I Hate That Spotify Does Not Support AirPlay 2
I have been a long time user of Spotify and, I daresay, a Spotify fan. As much as they keep fucking with the interface, changing things for the sake of change, and adding useless features, I think their app feels 'right', their functionality is good and the library is as good as I could ask for.
Cracks have started to show for me recently though. Ghost artists rub me the wrong way (a rant for another day) and their lack of willingness to support AirPlay 2 shows a lot of disrespect for their customers.
I like Apple kit, and I've recently added a HomePod Mini to my suite of devices that I don't really need, purely as I want a Home Hub for HomeKit and alerts about the smoke alarm while away from home. Music playback on the HomePod Mini was to be a nice bonus for me then. I was aware going into this that Spotify only supported AirPlay 1. Various reports online stated lag and issues but naively I assumed that my WiFi is good and lag on audio controls wouldn't really be a big deal.
Well it turns out that AirPlay 1 is useless. Skips, pauses, lag of 30 seconds to change track.. totally unusable. I've always thought my WiFi situation was pretty good, with a router 'relatively' central in the house but on the ground floor, you're only ever about three to four metres away from it inside the house, but it turns out this isn't good enough for AirPlay 1.
So the frustration begins. I'd like to be able to use audio on the HomePod but I'd need to change streaming service for AirPlay 2 support. A free trial of Apple Music suggests that the Airplay 2 experience is a lot better - but not perfect (again, a rant for another day), so I'm left annoyed at Spotify.
AirPlay 2 was launched several years ago now and Spotify have said they are working on the functionality. Various requests are open on their forums, but they would rather mess about with Reels and Podcasts than add basic, fundamental functionality for what is presumably a huge portion of their customers.
I didn't want to do it, but I've jumped over to Apple Music for a while. EE give me six months free so at the very least I can try it, cancel Spotify and not pay for my music for a little while. Whether I'll return to Spotify remains to be seen.. at the very least with AM it's nice to know when I put on playlists that I'm hearing 'real' artists and not generic ghost artist junk.