I set up the Amazon Echo over the weekend and have been an active user of my wife’s Spotify account which comes integrated with the Echo. I would have preferred to use my Apple Music account but the Echo currently only supports Spotify. I suspect the biggest reasons are competitive - Amazon and Apple are competing for the home and it’s likely that either Amazon doesn’t want to integrate Apple or Apple is preventing Amazon from getting the integration done. At the same time Amazon has a music offering yet they specifically call out the Spotify integration. Is this because Spotify is only a competitor for music and the value of an Echo trumps this? Is it because Spotify has more reach and this is a necessary integration? I’m sure the answer is a bit of both but it’s fascinating to see how these partnerships develop.

Ideally every company would provide an open way for others to integrate their apps but we live in a competitive, capitalist world where every company wants to get an edge over their competitors. As consumers it’s up to us to push for the integrations we want and make sure these platforms stay as open as possible - otherwise we’ll end up making the rich richer and prevent new entrants from even having a chance.