Waze and Spotify might live on your phone as two separate apps but the companies behind them want to bring them together in a partnership that should sound like music to any driver’s ears.
If you’re using your smartphone in the car, chances are you’re using a navigation tool or playing music. Spotify and Waze want to make it easier to do both at the same time by displaying information from one app when you’re inside the other. From inside Waze, you’ll see a small Spotify logo you can tap on to see the track you’re playing or browse through your playlists. Equally, Spotify will now let you view navigation instructions from inside their app in a bar at the top.
The new feature is simple enough. But it shows us what’s possible when two apps start working together. Rather than have apps that live in a silo on your phone and compete for attention, this is what can happen when app companies think more holistically about how consumers go about using their phones on a daily basis and how they can integrate offerings to create better experiences. Maybe we’ll start seeing even more collaborations form between apps in the future.
Waze wants users to stay safe when using the new feature while driving. So you’ll only be able to browse your playlists inside Waze when the car is at a standstill. Guess they’re taking a lesson from Niantic’s PR headache dealing with news of drivers causing fatal accidents while playing Pokemon Go. Still, making the app unusable until you get to a full stop seems a little heavy handed. I mean, sometimes we truly are just passengers who want to use our smartphones responsibly from inside the car.
The new feature will be released to Android users globally in the next few weeks. iOS users will get the update at an unspecified date.
