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Remember when Spotify made headlines last year for having a button to listen to an album in order? That's how low the bar is. I switched to Apple Music as well

Remember when Spotify made headlines last year for having a button to listen to an album in order? That's how low the bar is. I switched to Apple Music as well. It's not perfect but at least it's not trying to shove Podcasts into my music. Spotify also likes to complain about Apple being anti-competitive by locking them out of features, then when Apple does let 3rd party apps do things like Apple Watch offline background music playback, Spotify takes two and a half years to actually use it. https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/05/pandora-releases-redesigned-apple-watch-app-with-offline-playback-support https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/05/pandora-releases-... https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-05-21/enjoy-more-ways-than-ever-to-use-spotify-on-your-apple-watch-now-with-downloads/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-05-21/enjoy-more-ways-than... Edit to add: AirPlay 2 from iOS 11.4 (May 2018) still not supported, so you can't do multi-room audio, only a single speaker at a time

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
> then when Apple does let 3rd party apps do things like Apple Watch offline background music playback Entirely Apples fault, by the time they enabled the possibility of the feature it had become apparent that the Watch as a platform wasn't really worth focusing on so it's on the backburner now. If that feature was possible day one, it would have happened. But instead Apple has this attitude of locking things out from 3rd parties and only moving when it starts to make their products look bad.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  Offline music is really about fitness users, if you’re not a runner I can see how it looks useless. Anyone who wants it has switched off of Spotify by now, so at this point it probably doesn't matter if they ever get around to it.
  - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    >Offline music is really about fitness users Isn’t the entire concept of the device about fitness users? Seen as it failed to carve out any other niche.
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      More or less, I should have said runners. No need for offline music if you're weightlifting or sitting on an exercise bike. So it's a subset of the fitness userbase. But a big enough one that Spotify did eventually get this done. But I sorta wonder if their main motivation was that it was a bad look to continue complaining about Apple not letting them make a watch app on their "Apple is cheating" timeline, while also choosing to not make a watch app. If they actually cared about doing it, why take so long?
  - Thrymr 5y ago
    Offline music is also useful for travel: airplanes, car trips with imperfect cell coverage, train tunnels, etc. Not a small use case at all.
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      Ah that's true, I just tend to use podcasts for all that. Which I suppose is also a Spotify issue now, what with them turning into a podcast company.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

> then when Apple does let 3rd party apps do things like Apple Watch offline background music playback Entirely Apples fault, by the time they enabled the possibility of the feature it had become apparent that the Watch as a platform wasn't really worth focusing on so it's on the backburner now. If that feature was possible day one, it would have happened. But instead Apple has this attitude of locking things out from 3rd parties and only moving when it starts to make their products look bad.

wlesieutre 5y ago
Offline music is really about fitness users, if you’re not a runner I can see how it looks useless. Anyone who wants it has switched off of Spotify by now, so at this point it probably doesn't matter if they ever get around to it.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  >Offline music is really about fitness users Isn’t the entire concept of the device about fitness users? Seen as it failed to carve out any other niche.
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    More or less, I should have said runners. No need for offline music if you're weightlifting or sitting on an exercise bike. So it's a subset of the fitness userbase. But a big enough one that Spotify did eventually get this done. But I sorta wonder if their main motivation was that it was a bad look to continue complaining about Apple not letting them make a watch app on their "Apple is cheating" timeline, while also choosing to not make a watch app. If they actually cared about doing it, why take so long?
- Thrymr 5y ago
  Offline music is also useful for travel: airplanes, car trips with imperfect cell coverage, train tunnels, etc. Not a small use case at all.
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    Ah that's true, I just tend to use podcasts for all that. Which I suppose is also a Spotify issue now, what with them turning into a podcast company.