Spotify will not be supporting Google Cast for Audio
The other day we learned about Google Cast for Audio, Google’s plan to bring the ease of Chromecasting video to your music – so that in one button press, your tunes can go from your phone to your hi-fi.
Despite pledges of support from a number of manufacturers, including Sony, the largest streaming music player – Spotify – has now confirmed that it won’t be supporting the new system.
According to Pocket Lint, it will instead be continuing to push its own separate “Spotify Connect” technology – which works in a similar way.
“We launched Spotify Connect because we believe that by owning the technology end-to-end, we can deliver the best connected home music experience.”, a spokesperson told the website.
This isn’t hugely surprising, but is a shame – we can’t help but wonder “why not both?”, or indeed, why can’t the industry work together to make the technologies interoperable, and thus better for consumers?
In any case, it is easy to see how Google could subvert Spotify’s non-cooperation. All it would have to do is bake Casting functionality directly into the next version of the Android operating system, routing all audio from the phone via whatever speaker it is connected to.
It’ll be interesting to see what sides the various speaker manufacturers all pick.
