One of the quietest ways a platform exercises power is through the default. For years, asking Siri to 'play some music' meant Apple Music on iPhone: third-party services worked, but only if you named them. On iOS 27 that changes — Spotify users can set the service as their default music app, so a plain request routes to Spotify, TechCrunch reports.
Technically it is a settings toggle. Practically, the default is where habits are formed. Someone starting music by voice wants to make one decision — 'play music' — not four. Whichever service answers that request gets the playback, the data, and the relationship, without an app ever being opened.
For Spotify, access to exactly that slot has been the centre of its long fight with Apple, and it was never only about music. The dispute ran from the 30 per cent App Store commission to anti-steering rules that limited how Spotify could point users to its own sign-up page, through to enforcement of the European Union's Digital Markets Act, including a penalty against Apple of roughly 500 million euros in 2025 over obstructing competition among music-streaming apps.
Opening the default-music slot is the kind of remedy regulators design and rival products actually feel: not a new feature, but a removed point of friction. It is also a lesson in what platform neutrality looks like in practice — rarely granted voluntarily, usually extracted one category at a time.
The more consequential effect may be indirect. Once the default music app is choosable, the question of why the same does not apply to maps, messaging or the browser becomes harder to answer — and every additional category is another market where the default slot's advantage evaporates.
Still open: the report does not settle whether the change applies globally or only where the Digital Markets Act applies, nor exactly where the setting lives or whether it applies to existing users automatically.
