Starlink is turning airline seatbacks into streaming screens. United and Spotify announced on November 5 that passengers can scan a QR code on the seatback screen to log in to their personal Spotify accounts. From there they can play music, podcasts, audiobooks and videos and pick up where they left off. United says it is the first airline to offer this.
The feature runs over Starlink Wi-Fi. United says the Spotify rollout will reach half its fleet by next spring, that it expects to have 219,000 seatback screens by the end of 2027, and that Starlink installation across the whole fleet will be finished before the end of 2027. Since United added a curated Spotify collection in June 2025, more than 2.3 million customers have played more than 1.9 million hours of it, the airline says.
The Verge reports that United built a custom native Spotify app for the screens. Older in-flight systems assumed planes had no internet, so all content had to be stored on board. Mark Muren, United's managing director for product marketing, told the outlet that letting customers use their own accounts was the logical next step after the preloaded content.
