HomePod itself, but there’s still no native support for Spotify. However,iOS 17now makes it possible to get almost the same experience using AirPlay.
Is it possible to play Spotify from a HomePod?
Since HomePodsupports AirPlay, it’s always been possible to play music from Spotify on your iPhone, and then stream that music to your HomePod. In fact, any music service that you can play on your iPhone can be streamed to your HomePod this way.
An update in iOS 17 makes this process much easier, however. Now you canask Sirion your HomePod to play Spotify, and your HomePod will tell your iPhone to start playing Spotify, and to AirPlay that music to your HomePod. In other words, instead of having to do all of this manually on your iPhone, your HomePod will tell your iPhone to do it for you.
The overall experience is very similar to using a natively supported music streaming service, since you may start playing Spotify just by asking Siri on your HomePod, but the catch is that in order for it to work, you’ll need to have your iPhone connected to the same Wi-Fi network and powered on. If your iPhone is off, or on a different network, you won’t be able to play Spotify on your HomePod at all.
How to play Spotify from your HomePod
In order to use this new feature, you’ll first need to grant permission for your HomePod to be able to start AirPlay from your iPhone. You’ll only need to do this once. You’ll also need to haveSpotify installedon your iPhone.
What third-party music services does HomePod support?
For obvious reasons, your HomePod uses Apple Music as the default music provider. Whilst there’s no native support for Spotify on the HomePod, other music streaming services are natively supported. It means that you’re able to say ‘play music on Deezer’ for example, and your HomePod will start streaming fromyour Deezer account. It won’t matter if your iPhone is off or connected to a different network, as the music is played directly from the HomePod itself.
Currently supported third-party streaming services that you can play directly from your HomePod include:
If you want to play a music service that isn’t supported,such as Tidal, you should be able to use the same feature detailed above to get your iPhone to AirPlay that music service to your HomePod, just by asking Siri to ‘play music on Tidal’.
How to change the default music service on HomePod
To use natively supported music streaming services such as Deezer on your HomePod, you need to add phrases such as ‘on Deezer’ to your commands. By default, asking Siri to ‘play music’ will startApple Music, but saying ‘play music on Deezer’ will stream from your connected Deezer account instead.
It is possible to change the default music service, however, so that you’re able to stream from Pandora, for example, just by saying asking Siri to ‘play music’.
