After years of being forced to use Apple’s services on the iPhone by default, these restrictions are finally easing somewhat. As noted by MacRumors today, iOS 14.5 beta appears to allow you to set third-party music services as standard with Siri. This means that you can ask Siri to play a specific song or album and he will go straight to Spotify or YouTube Music. Siri currently only searches and plays things from any song you have in the Apple Music app, whether it’s your own music collection or the Apple Music subscription catalog.
It seems that after installing iOS 14.5, Siri will ask which music service you want to use when asking you to play a song. He then asks for permission to access the data of the music application of his choice and starts playing. After that, it will be played from that service by default.
It is important to note that you can currently ask Siri to play music from other services, but you only need to specify where you want it to play every time. Otherwise, it assumes that you are asking about Apple Music. For the many millions of people who use other music apps on the iPhone, it will certainly make life easier.
This is not the first time that Apple has allowed users to change their default services – iOS 14 has also added the option to set different browsers and email applications as default. Before its launch in September, Safari and Apple Mail were the default options, with no way to change them. Apple also added the option to change the default music service on its HomePod speakers at the end of last year, although currently Pandora is the only app that has added HomePod integration. Given the antitrust scrutiny under which the company is subject, allowing other applications and services to be set as standard may be a matter of relieving the pressure a little, as much as it is good for users.
IOS 14.5 was released in beta last week and has some significant new features in addition to support for music apps. Most notably, iPhone users with an Apple Watch will be able to unlock their phones using Face ID, even if they are using a facial cover. It is unclear when iOS 14.5 will be ready for everyone, but 14.4 was only released a few weeks ago, so it will probably be at the end of the month or early March.