The company will open up even more, he says

May 6, 2020 07:06 GMT  ·  By

Spotify and Apple aren’t necessarily the best friends out there, but the two are still working together on a series of projects, including apps that run on iPhones and the Apple Watch.

Last year, Spotify officially filed a complaint against Apple in Europe, claiming that the Cupertino-based tech giant blocks innovation with a 30 percent App Store tax and restricts the access to some of its features for competing products.

Spotify claimed it couldn’t implement Siri support in the Spotify app, which would have essentially allowed its users to control the app with voice commands.

All these features were already available in Apple Music, the competing product from Apple. After the regulatory complaint, Apple agreed to work with Spotify on Siri support for the iPhone and the Apple Watch, and Spotify itself became more committed to the Apple ecosystem.

Long term changes

And this won’t stop here, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek believes. Apple will open up even more, he says in an interview with Bloomberg, albeit he does explain that this will happen in the long term and most likely gradually.

“Long term, we do expect Apple to open up,” Ek said. “We’re very encouraged about being able to now finally use Siri as a way of building in voice support and also being available to build products for the Apple TV and Apple Watch, something that we haven’t been able to do until very recently.”

Spotify claims it has more than 130 million subscribers, with the number of active users every month exceeding 286 million at the end of March. The service is available in over 79 markets, with the company claiming that it offers over 50 million tracks and 1 million podcast titles to all of its users. There are over 4 billion playlists on Spotify.