We haven’t heard that much about Spotify’s European anti-competition complaint against Apple for a while, despite rumblings last year about a potential investigation. However, there have been some moves by Apple to open up its ecosystem in ways that address some of the complaints that Spotify had.
One concerns access to its Siri voice assistant, which was opened up last autumn with ‘SiriKit’ as part of the iOS 13 software. Spotify has already taken advantage on some Apple devices, and yesterday that extended to its Apple Watch app too. Small steps, but encouraging ones for these bitter rivals.
In separate Spotify news, it looks like we’ll soon be seeing the launch of its ‘Follow Feed’ feature in Spotify’s mobile app. First spotted in late February, it’s an in-app news feed of “new releases from artists you follow and more”.
This week, it appears to be getting switched on for some Spotify users: if you’ve got it, it’s a lightning-bolt icon next to the ‘settings’ icon at the top right of the Spotify app’s home screen.
It comes shortly after Apple Music added in-app notifications of new albums and tracks by artists in listeners’ libraries – we speculated then that this might be compared to Spotify’s plans to charge artists and labels for ‘marquee’ pop-up ads alerting listeners to new albums, but the Follow Feed may deflate any criticism on that front.
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