Note, Siri users: You will eventually be able to drop Apple Music and make Spotify, or another third-party service, your default value.
First discovered by Reddit users (via MacRumors), the new feature is part of the developer and public betas for iOS 14.5. It is therefore not available for everyone netnou.
If you have downloaded one of the betas on your iPhone, you get the chance to change your default music service the first time you ask Siri to play a song.
After downloading the iOS 14.5 public beta, I immediately tested the feature. Rather than say “Hey Siri, play Mumford & Sons on Spotify,” I said “Hey Siri, play Mumford & Sons.”
From there, Siri lists three streaming services that are currently on my phone: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. At the bottom of the screen it asked, “Which app do you want to use?”
You see options for all the streaming services downloaded to your phone.
Image: screenshot / apple
Once you have selected the preference, it will start playing automatically.
Image: screenshot / apple
After selecting Spotify, it asked for permission to access my Spotify data. After tapping “Yes”, it started playing a song via the app. Now Siri automatically plays music on Spotify without me having to specify.
You are also asked to give permission to access your data in the app.
Image: screenshot / apple
But the setup process was a bit buggy for some – which is part of downloading any beta software. For example, Reddit user mvbalan said:
“Wow, find it! It looks like it’s half baked like when I want to play a specific artist, song, playlist or album, it’s the default I chose in the menu, but when I say ‘play music’ is Apple Music by default “
The creator of the thread, matejamm1, also found that the feature does not work very smoothly:
“Yes, it’s a bit contradictory, as with all things Siri. Just now I asked it to play ‘Blue hotel’, after which it offered me to choose, then I turned it down and it again asked and it played straight on Apple Music., and when I asked for it the third time, it asked me to access my Pocket Casts data, which is a podcast app and of course has no music at all.
The second screenshot was another opportunity 30 minutes later. I just posted it to show that Deezer has temporarily become the default music service for Siri. This may be an indication that the change of standard will soon come to all services. “
From the screenshots above, you can see that the feature was buggy for me as well, as it mentioned Apple Podcasts as an option (which of course is a podcast app).
However, I noticed this when I requested it “ArmChair Expert with Dax Shepard,” it started playing the latest episode on the Apple Podcasts app (albeit also available on Spotify). Since it’s still in beta, it’s possible that it’s currently difficult to identify the difference between songs and podcasts.
Clearly, Apple still needs to do some work before the feature is officially introduced in the final version of iOS 14.5. Regardless, you can at least look forward to shaving off every Siri command every time you want to play music.