Last time I checked you can only control the official Spotify application on iOS with your own app, wich also means your app has to throw the user into Spotify

Last time I checked you can only control the official Spotify application on iOS with your own app, wich also means your app has to throw the user into Spotify to be able to start playback and then Spotify kicking it back to your app once playback started. A truly horrible user experience. I think a lot of small music discovery apps will either break or have to fall back to the above experience. My guess is this is the actual reason for the sunsetting, similarly how Twitter cut back the API access back in the day.