Spotify and Philips Hue partner for smart lights that sync with your music

Dynamic scenes, brighter bulbs, and updates to Hue Sync Box also inbound

Smart Lighting
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Ever wished your Philips Hue lights could synchronize with your expertly curated Spotify playlists? Well, now they can, all thanks to a new partnership between Signify, which makes the Philips Hue line, and the streaming giant that is Spotify.

It’s been a busy week for Philips Hue: alongside news of the Spotify link-up, the smart lighting brand debuted a trio of new gradient smart lamps, dynamic lighting scenes, and a series of additional options for its white dimmable and tunable ‘ambiance’ bulbs. 

The ability to sync your lights to your music is something users can already achieve through Signify’s Hue Sync app by letting the app tune in to what you’re playing. But Spotify’s new collaboration with Signify bypasses the need for third-party apps, enabling the Hue Bridge to integrate directly with Spotify and your connected account.

With the new integration, your Hue lights seamlessly connect with Spotify, flashing and changing color in sync with your playlists. What’s more: the intelligent link-up between Hue and Spotify means the setup can scale to any size, whether that’s a single Hue light in your house or a room that's chock-a-block with them. There's no upper limit to the number that can sync with the music platform.

Smart lighting scene

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The more the merrier

And living rooms jam-packed full of Hue lights is exactly what Signify wants to achieve by encouraging prospective customers to buy into Hue with a series of newly-announced Hue lights this week. A new Hue app update offers “dynamic scenes,” allowing the light to now shift through multiple colors. As well as this, there's a new Hue ambiance gradient light strip dropping October 1, plus gradient-enabled versions of Hue’s Insta-ready Signe floor and table lamps. These will be available in the U.S. from October 12.

But chief among the new releases has surely got to be the Hue Play gradient light tube, which is a sleek new light fixture that rests above your TV or sits slightly below it, casting out the characteristic ambiance that Hue is so well-known for. Set to ship in two sizes, the Hue Play gradient light tube will be available from January 2022.

Hue gradient

(Image credit: Philips Hue)

New gadgets aside, to pull together the requisite setup needed to convert your living room into a strobe-packed utopia by way of the new Spotify partnership, you’ll need color-capable Hue lights, a Spotify account, and the Hue app. The new partnership should mean a near-seamless user experience, with the Hue system able to tap into specific data about your playlists’ music, including tempo, genre, mood, and much more.

Of course, none of this comes cheap. Hue was and still remains one of the most expensive ways to rig out your home with smart lights. However, we've pulled together a list of the best cheap Philips Hue deals to help you bag a bargain in aid of a smarter and brighter living room.

Luke Wilson

Luke is a former news writer at T3 who covered all things tech at T3. Disc golf enthusiast, keen jogger, and fond of all things outdoors (when not indoors messing around with gadgets), Luke wrote about a wide-array of subjects for T3.com, including Android Auto, WhatsApp, Sky, Virgin Media, Amazon Kindle, Windows 11, Chromebooks, iPhones and much more, too.