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Spotify Announces Downloads and Offline Playback on Apple Watch for Premium Subscribers

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Spotify has announced it will finally allow users to download and play back songs, albums, playlists, and podcasts on their Apple Watch.

spotify-offline-playback-apple-watch.jpeg

So far, Spotify users have been unable to download songs to their Apple Watch, always requiring an internet connection to play back songs. Now, requiring a premium subscription and watchOS 7 or later, Spotify will allow customers to download songs right on their wrist. Spotify already offered users this feature with Fitbit, Samsung Galaxy watches, and other smartwatches.

Spotify has provided these steps for how to download songs, playlists, albums, and more to the Apple Watch:
1. Find the music and podcasts you want to download on your watch.
2 Select the playlist, album, or podcast and press the three dots (…) and choose “Download to Apple Watch.”
3. To check on the progress, head over to the Downloads section on the watch.
4. Once playlists, albums, or podcasts in your library are downloaded, you’ll see a little green arrow next to their names.
5. Connect your headphones and start listening, no matter where you are!
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With offline support on the Apple Watch, users can also use Siri to play songs right from Spotify, much like on the iPhone. Spotify says that offline playback from the Apple Watch will be 96 kbps and that the functionality is rolling out to users in the coming weeks.

Article Link: Spotify Announces Downloads and Offline Playback on Apple Watch for Premium Subscribers
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/21/spotify-apple-watch-offline-playback/
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A shame. Switched to Apple Music a few month back, then got the HomePod and today the Apple TV. I don’t think I’ll be returning to Spotify anytime soon. If they had introduced Watch support earlier things would probably look very different now.
 
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Tymmz said:
A shame. Switched to Apple Music a few month back, then got the HomePod and today the Apple TV. I don’t think I’ll be returning to Spotify anytime soon. If they had introduced Watch support earlier things would probably look very different now.
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Apple TV for music is a shame anyway. That thing needs to be able to act as music hub with your stereo without having to turn on the tv. But nope, we save the environment by selling you a different device for that.....
 
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Tymmz said:
A shame. Switched to Apple Music a few month back, then got the HomePod and today the Apple TV. I don’t think I’ll be returning to Spotify anytime soon. If they had introduced Watch support earlier things would probably look very different now.
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Well Apple Music has always been better than Spotify overall solely due to the Music Cloud Library feature. The issue was that Spotify was on a lot more devices and had better music finding algorithms, and still has better playlists.

The final nail in the coffin for Spotify [from my perspective anyway] would be Apple Music coming to more platforms like Xbox Series X and PS5. The Spotify integration with PS5 is pretty deep so I have a feeling it might only come to Xbox Series X, especially with the Dolby Atmos support being on both Apple Music and Xbox Series X.

But back on topic. I wish Spotify had full watch support a long time ago. It was one of the things I missed back when I had Spotify Premium.
 
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Finally! - I can’t believe they are doing it.
I thought they are focusing on more social media ****, cause „that is what customers want“
 
very happy that this finally happened - almost ditched spotify a few times just for this feature from apple music
 
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Capeto said:
Finally!

Wait… 96kbps? Might as well leave my phone at home, bring a tin can and string, and listen to music through that.
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PutTheFBackIn said:
96k?????

Okay… I am definitely in the camp that the law of diminishing returns generally kicks in with higher bit rates, but 96 is noticeably shyt.
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jfunker said:
96k? really? This is like dial up quality.
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What quality does Apple Music use when they download to the Apple Watch?

I suppose if it was 128k or 256k then people would complain that they can't fit very many songs on the very limited memory in Apple Watch?
 
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Too little too late. And it’s a shame because I never would have used Apple Music before, but Spotify’s redesign ruined everything anyway so I jumped ship and never looked back. Mainly for Apple Watch support.

It’s pretty obvious that they’re only doing this now that they’ve fallen out of favor with basically everyone.

Spotify had Apple users in the palm of their hand. I’m a diehard Apple fan and I still used Spotify over Apple Music. That changed when Spotify stopped focusing on the music and it became increasingly clear that they had maybe always been profit focused since they barely even pay their artists.
 
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dmylrea said:
What quality does Apple Music use when they download to the Apple Watch?

I suppose if it was 128k or 256k then people would complain that they can't fit very many songs on the very limited memory in Apple Watch?
Click to expand...

Back in the iPod shuffle days, you could select which bitrate to download to the device. I want to say it ranged from 64-256. I don’t have an Apple Watch (yet) so I don’t know if that option is there.
 
MrMacintoshIII said:
Too little too late. And it’s a shame because I never would have used Apple Music before, but Spotify’s redesign ruined everything anyway so I jumped ship and never looked back. Mainly for Apple Watch support.

It’s pretty obvious that they’re only doing this now that they’ve fallen out of favor with basically everyone.

Spotify had Apple users in the palm of their hand. I’m a diehard Apple fan and I still used Spotify over Apple Music. That changed when Spotify stopped focusing on the music and it became increasingly clear that they had maybe always been profit focused since they barely even pay their artists.
Click to expand...

“Maybe” been profit-focused? Has that ever been in dispute from any business ever? Lol.
 
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