Spotify opens doors to iOS devs with new API
Subscription streaming music service Spotify launched an API on Wednesday that allows third-party iOS developers to integrate Spotify into their apps. Called libspotify, the new resource should allow for some fairly innovative uses of Spotify services.
Context & Ripple Effects
Spotify has spent two years clearing Apple's gates before opening its own: Apple approved the Spotify iPhone app back in August 2009 (Apple's approval of the Spotify iOS app), and the service only reached U.S. users in July 2011, launching invite-only with Facebook enlisted as a distribution partner. With libspotify, the company flips the relationship — instead of asking Apple for permission once, it hands every iOS developer a supported way to embed Spotify streaming inside their own apps.
The timing matters because Spotify's U.S. conversion funnel is still unproven: reporting from early August 2011 put the service at roughly 1.4 million free-trial signups and around 175,000 paying U.S. customers, though those figures remain unconfirmed by the company. An API that lets third-party apps carry the player multiplies the surfaces where that trial-to-paid conversion can happen.
First-order effects
- Third-party iOS developers can now build Spotify playback directly into their apps via libspotify, moving Spotify's footprint beyond its single first-party app onto whatever integration partners ship.
- Every embedded instance funnels listeners toward Spotify subscriptions, giving the company more entry points for converting the free-trial base it accumulated after the July 2011 U.S. launch.
Second-order effects
- Apple regains a gatekeeping role it thought it had settled in 2009: each third-party app shipping libspotify passes through App Store review again, making Spotify's iOS reach dependent on repeated approvals rather than one.
- Rival subscription services face pressure to match the move, since an app whose music comes pre-wired to Spotify effectively locks that app's audience into Spotify accounts.
Third-order effects
- If libspotify adoption holds, Spotify shifts from being a product competing for downloads to a platform competing for developers — the same structural position Apple occupies on iOS, now contested at the music layer.
- The arrangement sets up a recurring friction point: the more of the iOS ecosystem runs on Spotify's library, the more Apple's review decisions about those integrations become de facto competitive levers between the two companies.
The trend: Streaming music services are evolving from standalone apps into licensed platforms whose libraries live inside other developers' software, with Apple's App Store review standing as the chokepoint on how far that embedding can go.