[Updated] Spotify aware some users are unable to download music for offline listening on their Apple Watch, fix in works

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on September 21, 2021) follows:

Spotify is the world’s biggest audio streaming and media service provider. It has 365 million monthly active users, which is a huge number.

What is the reason behind Spotify’s success? Well, one of the reasons is that they started early.

It was founded in 2006, while its competitor Apple Music was founded in 2015. Starting off early into the streaming game gave an advantage to Spotify.

But that’s not it. Spotify has improved its mobile app design, usability, streaming quality, and music sharing capabilities over a period of time. They offer a great user experience, and hence people want to stick with Spotify.

Plus, it is available on all major platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, Android, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S game consoles. Spotify is also compatible with smartwatches including Apple Watch.

That being said, there is a problem with the Spotify app on Apple Watch where users are unable to download music for offline listening. For those unaware, there is an option in Spotify where you can download music and listen to it without a network.

Spotify has acknowledged this issue on their Community forum. The thread has multiple users complaining of the same issue. At the time of writing, hundreds have already confirmed experiencing the issue.

Surely you’re not going to tell me this is normal? It’s been stuck at downloading the first song for over 20 hours!
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Same here and streaming does not work as well. White watch logo keeps flashing and keeps trying to connect endlessly… Hence, watch is still a simple remote
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The forum post on this issue is still labeled as “under investigation”, suggesting devs are yet to arrive at a solution to this problem. However, Spotify did give some troubleshooting options to help solve the issue.

For some users, these solutions didn’t work, forcing them to come up with other alternative workarounds. We’ve shared one that you may try below.

Yes, so it would seem downloads don’t sync if the watch is connected to iPhone. Here are the exact steps I take to make it work, ensuring Apple Watch is connected to WiFi:

1. With everything as normal (iPhone not in airplane mode, with WiFi and Bluetooth on) select a playlist to download to Apple Watch in the Spotify app on iPhone
2. Playlist appears in the Apple Watch downloads list, in grey with “1 of x downloaded”. This never appears to go any further.
3. Put iPhone into Airplane mode with WiFi and Bluetooth also switched off
4. Force close Apple Watch app
5. Relaunch Apple Watch app
6. Apple Watch downloads the songs over WiFi
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If this doesn’t work for you, then don’t worry as Spotify is working on it and we hope that the issue with Apple Watch users being unable to download music for offline listening gets resolved soon.

07:06 pm (IST): In a recent status update, Spotify support said that they won’t be able to provide any ETA for the fix for this issue and marked it as ‘Not right now’. However, the team will continue to investigate it.

We’re setting this issue to Not Right Now as we’re unable to provide an exact timeline for a fix at this moment. However, rest assured this will remain on our internal teams’ radar and we’ll check back in here with a new status when we have any new information to share. (Source)

Featured image source: Spotify Newsroom

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