Apple and Spotify are not exactly the best of friends as they try to outdo each other in their bid to dominate the music streaming scene. The two are locked in an antitrust suit but Spotify is hopeful that its rival will open up and allow third-party applications greater access to the lucrative Apple platform.
In 2019, Spotify filed a complaint before the European Commission and accused the U.S. company of implementing unfair restrictions on products and services on the App Store. For instance, the music streaming provider said Apple tends to limit the deployment of updates for the Spotify mobile app and it is prevented from functioning on the Apple Watch.
These restrictions resulted in "big business impact," for Spotify and similar services looking to establish their presence on the Apple platform, according to Daniel Ek, CEO of the Stockholm-based company.
The recent moves made by Apple, however, have addressed the issues raised by Spotify. The Cupertino-based tech giant rolled out changes in Siri that now allows iPhone users to control Spotify through the digital assistant.
And the latest updates on the Apple Watch and Apple TV operating systems now make for better Spotify experience on the Apple platform, which according to Ek are encouraging signs.
"We're very encouraged about being able to now finally use Siri as a way of building in voice support and also being available to build products for the Apple TV and Apple Watch, something that we haven't been able to do until very recently," Ek told Bloomberg.
He added: "Long term, we do expect Apple to open up ... It's moving in the right direction, but we still have many, many steps to go before Apple is an open and fair platform."
The report, however, made clear that similar services have been operating on Apple's platform for several years but with no major problems such as the case of Spotify. It remains unknown as well if Apple made it hard for Spotify to issue versions of its applications that are optimized for the Apple Watch and Apple TV.
As pointed out by 9to5Mac, the claim made by Ek sounded strange because iOS 13 had already allowed the integration of Spotify with Siri in October 2019. The release of the music app for Apple TV followed shortly and it was noted that Spotify could have been introduced in the platform earlier, hence its absence in the preceding years was hardly Apple's fault.
Spotify's issue with Apple Watch is also a big question mark since Pandora, a competitor of the music service, has been long present in the platform. At best, it's hard to see how exactly Spotify wants to operate in the Apple platform, the report added.
