After many rumors and some timid attempts, it seems that the time has come to say "Hey Spotify".
Spotify will also have its own voice assistant and it will be privacy-friendly. After rumors circulated in the last month, the platform dedicated to streaming audio would finally have a new ace to pull out of the sleeve, ready to listen and fulfill all the musical requests of the user.
As discovered by GSMArena, the first site to report the news, the feature is slowly making its appearance on users' devices. Once activated on your device, it will allow you to search within Spotify's huge database without having to manually interact with the search field. The application, therefore, adds another useful element that could be exploited in all those situations in which it is not allowed or not possible to use the smartphone directly, while doing sports, driving or simply have their hands full, thus making the whole listening experience even more enjoyable.
Spotify voice assistant, how it works
The operation of the Spotify voice assistant will be extremely simple. In fact, it follows what we've already seen with other assistants such as Siri, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, only this time the focus will be completely on the content hosted on the platform, so mainly music tracks, podcasts and audiobooks.
To "wake up" the assistant, you'll just have to use the phrase "Hey Spotify"; to work, the application must be open and the screen unlocked and turned on. This means that continuous listening by the app will only occur if certain conditions are met that indicate contextual use of the app.
As Spotify mentioned, privacy remains paramount, even with the new introduction. In fact, the platform itself has specified in its privacy policy that the only voice recordings that are retained are those made when the search button is pressed or consequently when the activation phrase is spoken.
Once activated, the assistant will be able to record the listening request. Whether it is a specific artist, a playlist or an album, as well as all the other options available on the service, the helper will start searching within the database and, once it finds the correct result, it will start playing it.
Speech search by Spotify, a novelty? Not quite
For Spotify Premium users, this is not a complete novelty, since voice search - without an assistant, though - was already introduced two years ago, in 2019. The first signs of the presence of the phrase-activated smart assistant, however, appeared just over a year ago, in March 2020, within the app.