Spotify, a company who is pretty well-known for their streaming music offerings, and is actually a fairly popular streaming music service, has just announced a new integration for their app. This time it’s with Waze, the Google-owned traffic app. Waze is popular because it allows you to see traffic slowdowns on your route and get around them, but it also gives you directions like Google Maps would. And now, with this new update to the Spotify app, you can get directions from within the Spotify app while you’re listening to your favorite tunes.
Once you open the Spotify app, you’ll see a pop up at the top of the screen which will have a button to get you started with Waze integration. From there you’ll be able to start navigating anywhere with Waze, from the Spotify app. You’ll also be able to access your Spotify playlists from within the Waze app, and you also have the basic music controls inside the Waze app. Now most importantly here – and this will likely anger some folks – Waze and Spotify have made it so that you are unable to switch between the apps unless your car is at a full stop. This is so that you are keeping your eyes on the road, and not focused on your smartphone. The two companies are wanting their users to put safety first, which is completely understandable.
In a surprising turn of events, this functionality is actually only available to Android users. Spotify did not expand on why this is an Android only type thing right now, but it could be due to some limitations with iOS. It appears that this is an server-side change, and not an update to the Spotify app, so you won’t have to wait long for the functionality to be available on your device. This integration is pretty impressive, as it brings two of the most popular apps for drivers together. Allowing you to get directions while also controlling your music, seeing as just about everyone streams music while they are in the car (whether they are driving or not), this is definitely a good feature for Spotify to add.
