Spotify Premium and Discovery Pro

[GTI-7-Performance]

I have signed up for 30 day free trial of Spotify Premium. For me the big attraction was to be able to listed to up to 3,300 tracks (as 'Playlists') offline. ie. in the car.

I have tried with Discovery Pro and iPhone, iPad and iPod Shuffle. All have the same problem:

With both Bluetooth and Apple cable it works fine if Spotify is open on the device it plays and shows the track info and album cover. But the tracks are not visible in 'show tracks' mode - there is a message to this effect. Tracks cannot be jumped and Playlists cannot be changed by Discovery Pro. Any changes, like jumping tracks sends the device to iTunes.

Otherwise it with play through one track after another (or shuffle) on a playlist. Then stops and the next playlist has to be selected in Spotify on the device - not Discovery Pro.

I want Spotify to work like iTunes, but iTunes takes over - even if switched off.

Any ideas?

[AlanH]

I think that the problem you're having is due to iTunes being the default music player, and Spotify is a third party app. If you Google "Spotify on iPhone in car", you'll find you're not alone. That Google search should take you to Spotify community forums - you might find an answer there.

[Climb_Ne]

I currently have a gtd waiting for the 1st of March for delivery and would be very interested to know how much luck android Spotify premium users have had. Does it suffer from similar problems?

[AlanH]

Just one further comment - you could jailbreak your iDevice, allowing you to set another app as your default music player. But maybe a step too far...?

[JakeF]

Just to chime in with my experience, I have a Kia Cee'd currently (waiting for my GTI to be built) and use Spotify on my iPhone 5s on the in-car nav/entertainment without issue (although it's not the full set of features). Obviously it's a different manufacturer but I think the way Bluetooth connects to mobile devices, it should send generic track control commands.

To get techie for a minute, all car stereos should use A2DP to get the audio from the device, and then use AVRCP to control the tracks, and assuming they do, these BT profiles certainly work on the Spotify iOS app as it works with other BT devices I have (headphones and home speakers).

I've found iPhone compatibility over BT varies between OS releases, so for example it worked fine in iOS 6 but was buggy in 6.1 and has been largely okay in iOS 7. Not sure if you guys are on the latest possible versions of the Spotify app and iOS on your phone, but as Spotify last updated on 27 Jan, you may not be possibly...

Anyway, here's hoping things either can be made to work or updates improve things, as I'm going to go nuts if I end up downgrading on my stereo with my GTI! Also just to say jailbreaking isn't always an option as iOS 7 is tougher to break and the usual warnings about voiding warranties apply (Apple are a tight bunch and can tell if you've ever jailbroken your iOS device).