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

194 points by desertraven 4y ago

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?

akmarinov 4y ago
What happens if you try to share a song that’s on Spotify but not Apple Music?
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Conspiracy answer: Siri: Okay, setting timer for 23 minutes
marcodena 4y ago
It seems something to add to this website https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fetzu 4y ago
  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.
  - red_trumpet 4y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    What are you talking about? Spotify premium is currently USD 9.99/mo.
    - 8ytecoder 4y ago
      $12.99 when you subscribe via App Store.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        That's truly unfair and must feel awful as an iPhone user. Fingers crossed that Apple makes this right in the long-term.
        LegitShady 4y ago
        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.
        FinnKuhn 4y ago
        iPhone users can still subscribe via the website, if they want to save a few $ a month afaik
        brokenmachine 4y ago
        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.
- scarface74 4y ago
  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.
  - Omniusaspirer 4y ago
    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.
    - simion314 4y ago
      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.
      - 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nmlt 4y ago
  I thin Apple should have rejected all versions of the Spotify app. It’s atrocious.
  - testmasterflex 4y ago
    Can you elaborate?
  - piva00 4y ago
    400+M people beg to differ from your assessment :)
  - usea 4y ago
    I also hate spotify's applications, but apple should not have any say in what software users can run on their devices.
    - brokenmachine 4y ago
      This comment has to be a joke, right?
- taneq 4y ago
  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.
nicolaslem 4y ago
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.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  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.
  - harry8 4y ago
    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.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Can you explain to me exactly which technologies are preventing Siri from being made into an iPhone app? Somehow, I don't believe you.
    - rgovostes 4y ago
      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 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.
pflenker 4y ago
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.
- ushakov 4y ago
  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
  - TheJoeMan 4y ago
    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.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Yeah. Or I even wonder if Siri is not "Shazaming" it and sending the match from that
  - e-clinton 4y ago
    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
- smileybarry 4y ago
  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.
samwillis 4y ago
I wander if Siri used Shazam to identify the song to send it, rather than the share sheet api?
toxik 4y ago
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.
- samatman 4y ago
  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.
autoexec 4y ago
Replaced spotify links should be the least of your worries. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings 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.
- lnsru 4y ago
  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.
  - batch12 4y ago
    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.
    - mcculley 4y ago
      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.
  - nolok 4y ago
wodenokoto 4y ago
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.
szundi 4y ago
Clever.
dmitriid 4y ago
Reminds me of this: https://twitter.com/nedwards/status/1591170105505099777 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
- smoldesu 4y ago
  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.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    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.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
permo-w 4y ago
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
DueDilligence 4y ago
.. ha! perhaps SIRI is smarter than we give credit. go SIRI!
fattybob 4y ago
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.
drewbeck 4y ago
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.
- Siddarth1977 4y ago
  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?
  - Lievelingsduif 4y ago
    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.
  - 4y ago
sebastien_b 4y ago
“Apple: Think Arrogance”
specialist 4y ago
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.
yalogin 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
CharlesW 4y ago
This works normally for me — Siri correctly shares the Spotify link. https://imgur.com/a/EiOKFMM https://imgur.com/a/EiOKFMM I had the crazy thought that I'd try it before rage-posting.
- sbuk 4y ago
  But knee-jerking is so much easier!
- karlshea 4y ago
  Or—like everything with Siri—it works one way the first time, and a different way the second time with the exact same input.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    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]".
- desertraven 4y ago
  Interesting. What iOS version are you running? I'm running 15.4
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    I’m running the 16.2 public beta. I wonder if it’s possible that they’ve changed this behavior since 15.4?
- gtirloni 4y ago
  A/B testing seems likely.
everdrive 4y ago
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.
carrozo 4y ago
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 https://songwhip.com so whoever is on the receiving end can choose their preferred way of listening.
woodruffw 4y ago
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.
megaman821 4y ago
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.
hatware 4y ago
Back in my day, we used to trade CDs to share music. Is the convenience of technology still worth it?
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  Only if you don't use Apple user-hostile garbage.
rgovostes 4y ago
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 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/mpnowplayinginfocenter 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.
- desertraven 4y ago
  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?
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Anti-trust violation; your attorney general might be interested.
andrew-ld 4y ago
hello, antitrust
andyexeter 4y ago
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 https://i.imgur.com/6kKxhW4.jpg
- desertraven 4y ago
  That's good to know. I have a 6S, so I can only upgrade to 15.4.
winternett 4y ago
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.

194 points by desertraven 4y ago

akmarinov 4y ago

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

TeMPOraL 4y ago
Conspiracy answer: Siri: Okay, setting timer for 23 minutes

marcodena 4y ago

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

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fetzu 4y ago
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.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- shkkmo 4y ago
  What are you talking about? Spotify premium is currently USD 9.99/mo.
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    $12.99 when you subscribe via App Store.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      That's truly unfair and must feel awful as an iPhone user. Fingers crossed that Apple makes this right in the long-term.
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        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.
      - FinnKuhn 4y ago
        iPhone users can still subscribe via the website, if they want to save a few $ a month afaik
      - brokenmachine 4y ago
        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.
scarface74 4y ago
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.
- Omniusaspirer 4y ago
  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.
  - simion314 4y ago
    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.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nmlt 4y ago
I thin Apple should have rejected all versions of the Spotify app. It’s atrocious.
- testmasterflex 4y ago
  Can you elaborate?
- piva00 4y ago
  400+M people beg to differ from your assessment :)
- usea 4y ago
  I also hate spotify's applications, but apple should not have any say in what software users can run on their devices.
  - brokenmachine 4y ago
    This comment has to be a joke, right?
taneq 4y ago
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.

nicolaslem 4y ago

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.

Gigachad 4y ago
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.
- harry8 4y ago
  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.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Can you explain to me exactly which technologies are preventing Siri from being made into an iPhone app? Somehow, I don't believe you.
  - rgovostes 4y ago
    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 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.

pflenker 4y ago

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.

ushakov 4y ago
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
- TheJoeMan 4y ago
  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.
raverbashing 4y ago
Yeah. Or I even wonder if Siri is not "Shazaming" it and sending the match from that
- e-clinton 4y ago
  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
smileybarry 4y ago
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.

samwillis 4y ago

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

toxik 4y ago

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.

samatman 4y ago
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.

autoexec 4y ago

Replaced spotify links should be the least of your worries. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings 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.

lnsru 4y ago
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.
- batch12 4y ago
  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.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    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.
- nolok 4y ago

wodenokoto 4y ago

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.

szundi 4y ago

Clever.

dmitriid 4y ago

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

smoldesu 4y ago
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.
- dagmx 4y ago
  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.
jodrellblank 4y ago
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.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

permo-w 4y ago

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

DueDilligence 4y ago

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

fattybob 4y ago

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.

drewbeck 4y ago

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.

Siddarth1977 4y ago
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?
- Lievelingsduif 4y ago
  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.
- 4y ago

sebastien_b 4y ago

“Apple: Think Arrogance”

specialist 4y ago

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.

yalogin 4y ago

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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

CharlesW 4y ago

This works normally for me — Siri correctly shares the Spotify link. https://imgur.com/a/EiOKFMM https://imgur.com/a/EiOKFMM I had the crazy thought that I'd try it before rage-posting.

sbuk 4y ago
But knee-jerking is so much easier!
karlshea 4y ago
Or—like everything with Siri—it works one way the first time, and a different way the second time with the exact same input.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  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]".
desertraven 4y ago
Interesting. What iOS version are you running? I'm running 15.4
- CharlesW 4y ago
  I’m running the 16.2 public beta. I wonder if it’s possible that they’ve changed this behavior since 15.4?
gtirloni 4y ago
A/B testing seems likely.

everdrive 4y ago

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.

carrozo 4y ago

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 https://songwhip.com so whoever is on the receiving end can choose their preferred way of listening.

woodruffw 4y ago

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.

megaman821 4y ago

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.

hatware 4y ago

Back in my day, we used to trade CDs to share music. Is the convenience of technology still worth it?

brokenmachine 4y ago
Only if you don't use Apple user-hostile garbage.

rgovostes 4y ago

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 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/mpnowplayinginfocenter 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.

desertraven 4y ago
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?

mensetmanusman 4y ago

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

andrew-ld 4y ago

hello, antitrust

andyexeter 4y ago

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

desertraven 4y ago
That's good to know. I have a 6S, so I can only upgrade to 15.4.

winternett 4y ago

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.