[iOS] Apple Watch: Spotify Streaming and Offline Listening

[stan88]

Apple Watch: Offline Listening

watchOS 5 should allow Spotify to develop an app that allows offline listening and streaming via cellular data.

Vote here to show your support for this development!

[Troyhe98]

I finally canceled my Spotify family subscription last month because of this and switched to Apple Music. Although I really miss “My Morning Drive” and “My Daily Mix”, it became really annoying when I wanted to go for a run with only my watch and not be able to listen to my music.

It’s really unfortunate Spotify doesn’t care about the most upvoted request in their forums. Why even offer people the ability to vote and comment and then refuse implement what their customers are asking for?

I can honestly say, I never would have even looked into Apple Music, if offline/streaming capability was added to the Apple Watch.

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[heikki9]

You guys are barking up the wrong tree here. Please see https://timetoplayfair.com/ and send all the hate mail to Apple. They deserve it.

And pleaase share this. It seems that nobody knows what is REALLY going on.

[krispy4]

@heikki9 Apple is not at fault here. In WatchOS6, which came out in September 2019, Apple provided the Apple Watch API to enable any third party platform to provide streaming on the watch. WatchOS 5 (which came out in 2018) already allowed offline playback for third parties. Spotify has chosen to provide neither, and has had ample time to do so.

The ball is in Spotify's court, there's nothing else Apple can do besides beg. Spotify is actively choosing not to provide the software, and they are buying out / blocking software that enables this. Several years ago, they bought out a software developer that built a Spotify streaming app. After buying him out, they killed the app.

The software is available, they literally have a previous Spotify Apple Watch developer and his software at their disposal. 

[heikki9]

haha, that is one of the funniest thing I have heard for a long time 😄 I bet you can provide sources to back up your claims, right? And you can probably give us a reason why Spotify has decided not to provide this software.

What is their motivation to do so? What they benefit from that? Unhappy customers who are moving to Apple Music because the lack of this feature. Like Siri commands. Or missing buy premium now feature in the app. I wonder who would benefit from that. Hey, how about Apple.

[64_d-3ajid5qw]

Yeah the app was called Spotty and it allowed you to download Spotify music to the Apple Watch. Spotify killed the app but the dev went to work for them (not sure if he still works there).

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/5tjj9c/spotty_for_spotify_aw_is_now_called_snowy_an/?st...

[Rahoulb]

haha, that is one of the funniest thing I have heard for a long time 😄 I bet you can provide sources to back up your claims, right? And you can probably give us a reason why Spotify has decided not to provide this software.

What is their motivation to do so? What they benefit from that? Unhappy customers who are moving to Apple Music because the lack of this feature. Like Siri commands. Or missing buy premium now feature in the app. I wonder who would benefit from that. Hey, how about Apple.

If you go back through this thread you'll find it's been mentioned a few times.  

Not only is there Spotty, which Spotify bought up, but I have, on my watch right now, an app called Apollo which does streaming via the Spotify API.  It's a bit buggy but not bad considering that one person wrote it in their spare time.  

The important thing is Spotify, not Apple, sent a cease and desist within days.  The app still works for me, but I'm guessing it could break at any time.  

Here is an old article about it https://twitter.com/Bmgentile/status/1062583597201145856?s=20

The key point - Spotify own the code for one app that already does this and hired the developer- and then they killed off another app that does this.  It's not Apple stopping this from happening.  

UPDATE: If you're a developer it looks like you can build your own version of Apollo now: https://twitter.com/KhaosT/status/1109319559641587712?s=20

[keltong]

Who is the 'haha' now? 😄

[heikki9]

The software is out there. No doubt about it.

I also believe Spotify has built a working version of offline functionality. It is not hard as one person can do it in spare time. But that is not the key point. The key point is that they can't launch this feature because of Apple.

Please people see the timeline to get better picture of what is happening https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/. That website is by the way build by Spotify. Would they rather build a website just so that they don't have to build a feature that people would love to see? I just can't understand that logic.

From the timeline you will see that Spotify got permission to start building offline functionality September 2018. And year later it is still not ready? The only reason for that functionality not being ready is Apple. They really want to put Spotify down on their knees to sell their own product. It's understandable although a bit evil I would say.

Btw, thanks for the Apollo link. I will build my own version of it during the winter holidays.

[Lucho7]

You can currently download Spotify music to the Apple watch and listen to
it there without a phone. What we cannot do is stream music directly to
the Apple watch without having to download it first. So if you want to
listen to music you have not already downloaded you need to have your
Iphone with you.

What we are asking is for the ability to not have the Iphone with us and
still listen to Spotify music by streaming it directly using the LTE
capability of the Apple watch, just we are able to do with Apple Music.

[evolross]

No you can't currently download music to the Apple Watch and listen
offline. Not without ripping it out of Spotify and manually loading the
music files onto the watch. There's no seamless integration how Apple Music
allows you to play downloaded playlists offline.