Philips Hue + Spotify – Dynamic lighting to music

Signify Holding now promises a perfectly coordinated combination of music and dynamic, smart light with the new linking of Philips Hue and the music streaming service Spotify.

Philips Hue is clearly the leading system on the market when it comes to smart lighting systems. For years, this platform has been constantly developed and improved, and new lighting systems of various kinds have been introduced to the market, so that an impressive variety is now offered to realize a complete house including garden with a smart lighting system that can be individually adapted.

The system, originally developed by Philips, was taken over some time ago by Signify Holding, which continued it under the same name.

Philips Hue – smart lighting for the whole house

As already mentioned, it is an immensely versatile platform. Dozens and dozens of different lamps and light sources are available to actually set up a lighting system for the entire house, and even more, corresponding solutions in various forms have long been available for outdoor use.

All of this is controlled primarily via a central unit, the Philips Hue Bridge. In addition, the latest generation can also be controlled simply via Bluetooth, although this does not achieve the flexibility and complexity that the system would offer in principle.

The central control element for the user is of course the Philips Hue app, which is offered for Apple iOS as well as Google Android.

In addition, there are also light switches in the most diverse forms, on the one hand from Signify Holding itself, but also from third-party suppliers, for whom the Friends of Hue program is open.

The technological basis for the entire system is the Zigbee radio standard, whereby a mesh network is set up between all components of an installation for the best possible performance and the longest possible range.

Direct connection to consumer electronics

The Philips Hue system already offered a direct connection to consumer electronics solutions. The start was made by Philips brand televisions, which had a so-called Philips Ambilight. These smart TVs use LED strips on the back to project color gradients on the wall around the TV, which are dynamically adapted to what is happening on the screen. These Philips smart TVs offer the possibility of extending said Philips Ambilight to lighting systems from the Philips Hue platform, so that the effect of dynamic lighting thus achieved is extended to the room.

Philips Hue Entertainment

In recent months, the company has been pushing this area and created Philips Hue Entertainment. The central component here is the Philips Hue HDMI Sync Box, which establishes the connection to a source device via HDMI and can generate Ambilight on this basis in conjunction with corresponding light sources. With the Philips Hue Sync Desktop App, this can also be realized via a PC.

Linking with Spotify

But now Signify Holding is going one step further, enabling users to dynamically adjust the lighting in a room to the music.

For this purpose, the leading music streaming provider Spotify AB has been brought on board as a partner and now allows users to link Spotify and Philips Hue directly. The exciting thing is that no separate hardware is required for this, the link is made directly via the cloud, which every Philips Hue system based on a Philips Hue Bridge uses anyway, at least if you want to control the home smart home on the go, i.e. remotely.

From this point of view, a Philips Hue Bridge is of course also necessary to establish the connection to Spotify, especially since this bridge then also controls the dynamic color changes to match the music.

However, it is very important that this does not require any special device that analyzes the environment via a microphone and adjusts the color gradients accordingly. Instead, the music is to be used for the color changes in an unaltered form, i.e. without ambient noise, and conversations in the room do not affect the color display.

“As a global leader in smart lighting, we are constantly looking for new ways to bring the most advanced smart lighting experience to our Philips Hue users. Entertainment, of which audio is a key component, is a major focus for Philips Hue. By innovating with Spotify as a leading industry partner, we are proud to offer our users an unprecedented integration of music and lighting.”

Jasper Vervoort, Business Leader Philips Hue at Signify

Immersive lighting ambience

Philips Hue creates lighting scripts that mirror the beat of music, according to the manufacturer’s promise. Together with Spotify, it used an advanced algorithm as the basis for these scripts, it said. The light scripts should be perfectly matched to each song and correspond to the respective genre, mood and beat.

Any audio device is supported

You are also not limited to specific audio devices, according to Signify Holding, rather you can use any audio device in a familiar way for the playback of Spotify, whereby the control is also done in the tried and true way above all directly with the Spotify app.

Once you have linked the two accounts of Philips Hue and Spotify, you can start the dynamic lighting to match the music at any time via the entertainment area of the Philips Hue app.

By the way, the whole thing is also supposed to work with Spotify’s free offering, so you don’t have to rely on the paid offerings here either and can try out the feature right away.

“At Spotify, we’re constantly working to create the best listening experience for every moment, across every device, all day long. We’re excited to introduce our innovative integration with Philips Hue, where smart lighting will add another dimension to enhance your next listening session.”

Sten Garmark, VP of Consumer Experience at Spotify

Getting to the point

Philips Hue is by far the most versatile system when it comes to smart lighting solutions throughout the home, patio and garden. With the new linking of Philips Hue and Spotify, dynamic, automatic lighting control can now be realized with minimal effort to match the music being played. The only prerequisite for this is that the lighting installation actually relies on a Philips Hue Bridge as the basis of the system, because the linking of the Philips Hue account and the Spotify account takes place via the cloud and the Philips Hue Bridge also takes over the control.