Spotify offline support now rolling out

olymay

As promised, I went for a run last night using Spotify on my watch to listen to music. I did not take my phone with me at all.

First, my watch settings:

Trail run (basic)
No route loaded
GPS Best
Always on map OFF
All apps were checked and up to date before leaving.
I did not wake the watch or change screens at any point during the run, the only times I touched it were to start and stop the activity.

Findings:

Battery life at start of run: 97%
Activity lasted 00:40:30 (40mins30sec)
Battery life at end of run: 78%

Resulting in 19% drop in 40 minutes. Equates to roughly 30% drop per hour.

Conclusions.

This was one single run and not scientific.

I would be confident to use this feature for shorter runs, but anything over 2hrs and I would start to get a bit nervous of the battery running out.

Also, the inability to shuffle the music, or repeat it (when it gets to the end of the playlist it just stops!) is a deal breaker for me.

It works, but it feels like a half baked implementation.

Therefore, I will not be using Spotify on my watch anymore (I’ve already uninstalled it!).

Steff

@olymay so ~ 3.3 hours of GPS hours…indead pretty near the up to 7hr estimate for GPS & music

Jamie BG

@olymay sorry to hear that.
end of list - could download a longer play list…

But yeah that battery life if it is the norm, isn’t worth it.

olymay

@steff said in Spotify offline support now rolling out:

@olymay so ~ 3.3 hours of GPS hours…indead pretty near the up to 7hr estimate for GPS & music

In this test I carried out, the watch lost approx 10% per 20 mins which is 30% per hour.

Based on those figures, a fully charged watch would expect to run out after roughly 3hours20mins.

This is with BOTH music and GPS. There is not a chance the S7 could last for 7hrs in this mode. Not even with GPS set to GOOD. The drain caused by music playback is massive.

rooldaa

@steff Hi, it was only spotify’s consumption.

mcsolaar

@olymay What I did is after starting the playback on the watch before going out I had a cellphone nearby and I toggled shuffle in so that it impacted the playback on the watch as well. Probably it is similarly workable for repeat function too

Aleksander H

@mcsolaar said in Spotify offline support now rolling out:

@olymay What I did is after starting the playback on the watch before going out I had a cellphone nearby and I toggled shuffle in so that it impacted the playback on the watch as well. Probably it is similarly workable for repeat function too

Oh, that’s an interesting workaround!

Aleksander H

A bit of good news. It seems YT Music will make its way to older devices as well.

https://9to5google.com/2021/09/27/youtube-music-wear-os-2/

olymay

@aleksander-h said in Spotify offline support now rolling out:

A bit of good news. It seems YT Music will make its way to older devices as well.

https://9to5google.com/2021/09/27/youtube-music-wear-os-2/

I saw this last night. I am hoping it will come to the S7 soon.

Although It’s unlikely I will use it due to battery drain, it’ll be a nice to have (and arguably something we should never have been without!).

af ag

I got a Spotify update a couple of weeks ago, but offline playback wasn’t available at first.

However, when I checked again yesterday, it had appeared (no new app update, so it must have been a server-side change).

It’s very basic, but it works. I downloaded a playlist and did a quick test—it seems fine so far.

One major limitation I’ve noticed is frustrating: you can download a playlist and play it, but you can’t shuffle it. Playback has to be in order. You can pick where to start, but it will continue sequentially.

I like shuffling my music so I never know what’s coming next.

Later, I’m going for a short 7km run and will test leaving my phone at home to see how it affects battery life. I usually don’t listen on this route, but I’ll turn it on with the volume very low