Tell HN: Siri provides Apple Music link when sharing current song on Spotify | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Siri provides Apple Music link when sharing current song on Spotify

194 pointsdesertraven128 comments

My phone screen is broken, so I use Siri a lot lately. I was listening to a song on Spotify, and asked Siri to "Send this song to Alice". Everything seemed to go fine until later, I saw the link was Apple Music, not Spotify.

Alice likely never listened to it because we only ever share Spotify links.

Also what is happening behind the scenes to give Apple the song from Spotify? Are they just accessing current song on Spotify? What if they don't have it on Apple Music? Or are they running pattern recognition on the audio output to determine song?

View on HN

This is frustrating and demonstrates the tension in Apple owning their own music (or anything) service. Do they want us to use Siri? Then it needs to behave consistently and match expectations. If I have to think “we’ll apple has Apple Music so I can’t use Siri to share music but I can use it to share URLs” you’re putting it on the user to remember the business context every time they use the assistant. As if Siri isn’t busted enough … In UX I’m always trying to make sure that users don’t have to know or think about how the system works, that they can just think like humans and not machines. Here Apple is asking you to think like biz dev folks in order to use Siri. Seems bad.

Apple is absolutely not "asking you to think like biz dev folks" in fact they're counting on the fact that you won't.

They're exploiting their near-monopoly to expand their ownership and control of user actions and make more money. They know most of their users won't notice, and many won't care.

It's absolutely bonkers how much Apple gets away with today, when Microsoft got torn apart for abusing their monopoly 20 years ago for things that weren't even 1% as abusive as what Apple is doing here. Microsoft got attacked for bundling an internet browser with their OS. Can you imagine the outrage if Windows started swapping Google URLs for Bing ones or iTunes links for Microsoft-owned properties?

Microsoft got attacked for Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

Saying "for bundling an internet browser with their OS" is a massive understatement. They forced manufacturers to not only bundle their browser but would seize working with them if they bundled a competitors browser.

They also took deliberate steps to make sure their software didn't work on competitors machines. They acted like the competitors software was broken while it was simply a check to see if it was MS-DOS (see DR DOS).

Yes Apple should be slapped with an anti-trust case especially when iTunes was nearly the only place where you could buy music. But acting like Microsoft wasn't run by a bunch of anti-competitive pricks makes it look like we've already forgotten about the Halloween documents.

How is "about 50% market share" a "near monopoly"?

Yes, the business context is holding back such amazing innovation for voice assistants like Siri! There are also a couple apps I use, one being brain.fm, which I would love to see integrate with Siri for voice control but I believe they don’t because they have to pay to integrate with Siri. Or is Siri integration free from an app developer perspective?

> Or is Siri integration free from an app developer perspective?

It's free in the same way that any iOS APIs are, but one could argue that there's a cost in terms of development and QA resources, etc. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit

Replaced spotify links should be the least of your worries.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

Digital assistants do not exist to serve you or your interests. You should assume that your every interaction with one will be exploited in some way for someone else's benefit, or leaked and/or sold to some third party without your knowledge, or both.

I'm not saying apple isn't wrong for what they're doing to sneakily drive more traffic to their own services for profit, but this is exactly the sort of thing you should expect.

That’s why I am slowly training myself to leave the cellphone in the shelf at the house’s exit. Ironically loosing the “mobile” feature of the mobile phone. I see other people sticking paper pieces on both cameras already. I also see people having Alexa in every room:-/ Interesting new age and I feel being Luddite in it.

I was thinking about the idea of being considered a luddite for opting out of 'smart things' yesterday. I don't think that deciding not to use intrusive surveillance in my home should qualify. I still extensively use technology. I don't consider the mining of my data as a trade for voice controlled searching to be technological progress. Give me the same solution-- one I can trust-- one that I can fully control and I will use it. Let me understand and alter the technology as I see fit. To me, that's the opposite of a luddite. I am not going to let the marketing departments of these advertising agencies manipulate me into thinking otherwise.

Luddite is not the best term. The way I have been putting it: We are all Amish now, forced to evaluate each new technology we use lest it use us.

Android users here so I genuinely don't know: can't the voice trigger for Siri be entirely disabled ? I know I never allow my phone to listen for trigger (or even the entirely worse "keep listening when locked for the trigger", aka always record what I say even if I'm not using my phone).

Now whether it does respect my choice or still record but disable triggering is another matter, but that's sadly the world we got into with our purchasing choices of phones, and why I support the EU going after such privacy issues.

Yes it can be disabled completely.

You’re being hyperbolic. It’s not ‘aka always record what I say even if I'm not using my phone’. It’s processing the audio at all times to detect the trigger words.

If you won’t say it, I will: Apple is wrong for what they’re doing.

These are tools that should be serving their users, not their creators.

What is the basis of right/wrong in this value judgment and why is this basis correct and the others not?

It is wrong that they do not do, what the user who payed for it, asked it to do.

A task it can do, but choose to do a different task, that is better in the intereet of the corporation.

It is a quite harmles example, but it is zelling of the general state of things and where we are heading.

If I buy a device I assume I own it. Thats how it should be. Not that I rent it and the rules to rent change all the time.

Is it not reasonable to expect that the keyword "share" functions the same as the share button? I don't know the standards you have for the things you buy, but I find unacceptable that a thing I paid (handsomely) for twists my orders to share adverting to my contacts under my name, and part of the reason things are so bad is because at every valid criticism there are people defending these stuff as normal

One could ask this same question of any terrible, unethical thing.

The reasonable expectation is that a digital assistant will work for its user and not the corporation that sold it. The corporation is trading on this expectation to exploit its users.

This is not a reasonable expectation for a digital assistant. At all. It is reasonable for a hacker to expect it. But the majority of the public doesn’t care that Apple tries to push Apple Music. If this was sold as a separate service however, maybe people would have other expectations.

Except Apple clearly owns its users, not the other way around. They get money from you for everything you do with their devices (music, vids, books, ads, even purchases of anything now), AND get money from the sellers to let them just talk to you.

"If you can't freely do anything on the device you own, you're the one owned."

Why would you ever think Apple's tools should be doing anything other than serving the interests of their owners? The whole system has worked so well for us by driving massive innovation through the credible promise of being able to use what you created for your own benefit. The thing that stops companies from abusing their users like this is not any should statement attached to their product, it's the fear of losing all their customers to a competitor, which is not a credible threat to a company as large, entrenched and good at using the walled garden strategy as apple. The correct thought here is not a should statement that will never happen (and shouldn't happen because if we make it true it will fundamentally break the innovation machine). The correct thought here is "Apple is way too big and has way too much market power. We need to use the existing antitrust system and break this company up." This correct thought is not unique to apple either, it's equally applicable to many tech companies, apple just happens to be in the small cadre of the worst of the worst.

wow, there are at least five people on here with more than 500 points that don't live in the real world and instead choose to believe this is a utopia where people don't work in their own interest and will instead sacrifice for everyone else to benefit over themselves. Please open your eyes and realize this is not the case and that pretty much any time it has been held up as the case it has turned out to be a cover for self interested (most recent example on here is the Patagonia founder hiding the true purpose of avoiding billions in taxes with the unicorn farts of a charitable donation to a charity controlled by his family) and sometimes illegal (most recent example on here is the SBF FTX debacle. Effective altruism apparently really means fraudulent client fund comingling and theft) behavior.

The first step to a better world is acknowledging the prime driver of self interest in human action and designing systems that support that while protecting from too much power. This historically meant strong property rights, strong speech rights and strong antitrust regulation. Wishing that someone would exercise their property and speech rights differently isn't an effective system and regulating them into right think and right action robs us of innovation because there's no reason for anyone to put in the extra effort to make something better beyond trivial improvements since they won't get to keep that benefit while they pay the cost of development, it is far easier to just stay mediocre and not stick your head out.

I noticed this when I switched to an old iPhone (11) after my phone finally broke down after using android for the last 10 years. I'm liking it so far but it really opened my eyes how much the apple ecosystem is embedded in the OS, and through that likewise with the google apps on android. On iOS i noticed how the OS is very opinionated on how you use it, and I guess that's fine for most users, it's just kind of scary to think about how news and other information is curated by the algorithms before we get to see it. And also how locked into the ecosystem you become if you always follow the OS suggestions and just start using Apple Calendar/Keychain/Maps etc. It's understandable the company wants to make a profit and that the primary objective isn't to make hard- or software that is best for the user, but it still makes me feel a bit "uneasy".

>> Digital assistants do not exist to serve you or your interests. You should assume that your every interaction with one will be exploited in some way for someone else's benefit, or leaked and/or sold to some third party without your knowledge, or both.

Correct. Siri is Apple's tool, not yours despite appearences:

https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57

On that Guardian link: you can switch off allowing Apple to use your Siri input for training:

Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Analytics & Improvements -> Improve Siri and Dictation switch.

It has the explanatory text ‘Help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store and review audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions from this device.’ next to it.

I’m pretty sure the initial state of this is set by your response to a specific question about it during phone setup.

Only four levels of nesting menus? How generous!

As the GP remembered, the option to share training audio with Apple is presented clearly during the OOBE setup for Siri.

> https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-analytics-class-act...

Apple is currently being sued because they only apply their "do not use analytics" setting to other companies analytics. Apple analytics still track you.

Given that, I would not trust any privacy setting from this company.

I wish I could read the complaint (5:22-cv-07069 - doesn’t seem to be available online?) - but I think it’s more nuanced than that.

The complaint alleges, I think, that if you switch off ‘device analytics’ on your phone (the ‘Share iPhone Analytics’ setting?), the App Store app will still send some data about your device to Apple.

Yes but only from Apple apps, and not just "some" data but apparently "all the data" as in everything you do, every click, every scroll, every button you press, it's all recorded and sent to Apple.

At least according to these researchers and this lawsuit.

This works normally for me — Siri correctly shares the Spotify link.

https://imgur.com/a/EiOKFMM

I had the crazy thought that I'd try it before rage-posting.

But knee-jerking is so much easier!

Or—like everything with Siri—it works one way the first time, and a different way the second time with the exact same input.

FWIW I tried it several times, and you can try it yourself even without a paid account. I just asked Siri to "share this with [name]".

Interesting. What iOS version are you running? I'm running 15.4

I’m running the 16.2 public beta. I wonder if it’s possible that they’ve changed this behavior since 15.4?

A/B testing seems likely.

It seems something to add to this website https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

It is interesting how that timelines blames the 30% Apple tax as the reason why they had to up the price to 12.99/mo; but they somehow did not bring it back to 9.99/mo when they managed to go around the tax.

I am not defending Apple’s practices, I just find the omission on a website called “time to play fair” sweetly ironic.

How and when did they manage to go around the 30% fee[1]?

[1] Not sure if "fee" is the correct term, but it's certainly not a tax, because those are issued by governmental organizations by definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax).

What are you talking about? Spotify premium is currently USD 9.99/mo.

$12.99 when you subscribe via App Store.

That's truly unfair and must feel awful as an iPhone user. Fingers crossed that Apple makes this right in the long-term.

its because apple is taking a cut that it costs more. If you don't want to pay it, subscribe on a platform like a normal web browser that doesn't force spotify to pay a cut to apple.

iPhone users can still subscribe via the website, if they want to save a few $ a month afaik

Every day I learn something new that Apple does that sucks.

They're an absolutely terrible company, and are actively ruining something I love which is general purpose computing with the user as owner. Fuck Apple.

But Spotify is the same way. They underpay the artists in the market they dominate. Everybody with Monopoly in any market is abusing it and pointing fingers at the others.

I find everything that Spotify says about the Watch to be disingenuous.

> Us: "Hey Apple, we love your watch; can we make an app for that?" Them: "nah

The first Apple Watch was slow, and didn’t have any real third party apps at all. They were basically all running on the phone and displaying things slowly on the Watch.

> Apple rejects Spotify's proposal for an Apple Watch app yet again (2016)

This was before the cellular watch came out. How much good would any streaming service be with wifi only? Even then, for battery saving reasons, the Watch really preferred Bluetooth to communicate with the phone

> This app update means that rival apps have to agree not to “directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than IAP or discourage the use of IAP.”

No retailer is going to let a company advertise how to buy products cheaper somewhere else.

> Apple finally allows enhanced functionality for the Spotify app on the Apple Watch (2018)

And it took Spotify over two years to support streaming music from the Watch.

And now they introduce their own “podcast player” that can’t play podcasts - ie audio hosted on a server where I can subscribe to a RSS feed.

Spotify is just doing the age-old cycle of getting out-competed despite first mover advantage and then appealing to government authorities to try and stifle competition. When your only idea for innovation is trying to monopolize podcasts while your competitor is rolling out features like spatial audio (which is actually phenomenal) the writing is on the wall.

Is it free competition? As far as I know Apple always attempts to screw with competitors, Apple apps using private functionality, ignoring privacy settings etc. Can I compete fair with Siri, say I have a better quality version that works 10 times better? |

I can't , but I am free to create a phone and OS first, bundle my app in and compete with Apple like this... so the better Siri will not happen , users suffer a lower quality app and will ignore Siri because is garbage, only Apple wins.

This point has been debated extensively in thousands of threads with strong arguments made on both sides so I won't dive into it again as it's somewhat off topic to the actual response I made.

I'll instead ask- what has Spotify actually done to stay competitive in streaming music since being founded in 2006? Apple has actually innovated in this space and frankly has a much stronger offering today despite launching 9 years later (higher stream quality, spatial audio, more money to artists, larger library). I won't claim Apple is perfect by any means, but Spotify really doesn't garner my sympathy either as the company who's chief "innovation" has been trying to snuff out independent podcasts and lobbying the EU for protectionism.

Stream quality and catalog sizes are both legal issues with music rights holders and have nothing to do with streaming innovation. Unless you consider Apple having a boatload of money to make legal issues go away a kind of innovation.

Streaming music is a bad product to base your entire business on period. It’s the classic “DropBox problem”. It’s feature not a product.

The music industry will always get 70% of revenue for streaming music. The video streaming services for the most part negotiate a fixed cost license and then as they grew, they could theoretically spread the cost.

I am surprised that on HN, supposedly technically people still tout the “vendor uses private functionality” trope.

Of course every OS has “private functionality” that is not exposed to untrusted third party apps. Do you want every application to have root level access to your device? The private enclave?

Apple usually dog foods any new APIs before making them public. Once you make an API public, you’re stuck with it warts on all. Apple can also do things in ways that would be insecure for third parties to have access to.

For instance, in iOS 2 (?) Apple had an internal app extensions framework and in the US, was hard coded to support Facebook and Twitter.

A few years later, Apple had extensions framework where the extension was in a separate process for security and opened it up.

It took years for Apple to come up with a decent Siri intents framework for any third party and still Spotify took years to support all of the features that they complained about after Apple implemented the APIs.

You have completely missed the point. Let me back things up and you can tell me where things stop making sense for you:

Nobody is mad about iOS existing or using custom entitlements. Nobody is mad about the App Store existing or charging 30% on top of most IAPs/transactions. Nobody is angry at Apple for shipping Safari by default, or even for loading up iOS and MacOS with uncontrollable telemetry.

We're mad that we don't have options. Apple has no reason to arbitrarily limit our options besides personal profit, which is something they objectively do not need. That's what people are going to bring up during antitrust hearings, and it's the stuff you can't refute with "oh muh security". Apple is a hardware vendor that uses their status to abuse the software market, much like Microsoft did with the early web before they were brought to heel by antitrust hearings. The writing is on the wall for Apple, private entitlements or no they're headed straight to the hot-seat.

> We're mad that we don't have options

Sure you do, you have the same option that 70% of mobile users exercise - buy an Android device.

> much like Microsoft did with the early web before they were brought to heel by antitrust hearings

This is another false trope. Absolutely nothing happened in the US as a result of the anti trust trial with respect to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows. There was no forced unbundling, no “browser choice” nothing.

> That's what people are going to bring up during antitrust hearings

Those same arguments landed with a big thud during the Epic vs Apple trial.

> Sure you do, you have the same option that 70% of mobile users exercise - buy an Android device.

I didn't buy an Android device, though. I bought an iPhone, and Apple is the one limiting the software I run on it. It's a closed case: Apple does not deserve the right to dictate what software people run on the devices they own. There is no degree of apologism that refutes this.

> Absolutely nothing happened in the US as a result of the anti trust trial with respect to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows.

They were still found guilty though, and the only reason they escaped prosecution was because they appealed and instead seeked a settlement under similar terms: https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/504276/downlo... (page 10).

Their settlement involved the explicit forced sharing of APIs and internal technology (in Apple's case this would be software management).

> the Epic vs Apple trial.

And in fairness, so did Apple's. They used this as an opportunity to subpoena half the industry, and all it revealed is that Apple is in a class of their own when it comes to control over what users are allowed to interact with. Maybe it didn't hit a boiling point with Fortnite, but few things do. At least we have the EU to slap Apple around when they make silly mistakes like the Lightning port.

> I didn't buy an Android device, though. I bought an iPhone

So you bought a device using your own free will that didn’t meet your needs even though there was an alternative? That’s like someone buying a Tesla and complaining they can’t use gas to power their vehicle.

> Apple does not deserve the right to dictate what software people run on the devices they own. There is no degree of apologism that refutes this

A real judge disagrees with you…

> Their settlement involved the explicit forced sharing of APIs and internal technology (in Apple's case this would be software management).

And that has nothing to do with browser bundling or the App Store. If a single App Store is illegal, that also means all of the console makers and TV smart OS vendors are acting illegally.

Also, today in 2022, Microsoft Office is just as dominant as it was in 2000.

> prosecution was because they appealed and instead seeked

And the “settlement” has nothing to do with browser bundling and in fact, they did release another platform - the XBox where not only were they the only store, even when you buy a physical game, they get a cut.

> So you bought a device using your own free will that didn’t meet your needs even though there was an alternative?

The device does meet my needs, it has a very capable ARM processor inside and a decent-looking screen. The only thing I need an alternative for is software, and Apple goes out of their way to prevent me from using software that respects my freedom as a user.

> that also means all of the console makers and TV smart OS vendors are acting illegally.

Ah yes, the tried-and-true "but look at [OTHER-INDUSTRY]" strawman. Console and smart TV vendors are not in the smartphone industry, much less even get treated as part of the computing industry. They're regulated as appliances, and if you think the regulation around that should change then I wholly recommend writing to your senator. You might even get me to co-sign it, too!

> The device does meet my needs, it has a very capable ARM processor inside and a decent-looking screen. The only thing I need an alternative for is software, and Apple goes out of their way to prevent me from using software that respects my freedom as a user.

“yes the Tesla body frame meets my needs. But the battery I knew was bundled with it can’t use unleaded gas and I need to drive to rural areas where there aren’t any battery chargers available.”

> Ah yes, the tried-and-true "but look at [OTHER-INDUSTRY]" strawman. Console and smart TV vendors are not in the smartphone industry, much less even get treated as part of the computing industry. They're regulated as appliances

So consoles “are regulated as appliance” (no they are not regulated much at all) even though they are computers that are meant to serve one purpose. But the phone, which is a computer that is meant to serve one purpose is not an “appliance”.

Where are these “regulations” you speak of?

Are you claiming that Epic would have had no basis to sue console makers on the same grounds they sued (and failed) Google and Apple?

>yes the Tesla body frame meets my needs. But the battery I knew was bundled with it can’t use unleaded gas and I need to drive to rural areas where there aren’t any battery chargers available.”

The fair example is if Tesla would only allow you to use Tesla electrons, from Tesla electric generators. I van put non Ford petrol or non Ford oil in my Ford. I could put my own browser in iOS and it would work just fine but some companies does not allow it, it is not a material thing like your ridiculous example, an IF statement prevents me to run the real Firefox on iOS. When an IF statement in Tesla will prevent you using non Tesla electrons then you can use your shit example.

When OP bought an iPhone on the box it did not said "only runs what Apple thinks is social correct and only what Apple thinks is not a financial risk for Apple".

> No retailer is going to let a company advertise how to buy products cheaper somewhere else.

That was an odd way to elide over the idea that a "retailer" can now stay in your pocket for 2-60 years and become a middleman to every financial transaction.

If you sign up for a streaming service via Roku, Roku gets a cut as a middleman - forever. you can sign up outside of Roku just like you could sign up for Spotify outside of the App Store.

Soon your ISP will also get a cut of every online purchase you make. Since you did it on their “platform”.

You don't need cellular for a streaming service to be useful on a watch. You can download music to the watch while on WiFi and then can play it while out on a run or whatever while your phone is at home.

Yes and Spotify could have supported that from 2016 forward and didn’t.

Yes, I have approximately zero trust in anything Spotify says regarding the Apple Watch. They have dragged their feet repeatedly on it, and even now their implementation is shit.

I have no horse in this race, and, thus, no valid opinions on the Spotify/Apple spat.

However, I have written a few Watch apps.

It’s quite difficult, and there are severe limitations, due (I suspect) to power-saving and limited display size stuff (in addition to all the private SDK restrictions, and privacy/sandbox safeguards that all Apple platforms have). The SDK is frustratingly hobbled, and the Watch, itself, wasn’t really (in my opinion) usable, until Generation 4. Nowadays, I see them everywhere (but I live in a fairly affluent area, so I see Apple kit all over the place).

I can’t imagine hybrid apps (like Ionic or React Native) working on the Watch, so it needs to be done in native Swift and/or ObjC. There’s actually a dearth of true native developers (I am one, and find it difficult to connect with others that I can talk to).

I mean I totally get that the watch is a constrained environment and you can’t just slap Electron on it and call it a day or whatever. I have also worked with the SDK and I agree it’s quite limited.

But we’re not talking about a fly-by-night startup - Spotify has a good deal of resources and the requirements for their application are pretty straightforward. Yet every single time I use it it fails in some stupid, unintelligible way. It has a couple of very obvious race conditions in the UI, and it took years to get to this state. I have some sympathy for the difficulty of the implementation but at this point it’s a bit of a joke.

There's a big issue with the reliability of communications between the phone, and the watch.

We can't assume that communications will happen in realtime. Even Apple's apps have some weird lag, and unpredictability. It's far better on the newest Watches. I've watched it improve, over generations (I currently have an 8, but my earliest one was a 2).

Any app that requires realtime sync with the phone is gonna have issues (I have tried writing them, and learned this, the hard way).

> the requirements for their application are pretty straightforward.

Surprisingly, not entirely straightforward. Source: working at Spotify.

Should the app be better? OF COURSE. But the scenarios it can be used in can be weird and complicated by legal matters.

If a user on free tier joins a group session over wi-fi at a friend's house, when the friend has premium subscription, what happens to queues, song skips, and what status is displayed on which devices? :) Note: even getting the device name is often tricky.

And there are hundreds of such use cases per device because different devices have different capabilities and limitations (on some devices you don't even have control over the UI presented to the user).

Without revealing too much, there's an ongoing work to make this stuff better, faster, more seamless, and from personal experience Spotify has been better across devices in recent years. But... It's still weird, brittle at times, and takes time to propagate to some devices and apps.

But it should get better (don't quote me on that :)) )

Also, and I suspect that you would know better than I, there's usually an issue with The Corporate Library, in $BIGCORP.

Most corporations, over a certain size, tend to develop an internal SDK/dependency, that needs to be reflected in all their software. This can bring all sorts of issues.

And that, too :) One can't simply change X dependencies that are used by Y services used by Z apps.

I really do appreciate your view and want to stress that it’s not a personal attack on you or any other engineer at Spotify. Like any software project it’s very easy for someone outside to point at it and say “this is simple and you are bad for not doing better”, and that rarely reflects the complicated reality.

But the flip-side of that is that every single time I try to use this software—something I fork over money for every month—it fails in some baffling, opaque way. At that level it’s more of a management and prioritisation issue - this is exactly the sort of thing that is likely to make me throw my hands up and switch to an alternative.

> it fails in some baffling, opaque way.

It's weird that it actually fails in some ways, and constantly. But then, I myself use it only as a background music player during the week, and as a podcast player in my car, so I definitely don't use it in a variety of scenarios.

> At that level it’s more of a management and prioritisation issue

Actual failures are tracked and prioritised. Sometimes the fixes don't get propagated to all systems quick enough, or they are deprioritised because there's something that affects an even larger number of users (it could be anything from parity of features to bugs to certain behaviours).

There was a third party developer who made a Spotify app for the watch. Spotify hired him and then dragged its feet for 2 more years. Even now there are third party apps that perform better than Spotify. I think Spotify is finally releasing a decent app but they’re absolutely not without sin in this fight. Even after Apple added some functionality they wanted they didn’t want to build anything because that would’ve made their case weak. They put their petty grievances over caring about their loyal customers.

https://www.engadget.com/2017-04-12-spotify-apple-watch-app....

> They put their petty grievances over caring about their loyal customers.

Could that not also be used to describe Apple's business practices, who forces Spotify to charge higher prices on their platform? Or their move to block Epic Games from releasing their own software storefront? Or how they force people to use a single browser engine?

Petty grievances make the world go round, friend. If you want to throw stones at Spotify though, I should first warn you that your glass house is awfully fragile.

> Could that not also be used to describe Apple's business practices, who forces Spotify to charge higher prices on their platform?

And you could also get a subscription at the lower price by going directly to Spotify. How is this any different than any other product that you can get at a lower price by going directly to the vendor?

Can I put my (hypothetical) music on Spotify without them getting a cut? Hell I can’t even subscribe to a podcast by entering the feed url manually with Spotify’s “podcast player”.

> Or their move to block Epic Games from releasing their own software storefront?

How did that work out on Android when they tried?

Good.

Apple shouldn't let developers waste my five grams of battery on inefficient apps which give a bad experience.

Not having charge at the end of the day is the definitive bad experience for a watch.

Now I'm going to go back to being annoyed that Apple won't let anyone else write a watch face, even if they do a good job.

> No retailer is going to let a company advertise how to buy products cheaper somewhere else.

Many do. I’ve bought plenty of products that, inside the packaging or via product registration, try to get you to use their first party store fronts.

I agree that nobody works allow you to advertise this on the packaging, but within the package is a different story.

I thin Apple should have rejected all versions of the Spotify app. It’s atrocious.

Can you elaborate?

400+M people beg to differ from your assessment :)

I also hate spotify's applications, but apple should not have any say in what software users can run on their devices.

This comment has to be a joke, right?

Devils advocate: why should Apple be obliged to ‘play fair’? The success of the App Store doesn’t change the fact that it’s their product on their platform and they can do whatever they want with it.

This is a good example showing why OS and services should be decoupled. Bundling both gives an incentive to nerf one to prop up the other.

You can’t decouple Siri from the OS. It needs deep access in to sensitive areas of the OS. Decoupling it would just result in mass abuse of user data far beyond the problems of music links.

Siri is OS and fine to be in the OS. The vendor of that OS should not also have services like selling music brokered by preferential treatment by the OS.

You sell the hardware and the system software

Or you sell the apps

Not both.

Can you explain to me exactly which technologies are preventing Siri from being made into an iPhone app? Somehow, I don't believe you.

In fact Siri was originally an app (Apple bought it).

To your question, a simple example is "Hey Siri" https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/hey-siri

> To avoid running the main processor all day just to listen for the trigger phrase, the iPhone’s Always On Processor (AOP) (a small, low-power auxiliary processor, that is, the embedded Motion Coprocessor) has access to the microphone signal (on 6S and later). We use a small proportion of the AOP’s limited processing power to run a detector with a small version of the acoustic model (DNN). When the score exceeds a threshold the motion coprocessor wakes up the main processor, which analyzes the signal using a larger DNN.

Yes, as with all things they could come up with a way to let third-party apps program the AOP with a different detector, but my point is that Siri has deeper integration into the device.

Apple's privacy and security rules also limit what a third-party app could do. For example, Siri knows what apps you have installed, but apps aren't able to access this information. Siri can make modifications to system settings; apps cannot.

I can’t answer the rest, but for the “how”: iOS has a “currently playing” API just like macOS and Linux (via MPRIS). Individual players need to support it, but any app with the right entitlements should be able to read from it.

In other words, this particular case isn’t that nefarious: Spotify is publishing the “currently playing” metadata so that other apps can read it, and Apple is consuming it.

It’s trivial for Siri to know the song that is currently playing - Spotify signals it to iOS so that iOS can display it on the Lock Screen. It’s likely much easier for siri to construct a URL based on this information than to try and get a url from Spotify.

If the song itself is not on Spotify, Siri will send a link to a similar one - for example, same name and artist, but a live recording instead of the studio version. If it doesn’t have that, it fails your request and doesn’t send anything.

couldn’t Spotify just tell iOS the link to the current song, so that Siri could copy it?

seems like Apple didn’t allow it on purpose

Spotify could create a Siri shortcut to share the Spotify link. Instead when you tap the share button Spotify is making the link, but when asking Siri Apple is creating a link from just the song name.

Yeah. Or I even wonder if Siri is not "Shazaming" it and sending the match from that

Why Shazam when in iOS already has all the information it needs? Title, Singer, cover art work, etc. All that info is shared by Spotify so that it can be presented via the iOS native controls, like your lock-screen

I just tried this with a Spotify song and Siri said "sorry, I'm unable to share that". It probably does a song search like you said and it failed this time.

I can see a use case for this, though: when you play Apple's radio stations in Music.app (and maybe other stations with rich metadata?), the "now playing" area pretends to be the current song. In that case Siri's implementation would send a link of the current song instead of just Apple Music Hits.

If Apple allowed it, Spotify (or any other app) could easily send more metadata about whatever media is playing on the lockscreen.

Apple owns Shazam (the music recognition app), and it's in-built in all modern iPhones. I'd guess that's probably how it works, but I could be wrong

I’m pretty sure there’s an api where Siri can ask “what’s playing” and iOS knows which app has the audio output currently, so it asks that app, and spotify replies with song name, artist and link (or maybe just link) and then Apple figures out which song that is on their service.

I run an independent music label and I was confused as to why no matter what I did, my Spotify stats always stayed low... No matter how much I shared links on Twitter or other social media sites, month after month, my monthly listeners on Spotify would stay below 20 listeners, despite having published over 30 songs that were well supported on other streaming sites like YouTube and Audiomack...

Politics also have a huge effect on even what is shared successfully on the web. Companies go to great links to ensure that you don't leave their platform, which also cuts artists out of pay a lot as well.

I also found that Shazam also incorrectly identified many of my songs, and pointed them to music by other artists, that looked like they were getting a lot more plays than me.

The only way I could explain it is that things aren't fair. There is money involved, and the people at the top of the food chain work very hard to ensure they make it without any thought of the independent musicians like us. It's sad, but the gap between being listened to and not being listened too is widening greatly despite all the equality the internet originally promised.

Luckily I run my own website, where the stats and streams aren't all mysteriously low too.

I really hate this trend more than anything else. Platforms are trying to hijack file and protocol handlers. Now they are going after sharing. A few years a Microsoft add a news widget to the OS but clicking on a link will ignore your default browser and open Edge instead. That is just openly user hostile. Absolutely no one wants that behavior. Apparently Apple is going down the same path.

Reminds me of this: https://twitter.com/nedwards/status/1591170105505099777

me: i am listening to spotify. i press pause.

macOS: i pause spotify.

me: VERY good. okay, a little bit later i press play. what do you do?

macOS: uh, i unpause a youtube video in a tab from four hours ago

me: try again

macOS: I LAUNCH APPLE MUSIC AND PLAY SONGS OF INNOCENCE

People hate hearing it (sorry I guess) but modern MacOS is a literal joke. It's literally unbelievable to me that putting on my headphones tells my Mac to logically open Apple Music and start playing random music by default.

Generally that’s because your headphones are the ones sending a play signal on connect.

None of my Apple Bluetooth headphones send a play command but some of my previous third party ones did.

Some of them allow changing that default but it’s not the OS that’s the issue, it’s the headphones. The OS is simply doing what it’s being told to do.

me: i am listening to a podcast on iOS podcast app. i press wired headphone button.

iOS: i pause the podcast.

me: okay, a little bit later i press play. what do you do?

iOS: beeply booply, Voice Control listening…

me: voice control? I have voice control switched off in settings -> accessibility

iOS: why not take your phone out, take your gloves off, cancel voice control, lock unlock to get rid of the unlock prompt and get the Lock Screen back then press play on it?

Me: can I voice control “play”?

iOS: apparently not, no.

There probably is a less nefarious reason here. They built a “send this song to Alice” feature but supporting it for non-Apple services is very tough. They will need to work with everyone to integrate it. It’s possible they haven’t gotten to it or Spotify hasn’t gotten to it or didn’t bother. We don’t know.

Tangential to this but, when I want to share a song, I copy the link from Apple Music and pop it into the excellent https://songwhip.com so whoever is on the receiving end can choose their preferred way of listening.

Doesn’t seem to be standard behaviour, on iOS 16 at least.

I tried multiple phrases to share a song and Siri shared a Spotify link every single time:

https://i.imgur.com/6kKxhW4.jpg

That's good to know. I have a 6S, so I can only upgrade to 15.4.

Not very on topic but Siri is such hot garbage. I have dozens of screen dumps where the text is correct but the Siri interpretation of the prompt is just completely wrong.

It would have been better if they just gave me a shell-like language. Example case: “To each person in Jane, John, send text message with text 'I am on my way'”. This is completely impossible to do with Siri as is, it does not understand the difference between sending ONE message to many recipients and MANY messages to EACH recipient.

I would love it if there were a script for building Siri decision trees.

Thing is: there kind of is, actually, it's Shortcuts.

But that's "trigger with a keyword, provide more data", what I want is to be able to write out a sentence like "To each person in @person send Signal message $message" so I can say "to each person in Moe, Curly, Larry send Signal message "nyuk nyuk, person" and Moe gets "nyuk nyuk, Moe" and so on.

What I do not want is the kind of crappy mind-reading that the Google and Amazon voices try to do. Siri is stupid: but she's reassuringly stupid.

Rant:

Growth at all costs will ultimately wreck Apple.

It's past time for Apple to transition from a growth stock to a blue chip.

From stock buybacks to dividends (and higher wages).

From conquering every market and enemy to being a good shepherd of their existing products.

Cumulatively, dick moves like messing with Spotify and embracing ads harm Apple's hard earned branding.

I wish they'd redouble their focus on their customers and leave their (perceived) competitors alone.

There's SO MUCH left for Apple to do. Wearable and affective computing will be huge. Micromobility could be huge (pivot from Project Titan, h/t Horace Dediu). Personal health will be huge. I'm still waiting to backup my desktop to iCloud. And maybe there's a future IoT play (h/t Robert Cringely). I'm fairly bullish on AR too.

Etc.

Movies and music are nice. But they're not core customer needs. They're no longer forward looking.

And besides, Apple's UX for music and podcasts still sucks. Irredeemable. Stop sucking up all the oxygen and let some young bloods take a whack at the problem.

I wander if Siri used Shazam to identify the song to send it, rather than the share sheet api?

Back in my day, we used to trade CDs to share music.

Is the convenience of technology still worth it?

Only if you don't use Apple user-hostile garbage.

What happens if you try to share a song that’s on Spotify but not Apple Music?

Conspiracy answer:

Siri: Okay, setting timer for 23 minutes

Anti-trust violation; your attorney general might be interested.

Just don’t use Siri ! I have never found any value in it and it’s fairly obvious it all heads to some big central server off your phone - that’s something I really don’t want to be paying for.

With Apple moving into the advertising business, those of us who moved to the iPhone as the least bad of the two mainstream options should have reasons to be worried.

Clever.

hello, antitrust

“Apple: Think Arrogance”

.. ha! perhaps SIRI is smarter than we give credit. go SIRI!

Somehow HN would rather believe that Apple, which paid its engineers millions of dollars to develop Siri APIs to support music app integrations (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/media), wants to pull a fast one on (checks notes) people with broken screens who use Siri to verbally share songs from Spotify.

The features we are talking about are from iOS 14 (Siri+Spotify) and iOS 15 (Siri+sharing). Apparently everyone here releases version 1.0 of their software with all the low priority feature requests fully implemented.

The simplest solution might be for the Now Playing APIs (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer/mpnowp...) to be extended with a "shareable URL" value that Siri can use.

But Apple designers might start thinking, what if you're a Spotify user, but your friend is an Amazon Music user? The Spotify link is as useless to them as an Apple Music link is to you. And so rather than continue down the path of sharing per-service URLs, they might want to step back and revisit this in a future release, and create a solution for sharing metadata that allows playback in the recipient's preferred Music service.

But that starts opening a can of worms of, what if it's not available on your music service, or if you send it to an Android user, etc. etc. It is reasonable they might punt on a fully-formed solution for the first iteration of the sharing feature.

I see where you're coming from - but if I want to share something, I expect it to be shared by whatever protocol the service I'm sharing from uses (in this case a Spotify link). There isn't even a method to convert my Spotify link to an Apple Music link in the UI, so why would I want that behaviour when I'm using Siri?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com