Siri can’t play downloaded music on watch without cellular streaming?

[tcellguy]

Am I missing something? I have a series 3 cellular with LTE enabled. I don’t have an unlimited data plan so I play music downloaded to the watch when I run. If I ask Siri to play music by an artist or an album I know is on the watch (plays when manually scrolled to) I get a message saying I have to turn on cellular streaming to play music.

I intentionally turned cellular steaming off as Siri seems to default to this. I was hoping toggling that setting would force it to use locally stored music but now it just throws this error message.

I intermittently get the same message with the iPhone. I assume Siri is getting confused and trying to initiate a steaming session. Is there anyway to prioritize playing from the watch? This used to work fine on iPhone but has become intermittent too.

 

[Shirasaki]

Apple needs constant internet connection to check your license before playing music, whether downloaded or not. I assume this is how Apple Music works.
I only have a local library and watch has only locally stored music. No Apple Music whatsoever. I think I can test Siri to play some music from my watch if possible.

 

[iamasmith]

But Siri typically does need a cellular connection to do just about anything. It might pick up key words like 'Play' to produce some context in it's response but it may well need the cellular service to analyse your request even though it may then play locally downloaded music.

 

[Lennyvalentin]

Apple needs constant internet connection to check your license before playing music, whether downloaded or not.

I have a bunch of itunes albums on my OG watch, and I didn't need a connection for playing them when out on a walk without my phone. Also, licenses - if such a thing is relevant here - can be verified without a net connection, thanks to the miracles of cryptographic certificates... That's (probably) how Spotify handles offline playback, for example.

 

[tcellguy]

I have LTE active on the watch. Siri works for almost everything else while on LTE. It even sometimes is able to start music while I’m running. I just toggled off the cellular steaming feature on the phone / watch because my WiFi connection often drops on the phone and it starts eating data.

The intermittent nature of the cellular warning message makes me think it’s a bug.

Possibly Siri thinks I want it to start a radio station or streaming session based on an artist vs. playing a particular downloaded song or album.

This also happens on the phone where I have every album from an artist on my phone but Siri tries to start streaming from the cloud. It’s a huge waste of data if you’re not careful.

I think Apple assumes everyone has unlimited data and wants only to steam music now.

I now see I’m not the only one having this issue

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-there-a-siri-command-to-play-downloaded-music-only.2086618/

Lol on the message where Siri doesn’t know what music is downloaded on the phone.

Siri really needs to improve.

 

[CobraPA]

A test would be to launch music from the Watch music app vs using Siri. It’s a bunch of taps, but you can pick by artist from there. I’m suspicious this is just a Siri issue as well.

 

[tcellguy]

I’m certain the music is on the watch locally. I have the albums added to synced music and they play with LTE off.

I think Siri just misunderstands the request the majority of the time. The fact that it works sometimes means but it’s not technically impossible.

 

[matrix07]

A test would be to launch music from the Watch music app vs using Siri. It’s a bunch of taps, but you can pick by artist from there. I’m suspicious this is just a Siri issue as well.

I agree with this. We all know Siri always need connection so it’s no surprise the watch will ask for connection. If OP can play locally stored music without the connection then the issue is definitely Siri.