How to cast Spotify from Android to the Chromecast

[_Sergio_]

Right,

We all know that at the moment there is no official Spotify support for the Chromecast and that's a shame. Unfortunately sometimes companies business strategy goes in a direction different from what the customer base might like.

Assuming it's clear in your mind that there isn't an official support for the Chromecast, there is quite a good alternative way of doing it even if definitely more tricky than just update Spotify to the latest version (I never lose hopes though!)

First of all this solution requires a rooted phone: if you don't know what I'm talking about stop here. Chances are you will do a mess with the risk of making your phone unusable!

Even if you know what a rooted device is, it doesn't mean that there aren't risks. Many are the devices with all possible different ROMs: things can ALWAYS go wrong making your phone as useful as a stone. So do it at your own resposability.

Said all that the procedure is relatively easy:
1)You need a program to "intercept" all the audio flow of your device first. For this purpose you need to install Xposed. You will not find it in the Google Play store. It has been developed by the XDA community: go there and download the latest version.

2)Install the BubbleUPNP application: it does support Chromecast (among other things). Developers have designed a module, Audio Cast, which simply sends all audio to the Chrome cast. This module uses Xposed (that's why you need to install it)

It's that simple. 🙂

Good luck!

[Liam]

Good idea! There's a mod for anything nowadays 😉

Just a note, it's the XPosed framework, not Xpose 🙂

Liam

[_Sergio_]

You are absolutely right, thanks for the correction! 🙂

[gfagerland]

Thanks for the xposed tip.

I just use Chrome (the browser) and the "Google Cast"-chrome extension.

With Spotify's webplayer I have no problem listening to my music over chromecast 🙂

No hacking/rooting required, but it's not a very mobile solution, as I cast from the PC.

[Peter__]

I believe there is also a 3rd party app called Spoticast for casting Spotify.

[_Sergio_]

Hi,

Yes, you can beam Spotify from your PC but as you said, that's not a mobile solution. Also is worth noting that at the moment the WebPlayer is not supported on Google Chrome for Linux (see my other post in regard to this).

I'm aware that Spoticast exists but I was reading that it's still quite unstable but definitely worth trying.
I can tell you that BubblePnP is rock-solid: no issues whatsoever.

I've seen that Spotify has a number of agreement already to cast music to very selected hardware.
I think the service is called Spotify Connect?

So the fact that Chromecast is not supported (and it will never be) is a decision taken by the management since they have an alternative business model.

It's a pity but at least it's possible to find an alternative solution with BubblePnP or SpotiCast even if it's not a solution for the mass.

Cheers

Sergio

[Somatic]

Have they really said it will never be supported?
Officially?

Sounds illogical. No reason not to support both connect (1% of userbase) and chromecast (99% of userbase).

Still hoping it's just painfully slow developing and poor judgment from management group at spotify.

[_Sergio_]

Hi Somatic,

No, not at all, it's not official, it's just my opinion.

The thing is that it's more than a year that chrome cast is now available; I really struggle to see it as a slow development and poor judgment from management. But I hope you are right. 🙂

Don't forget that Google is a competitor of Spotify since Google Music came out and also Spotify has a close relationship with Apple which, again, is biggest Google competitor.

To implement the Chromecast support you probably need something like two weeks of development and three/four weeks of testing? To me it really looks like a strategy planned by the management.

Cheers

Sergio

[funtax]

Just use AirAudio to stream all audio from every app to any receiver.. Chromecast, DLNA, AirPlay and so on.

It's much simpler than all the other mentioned solutions.

[_Sergio_]

Hey  Funtax,

I didn't know about AirAudio, thanks for suggesting it.

It requires ROOT access but it's definitely quicker than using Xposed+BubbleUPnP even if I think the license costs a bit more than BubbleUPnP (not a big deal though).

I think that this is best suited for people with less experience on *hacking* the device since it works straight away (as long as the device is ROOTED).

BubbleUPnP seems to have more features like the transcoding but it really depends on what do you need it for.

Bottom line is that it is possible to beam music to ChromeCast/Any-DLNA device and this is what we want. 🙂

Cheers

Sergio

[bik3rjon]

How about linking up a car bluetooth hands free kit or something similar with it's output going through an audio amp? That way it will send all the audio from your phone and if you have a phone call it will interrupt the call and you coue mld even hook up mics around the room/house hidden in places and leave your phone on a charging cradle playing and transmitting the music switching to any calls you may have, you could also do cool tricks like setting up voice commands using Google Now, Tasker, and other apps, then you could just listen to it all around the house shouting out what you want to hear next, send text messages using voice commands etc. Would be awesome... In fact I think I might just go do that now!