Spotify launches hands-free voice assistant

The Spotify mobile app can now play tunes at your command and you won’t even need to touch the screen, thanks to the music streaming service’s new hands-free voice assistant. 

While Premium users were able to use voice search for years, they still had to press on a microphone logo and speak into the phone to search for a tune. 

Now, you simply need to call out the wake word “Hey Spotify” to request for specific artists, songs, playlists and podcasts. You can also ask to pause the music, skip a track or save a song to your library. 

Currently, Spotify Voice is only available to certain lucky Premium users. 

One notable difference between Spotify’s in-app voice assistant and other voice assistants, such as Siri or Alexa, is that you would need to be already in the app to activate it. The wake word would not be detected by Spotify if you call it out when you’re outside of the app. 

When the feature is rolled out in Singapore, iOS users can turn it on by accessing their Privacy settings and enabling microphone access for Spotify. 

Android users can go to their phone settings, go to Spotify under Apps, and tap on Permissions. Next to Microphone, you can switch Spotify’s access on. 

However, it is not specified as to when Spotify Voice will be made available in Singapore.