Cannot download app to Apple Watch on Apple Family Setup

[Seanoneill65]

Plan - Family

Free/Premium - Premium

Country - United States

Device

Apple Watch SE

Operating System

7.4.1 (18T201)

My Question or Issue

We recently purchased 2 Apple Watch SEs for our girls. We also purchased cellular data plans for them from T-Mobile. Note that they have their own Apple IDs/accounts and their own iPads with latest iOS, but neither has an iPhone, so we set the watches up using Apple’s Family Setup. Everything was set-up properly and works as expected, except we cannot download Spotify to their watches. They both have their own Spotify Family Plan logins and their Spotify accounts work perfectly on their iPads. However, Spotify did not automatically download when the watches were set-up, as I would have expected. So we have tried going to the App Store on the watch to download Spotify and it won’t let us - we receive the message in the watch App Store that a phone is required. My impression is that this is not the case. Our girls LOVE Spotify and it was a good portion of the reason we bought the watches. Help!

[bcathie]

Same issue here.  But my daughter have her own cellphone (my old one) but it doesn't have active plan.  Her watch configured through family sharing and paired with my own phone.  How can i pair her watch with her phone so she can download her spotify there? is this possible?

[OscarDC]

Hey @bcathie,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

Yes, this is possible. You can re-download the app on the phone and Watch to pair them for your daughter's device. First, we'd recommend taking a look at the info in this article to cover the basic info you'll need. 

To re-download the app on the Watch and resync the info with a different device, take a look at this article of the Apple support site, and follow the steps of the section "How to re-download apps on iPhone".

Hope this helps. If anything else comes up, don't hesitate to ask. 

[jasonmallen]

I attempted to do this (pair the Apple Watch to an old iphone without an active cellular plan).  Once I did that, my spotify issue was solved.  HOWEVER, the Watch no longer has cellular service because apparently it needs to be paired with phone with active cellular service.  So, the phone number that was working for me to call my son now just goes to voicemail and he can't make outbound calls.  Has anyone found a way to resolve this?  I'm with AT&T and they said my only option is to add another line for the old phone so it has an active cellular plan.  But I don't want him to have a phone and don't want the expense of another line.  

[Novy]

Hey @jasonmallen,

Thanks for your reply in this thread 🙂

We’re happy to know you could sort this out.  

Regarding your question about pairing the Apple Watch and the cellphone, we suggest you get in touch with either Apple or your mobile provider support since this is out of our field.

If anything else comes up, the Community will always be here for you.

[arlitosanoe]

I too have been wondering how to do this. We got my 11 year old an Apple Watch with cellular and have had to switch my whole family to Apple Music so he can listen to music on his watch. However, he does use an old iphone so I guess we could pair that phone with his watch, but I can't see how to do that without totally erasing all of his settings, which I don't want to do! Any tips? 

[jasonmallen]

I worked with both AT&T and Apple. If the watch is paired with an
old/inactive phone, the cellular service can’t be activated. So, we
basically need Spotify to create a standalone app for the watch if you want
the watch to have its own service without also having your child have a
phone with service.

[Jor193]

I bought an Apple Watch for my 12 year old who doesn’t have a phone. I upgraded to Spotify Duo, and I’m highly disappointed that it won’t work on her watch since she doesn’t own a phone. Had to cancel Spotify and switch to Apple Music & Pandora. Very disappointed. 

[cablec1]

This is not a solution. I have a a Spotify family plan and expect better of Spotify. 

this may require moving to Apple Music for my family…bummed because I like Spotify. 

[Dance_teach]

We just purchased our daughter an apple watch with cellular  as well because we did not want her to have a phone. We set it up with family sharing and Spotify will not download to her watch because she does not have her own phone. We have had a family plan with Spotify for several years but it looks like we have to switch back to apple music since she wants to be able to listen to her music. I refuse to pay for two music services and would have loved it if Spotify would have just resolved this issue. 

[Toff1990]

So dumb. This maybe sealed the move to apple music

[jkurtw]

+1 please fix

[Alex]

Hi folks,

Regarding the last few posts in the thread - you do need to pair the watch with a phone in order to download the Spotify app and play music on it. So, every family member would need to have their own phone paired with their own watch.

This is because there can be only one stream of music (music can play on one device at a time) with one Premium account.

Hope this makes sense.

[juliush]

Adding my voice to the crowd of people reluctantly having to move to Apple Music because of this issue, after years of using Spotify. I was happy to pay for Spotify Family, but it's no good if my son can't use it on his (Family Member plan) Apple Watch without a connected iPhone (which he doesn't have). It seems disingenuous to mark this issue as "Solved!" It clearly isn't.

[StretchablePizza]

We are having a similar problem. One parent-one child family, but otherwise identical. My son's apple watch is paired through my iPhone 12 mini, and he has his own Spotify family account. We cannot download the app to his apple watch at all. Not via my phone (which is the reason I upgraded from my perfectly working iPhone 7), and not from his watch. We get the same error message as Seanoneill65. 

I'm hoping between May and now there's been some kind of adjustment to how these various companies are managing the third party connection. Any news to report?

[richardfstrange]

There is no technical reason why Spotify hasn't enabled this to work as a
standalone app other than laziness to do the work.

They just don’t care which is evident that in there hasn’t been a
acknowledgment back from them after all these responses.

Pandora has proven its possible.

[richardfstrange]

Yes we know that Alex, but for those of us with family accounts etc, how difficult is it for spotify to code the app as a stand alone app? Pandora has!

[Baldrate]

Same. Has anyone contacted spotify and received any feedback? We just bought our son an apple watch are in the same boat!

[1HitWonder]

This is not solved. I really don't want to switch to apple music.  We have a family plan. We cannot download to Apple Watch SE2 for my daughter setup on Family Plan.

[1HitWonder]

This doesn't make sense.  We have a family plan.  My daughter has a cellular apple watch and cannot download the Spotify app because she does not have an Iphone.  

[skm619]

Same problem here with my daughter's family plan apple watch.  It's crazy that it hasn't been resolved after all this time.  Makes me want to cancel spotify and get apple music instead.  Come on spotify.  Solve this problem!