Spotify rolling out a hands-free way to control your music; here’s how it works - Android

Spotify is rolling out a new way for users to request or play music from within the app. The feature is called ‘Hey Spotify’ and it will be rolling out for both Android and iOS users across the globe. The new feature was first spotted by GSMArena and 9to5Mac where they have been testing it […]

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Spotify is rolling out a new way for users to request or play music from within the app. The feature is called ‘Hey Spotify’ and it will be rolling out for both Android and iOS users across the globe.

The new feature was first spotted by GSMArena and 9to5Mac where they have been testing it for the past couple of days. Honestly, both the Android and iOS ecosystems come with their own voice assistants that can help you pull up your favourite track or playlist without having to touch the device, however, Spotify feels it needs to add one of its own to the list as well.

Until now, beta testers have been able to tell that the feature is a little less handy compared to existing voice assistants as you need to keep the app open to use the “Hey Spotify” feature. Also, it will not launch when your phone is asleep or when the app is running in the background.

How to use the feature

To use the “Hey Spotify” feature, users need to first open the app and just say “Hey Spotify” followed by the name of the song or the playlist. You can also use the feature to launch a radio station, skip or pause a track and more. During testing, it was also found that saying “Play something I like” would pull up a random track from your daily playlist.

The phone version of the feature has been in the works for years and users will soon receive a prompt to get started with the feature in the coming days. You can toggle it manually by going to Settings>Microphone Permissions> Hey Spotify.

Why now?

It is indeed befuddling why Spotify would launch its own voice assistant when there are many better versions of the same to do the job. It seems that the company is looking to work towards its own hardware and “Hey Spotify” is another way of collecting user data and inputs.