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Comment by pen2l | Hacker News Reader

Funny you ask -- because boy do I have an answer.

Last week I officially switched (reluctantly and with a bad taste in my mouth) from Spotify to Apple Music.

Why? Simply because when I'm driving I want to dictate by voice command what song I want to play. I could not do this with Spotify, that's why I switched.

Next time I won't get an iphone because of the bad taste this experience has left me (the worst part is apple's voice transcription technology is so bad compared to Google's... so half the time even that doesn't work)

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I'm curious - I see that Midomi Sound Hound now has voice recognition in iOS 9, which I assume it gets from either licensing Google Now, Cortana, or directly from the companies that provide functionality for those. Why couldn't Spotify just do that? Would that solve your problem?

You would still need to find your way to the Spotify app though, so that defeats the point -- because you have to use your hand to unlock the phone, open the app, etc.

Compare this with being able to play a song by simply saying "Hey Siri play Beatles' Rain"... and that is it.

"hey siri open Spotify" works fine.

... And then find your way to search icon, click x to clear current query, hit microphone icon to say song name? By this point I've probably killed 9 people on the road while driving.

Compare this with "hey Siri play bob Dylan's blowing in the wind" and it working just with this

The previous post was saying that Spotify could implement their own voice recognition once launched.

But that's still more than simply "Hey Siri play something by Rolling stones" or "Ok google play some Johnny Cash"

Apple should have opened Siri to spotify.

Even if Apple did open Siri up and provide a "music playing intent" for Siri like they did for messages, it would still be something like "play something by the Rolling Stones using Spotify". Is that much different from "open Spotify" and once Spotify is open "Play something by the Rolling Stones"?

Definitely yes.

So, I have an iphone 6s -- and I use Siri a _lot_. Mostly I use it when I'm talking to friends or family... e.g. today someone told me he didn't know any of Dylan's songs... and I went "oh, well let me tell you of some!"

Usually when you're talking to someone, and you spend half the time on your device suddenly disconnected from the person you're talking to, that makes things tough. Generally one should optimize for a friction-free experience. Generally, that means trying to do whatever in the least amount of steps.

When Apple refuses to open up siri, it makes things really difficult.

I mean really, this is from direct personal experience. My decision to quit spotify recently was literally this. (another was driving -- I need to go hands-free and least-steps there too for my own sake)

This. Alexa and Spotify have great integration. It's depressing to think that Spotify on Apple may never offer this.

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