Spotify working on improving its voice control, and is going to add the command "Hey Spotify" so that we can request songs, artists or playlists from the application without having to touch our smartphone.
In a certain sense, with "Hey Spotify" the streaming music service is getting a little closer to voice assistants, possibly because I'd rather not rely so heavily on Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and Amazon's Alexa.
Now then, the "Hey Spotify" command will be much more limited, and will be used exclusively to request music, there is no greater claims. In fact, it will use the current voice search system, with the advantage that we won't need to press the microphone for it to start listening to us.
The current Spotify Voice browser works in English at the moment (with quite limited commands), so hopefully after this incorporation the company strives to bring it to Spanish and other languages.
This novelty has been discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, an engineer who analyzes the code of the apps in search of new functions. Although "Hey Spotify" has not yet been enabled, internally it does appear:
The screenshot itself points out the biggest problem with Spotify's "voice assistant": only works if we have the app open in the foreground, so we won't be able to use it while doing other tasks.
This is an inconvenience that is difficult to overcome, as Android and iOS increasingly limit access to the microphone of applications in order to protect user privacy.
Considering that YouTube Music and Apple Music also compete in the streaming space, it seems more than doubtful that mobile operating systems will facilitate the integration of "Hey Spotify" in the future.
Not to forget that Siri and Google Assistant already let you control Spotify, so there's not much incentive to support a third-party assistant.
On the other hand, there are practical drawbacks: we are unlikely to use voice commands if we use headphones in public, and if music is playing on the mobile's speakers, voice recognition could fail.
Of course, it may help us when Spotify doesn't work in the car, as the streaming platform sometimes gives errors when integrating into vehicles, and through the assistant We only need to have the application open to interact.
As always in these cases, it is difficult to know when a function in development is going to be launched, and it could even be canceled if the result is not as expected. Actually, we would like the "Hey Spotify" assistant to come out in Spanish, but in principle the most realistic thing is to think that English will be prioritized.
What do you think of "Hey Spotify"? Would you be interested in it being launched with compatibility with Spanish?
