The good news is that it looks like the company hasn’t forgotten about its commitment, even if it remains noncommittal about when it will happen. So, it’s probably unsurprising that AirPlay 2 support is a marathon for Spotify rather than a sprint. The company acknowledged that “With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality” in September 2018, but it took them over two years before they were able to deliver the feature. It wasn’t until two years later that the watchOS app gained direct streaming support and six months after that before offline playback came to the wearable. After all, it took until 2018 for Spotify to release an Apple Watch app that was little more than a glorified remote control for the Spotify iPhone app - something the company should have been able to do in 2015. However, the company notably didn’t commit to a time frame, and anybody who had followed Spotify’s glacial adoption of other Apple features probably wasn’t holding their breath.

Those requests appeared to fall mostly on deaf ears until August 2021, when Spotify initially said it had no plans to add it before reversing course a few days later to confirm that “Spotify will support Airplay 2.” Spotify users have been clamoring for it since early 2019. AirPlay 2 made its debut in 2018 and was available to third-party developers from the very beginning. To make matters worse, unlike the HomePod, Apple has never limited third-party support for its AirPlay streaming protocol. However, it’s anybody’s guess when that’s actually going to arrive.

While HomePod support doesn’t seem to be on the table, Spotify did commit to supporting AirPlay 2, which could offer a reasonable workaround for iPhone users with HomePods, Apple TVs, or other AirPlay-compatible devices. Even Deezer quickly added HomePod support, yet Spotify doesn’t appear to be even entertaining the idea at this point. At that point, the ball was clearly in Spotify’s court, yet the company refused to pick it up, much less run with it.

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