Spotify is hands down my favorite music streaming app. When I’m at the gym, I stream Spotify over my headphones. When I’m driving somewhere, I connect my phone to my car stereo and stream Spotify. When I get home to write for Techlicious, I stream Spotify to my Jambox. When I’m in bed, I stream white noise over Spotify to help get my shuteye. It’s a big part of my life – the app is almost always running.
Perhaps, then, I’m the perfect audience for Spotify’s newly announced feature, Spotify Connect. It essentially turns your iOS device into a remote control capable of seamlessly playing your music on different WiFi-connected devices and speakers around your home.
Here’s how Spotify Connect works. Say you’re working in the garden, listening to your favorite Milli Vanilli album. When you walk indoors, you press the new Connect button and choose your living room stereo from a drop-down menu. Your song then switches over to the stereo without missing a single beat, freeing your phone up to make calls, update Facebook or read emails. Headed upstairs to make the bed? No problem – just select your bedroom speaker from your phone and the music will play there, instead.
Connect tells Spotify what to play and on what audio device to play it. It’s as simple as that.
Of course, getting Connect to work as advertised required you to have a WiFi-connected stereo or speaker system with Spotify Connect technology built in. To that end, Spotify has paired up with ten different audio manufacturers (Denon, Philips, Marantz, Hama, Pioneer, Bang & Olufsen, Revo, Teufel, Argon, Yamaha) to make Connect as ubiquitous as possible. Your current home theater system probably won’t work with Connect, but the next one you buy likely will.
Spotify Connect is a premium feature coming soon for iOS devices, with Android and desktop support to follow. For more on Spotify Connect, watch the YouTube video above or visit the Spotify website.
