Spotify still hasn’t added AirPlay 2 support to its iOS app — and now, it seems like it might never happen, according to a forum post spotted by MacRumors. The reason offered by the company in the post is that “audio driver compatibility issues” forced including the feature to be put on hold for the foreseeable future.
AirPlay 2, added as part of iOS 11 update, introduced multiroom audio, Siri voice control, and fairly broad support across a wide swath of speakers, televisions, and streaming services. It was a real first for Apple’s “casting” feature, which had previously been somewhat poorly supported outside of Apple’s own devices.
Spotify has its own way to get audio from its service to other devices in the form of Spotify Connect, but considering Spotify already supports Google Cast, skipping Apple’s newest streaming protocol seems like an odd omission. As MacRumors notes, Apple also doesn’t make it seem like it’s too hard to enable in its developer documentation either.
But say Spotify had a less-than-friendly relationship with Apple, maybe even going as far as filing an antitrust complaint against it and publicly calling it a bully, and the choice to not take the extra time to incorporate AirPlay 2 begins to make more sense. There’s no reason to not take Spotify at its word — this could be a technical issue that just takes too much work to solve — but for any Spotify subscriber on iOS, it seems like it would be hard to not feel like you’re caught in the crossfire between two tech giants on the outs.
The Verge has reached out to Spotify for confirmation that AirPlay 2 support is no longer in the works and that driver issues are the cause. The company didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment on Friday.
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