Gear Fit 2 Pro Spotify won't start

[ynot8op]

Spotify stopped working on my Gear Fit 2 Pro recently, and my suspicion is that it may have coincided with a Samsung update for the watch. 

I can't recall the exact problems I was having intially, possibly that it wouldn't let me play songs offline.  To try to fix this I uninstalled the Spotify app on the watch, and then reinstalled it.  Then it refused to accept my password for a while and I left it for a couple of days thinking maybe I had got my password wrong too many times. 

But then the next time I tried starting Spotify on the watch it did something completely different.  It didn't ask me for my log in details.  Instead, now whenever I try to start Spotify without it being connected to my phone, but with it being connected to my bluetooth earphones it just says "unable to start spotify" "connect to bluetooth to start listening".

The built in mp3 player will play through the bluetooth earphones fine but when I pause that and try to start Spotify it gives me the above message.

If I connect the Gear Fit 2 Pro to my phone then it seems to act like a remote control for plying music through my phone, but that is as much as I can do with it.  I can't use it separately from my phone like I used to be able to do.

I haven't found this problem addressed anywhere on this site, except one place where a user called Jafro1988 complained about this exact issue and was told to start a new thread, but I can't find that anywhere so I presume he didn't make one.

Is this a known issue?  If so, how do I fix it?

Thanks!  Tony