HomePod to work with third-party music services such as Spotify
Apple is adding third-party music service support to HomePod, allowing users who subscribe to services such as Spotify and Pandora to set them as their default music player.
While the feature wasn’t mentioned during Apple’s long-awaited Worldwide Developers Conference today, which saw the company announce iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, tvOS 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur, one of the screens shown to users during the conference included a brief mention of the feature set to arrive later this year.
Currently, the only way to play music on HomePod without an Apple Music subscription is to stream songs using AirPlay, with users unable to fully use Siri, leaving many potential buyers who aren’t fully invested in the Apple ecosystem to look elsewhere for an alternative smart speaker.
Unlike iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, tvOS 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur which all are now available to registered developers through Apple’s Developer portal, no beta updates are available for HomePod.