[canuckintime]

Apple has not been clear about the capabilities of Shorcuts and still has limits[1] that prevent "competing music service" from working as OP suggests:

> Apple may have been slightly coy about this API (extensive documentation was not available at all during the iOS 12 beta)... There are caveats in the API, which may also be a turn-off for the likes of Google and Spotify: media shortcuts don't enable full-blown integrations with third-party audio streaming services. You can only ask Siri to play items you have previously assigned a custom phrase; this suggests that most users will only record a handful of phrases for entire playlists, charts, or artist pages. The ability to ask Siri to search and play any song or podcast episode is still exclusive to Apple Music and Podcasts.

[1] https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-rev...

[bgarbiak]

There are user-made shortcuts for Spotify already[0]. These use external website to connect to Spotify API and require a prompt. So, instead of "Play Kurt Vile" you have to say "Play artist", wait for a note, then say "Kurt Vile". Far from perfect, but works. Sometimes. Like all things Siri.

[0] https://shortcutsgallery.com/siri-shortcuts/?_search=spotify

[mullingitover]

Exactly, thank you. Apple is absolutely prioritizing short-term profits and their own ambitions before customers' feature requests in this area. Spotify, and every other music service, would've had integrations ready to go well before the iOS 12 launch if that was all it took for them to be given first-class music player status on iPhone.

[saagarjha]

Spotify has been given a number of APIs that lets them act similar to a first-party app in iOS 12. As far as I’m aware, they haven’t really used them yet.

[mullingitover]

So you're saying every third-party music app has the ability to be run with "Hey Siri, play [song] on [spotify/tidal/etc]?" and Spotify is blatantly lying? Because on their support forum they straight up say this can't be done.

[saagarjha]

That particular example isn’t possible (so they’re technically right): Shortcuts can only detect constant phrases. But there’s a easy way around this: split it into two parts, the first one detecting “Spotify play a song”, asks “which one”, then listens for the song name and plays that. A bit more cumbersome, but still fits the fixed-text restriction.