Downloading music to the new Samsung Galaxy Watch or Gear S3

[mlennard0]

Here is the solution to be able to download music to your Samsung Galaxy Watch or Gear S3 and the Samsung Gear watches with Spotify, to enable you to be able to listen to music from your watch offline when you are away from wifi or bluetooth (out running, at gym etc)

Many people have had issues with being able to download music to their watch to enable them to have offline listening.

Here is the solution...

1. Your mobile phone will likely be connected to your watch but to do the download process on your watch you must allow your watch to standalone for this process so I suggest you put your phone into Airplane mode to ensure it is temporarily disconnected from your phone.

2. Once you have disconnected the connection between watch and phone, make sure that your watch is connected to wifi by going to the settings area on your watch (not the Spotify app) and select connections, wifi and connect to wifi and for the moment select always on.

3. Open your Spotify app on your watch, go to settings and select playback, stream on wifi. You will be asked to connect to Spotify via your Spotify username or Facebook credentials.

4. Once you have logged in to your account, go to 'Your Music' on the Spotify watch app and this will show any of your music previously added to your Spotify account, such as your collection or playlists. As an example, if you wish to download to your watch a Playlist, select the playlist you wish to download and it will show a 'Download' option. Select Download and the music will start downloading to your watch.

5. If you wish to listen to your downloaded music offline when you are out at the gym, out running etc then on your Spotify app on your watch, select settings, offline, go offline, and this will then allow offline playback without needing a connection to wifi or Bluetooth.

I hope this helps anyone who had the same painful initial issues that I had 🙂

[Peter]

Hey @mlennard0.

Thanks for posting this detailed answer - way to go!

For those of you who have had this issue resolved as a result of the steps provided, feel free to add your likes and mark it as a solution.

Great job 🙂

P

[retrobod]

Is anyone getting a problem with spotify opening and playing after a phone call on Galaxy watch? I have seen this problem with spotify on phones so it must be a spotify issue?

[Katerina]

Hey there @retrobod,

Thanks for posting about this.

We'd recommend first checking the solutions in this thread. 

Let us know how that goes 🙂

/K

[mertles]

Yes @retrobod I have the same issue on my Galaxy watch. Also, if I ask Bixby to do anything (like ask what the time is), then the last played song in Spotify kicks in from nowhere once Bixby has finished talking. Even if the Spotify app has been closed! Only way to stop this, I've found, is to restart the watch.

[Arekerr]

Katerina,

There's nothing in that thread that deals with auto-playing on the Samsung Watch (or Gear). Regardless, I've removed battery optimisation and it still happens. Restarting the watch temporarily solves it but the minute you play music on the watch again, the issue reoccurs. This appears to have been an issue on the Gear S3 as well (other threads) but does not appear to have been fixed. It's a real pain.

[Snoopstar]

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@retrobod wrote:

Is anyone getting a problem with spotify opening and playing after a phone call on Galaxy watch? I have seen this problem with spotify on phones so it must be a spotify issue?

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Yes, exactly the same problem, ending or rejecting a call on the phone results in Spotify on the Galaxy Watch starting to play. As someone else mentioned, rebooting the phone stops it until music is play again  on the watch. I can't find a way to stop this anywhere. It seems a few are having the same problem. 

[1153607548]

Maybe if Spotify was updating their app once in a while it would help ... The last update is December 4, 2017.... 

[Jonesad1865]

I'm having a similar problem when I use either map my run or the Samsung running app. When the mile announcer tells me my splits Spotify then starts playing.

Doing my first half marathons on Sunday and not going to be popular if my watch starts playing musIf every mile.

[erank]

Thanks a lot.

The only option  is to switch my phone to flight mode?

Eran

[Ben_Lubeck425]

Hey all,

So I just got an LTE Galaxy Watch about a day ago and I've been following your steps exactly and every time I try to put in my username/password, it doesn't let me finish typing before it says "Unable to start Spotify Connect to Bluetooth to start listening" and it erases what I've already typed and I have to start over again and again, it keeps repeating that pattern. Could someone please explain to me how I'm supposed to log into this application on my watch and use it on LTE without my phone being around? It's driving me insane, I've been at it for about 3 hours now.

[Arekerr]

I'd make sure you disconnect Bluetooth with the phone before you start. It
needs to be forced to use a data connection - either WiFi or LTE - to
logon. Hope that helps.

[Khambz_14]

I need help in installing Spotify on my Galaxy watch. Since Spotify is not in the UAE Galaxy App is there another way to download Spotify into my watch?

[Troyhe98]

The app should really be more intuitive so a an offline playlist can easily be added. It has been almost a year since the last update...

[angela_33]

Is there a way to download podcasts to the Galaxy Watch to listen offline?

[Peter]

Hey @angela_33.

Thanks for posting your question on the Community - we'll be glad to point you in the right direction!

We recommend you head over to this thread, where this question has been answered already.

Hope that helps! If you have any other questions, just let us know 🙂

[Peter]

Hey @Khambz_14.

Thanks for reaching out to us about this.

Good news! On November 14th, Spotify launched in the MENA countries, including the UAE. This means that you should now have the Spotify app for the Samsung watches available for download 🙂

Could you let us know if you are able to download it now?

Cheers!

[flamingspiral]

Same here. This app is terrible and sadly looks like they have no interest in fixing it. It has not been updated for months. You will also notice that the app will randomly delete your dowloaded playlist, stop paying after a while and freeze with no way to fix it other then redownloading the songs. Also the next and stop Bluetooth controls won't work on your earphones. It's really embarrassing. 

[flamingspiral]

This is not a solution. It does not work.

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@Katerina wrote:

Hey there @retrobod,

Thanks for posting about this.

We'd recommend first checking the solutions in this thread. 

Let us know how that goes 🙂

/K

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[MarLeeKen]

Thank you so much! Your directions were very clear and had exactly the right amount of detail.  I finally have music on my watch! Yay for you!