Xbox One getting background music soon, but not from Spotify

The Xbox One's major summer update will introduce, among other things, support for background music. This feature has been available on PlayStation 4 for more than a year now through a partnership with music-streaming giant Spotify. While it remains to be seen how background music will work on Xbox One, it looks like it won't be via Spotify.

Someone on Twitter recently asked the Spotify customer support channel if the service might come to Xbox One. The channel replied (via VideoGamer), "Right now we're focused on our exclusive partnership with PlayStation; we don't have any info regarding other consoles."

Sony partnered with Spotify in a big way, as the service officially replaced Music Unlimited when it launched for PS4 and PlayStation 3 in March 2015. Asked how long the PlayStation-Spotify exclusivity period might last, and if the service could come to other consoles, a Sony marketing director said in 2015, "That's to be decided exactly."

The app is having a lot of success, it seems. "Thanks to you, Spotify has become one of the most downloaded apps in PlayStation history," Sony said earlier this year. People have already streamed more than 5 billion tracks, and PlayStation users really like Drake.

Background music support comes to Xbox One on August 2. Microsoft has not yet detailed how it will work, though one possibility is it will support the company's Groove Music service. Microsoft's music service used to be called Xbox Music, but changed to Groove Music last summer.

Also coming to Xbox One through the summer update is the Siri-like Cortana digital assistant, as well as changes to the Game Collection interface to make it "faster and easier." The update will also add a Facebook friend finder tool, while sharing screenshots and gameplay clips will soon be doable in fewer steps than before. Check out this post for a full rundown of what to expect.