If you’ve got a home full of Hue lights, there’s an easy new way to set the mood for your next party. Signify, which makes the Philips Hue line, is partnering with Spotify so that your lightbulbs can automatically sync up with whatever music you have playing, changing color and flashing along to the beat.
There are already plenty of ways to sync your lights to music — including Signify’s own Hue Sync app — but those methods typically require letting an app or some external hardware listen in on everything you’re playing. This new partnership avoids that by letting the Hue Bridge tap directly into Spotify to see what’s playing once you’ve linked your accounts.
That close partnership is also supposed to provide a better experience, letting the Hue system adjust lighting effects based on specific data about the music you’re playing, including its genre, tempo, volume, mood, and more. You can also go into the app and customize the effects if you don’t want the system deciding how to light things on its own.
The system comes with a couple of catches: to use it, you’ll need a Hue Bridge, which not every Hue owner is going to have (newer bulbs can be used over Bluetooth without the dedicated hub); and the feature only supports color bulbs. On the other hand, you don’t need a paid Spotify subscription — free accounts will work just fine.
Signify says the feature will start rolling out today and be available to all Hue users within a week. It’s initially being billed as an “early access” feature; in October, it’s supposed to get more prominent billing as a “permanent part” of the Hue app.
In addition to the Spotify partnership, Signify announced a whole bunch of new Hue lights today, including more filament lights, brighter bulb configurations, and updated lamps.
