Why can't I stream from my Apple watch to my Airpods without my phone?

[vany365]

Iphone 13 pro
Apple Watch OS 9.3.1
Head phones: Airpod v1
Spotify app on watch: just reinstalled
Headphones: already unpaired and repairs
Watch: already hard reset
I meet all of these requirement:
Spotify Premium
Apple Watch Series 3 or later
watchOS 7.0 or above
Paired Bluetooth headphones to the Watch
A cellular or WiFi connection

Now when I am out on a hike without my phone I am unable to listen to spotify with my airpods. When I go to select devices there are zero devices available to connect too. It appears my spotify app just cant work unless I am connected to WiFi or my phone. I got this because I wanted to hike with just my watch. Can anyone help?

[vany365]

One point of clarification. I have a Student premium account w/ Hulu and its $4.99. Would that block my eligibility?

[adh1]

I've had the same issue on and off for a few weeks. I have cellular on my watch and cannot stream music. I have even downloaded songs and I can no longer play those. I have deleted (phone and watch), reinstalled (both on my phone and watch) the app, and downloaded (several times now) songs, and it still does not work. I tried playing music with my airpods through my watch and it ended up playing on my phone when I was out of range from my phone. Let me know if you find a solution. Just to clarify, I do have cellular on my series 7 watch, using airpods pro, and also have premium.

[MihailY]

Hey @vany365,

Thanks for posting in the Community and kudos for the troubleshooting you've already done.

If you meet the requirements for playing music through the watch without your phone (note that this should work with any Premium subscription regardless if it's discounted or not) and you've exhausted all relevant troubleshooting steps, please send us your Spotify version so we can forward this to the relevant team.

Looking forward to your reply.

[vany365]

Thanks for the response. My apple watch is on 8.8.20 and my phone is the same. Opening the app today my apple watch became an option  to select which was not happening the other day. So somehow I am fixed but I am not sure what cause it.

[echozdog]

I was able to work around this by using Siri. "Hey Siri play the Beautiful songs playlist on Spotify" and it works. But you can't manually play playlists or manually switch songs etc. This bug has been around for two years. Spotify should really fix this. 

[isaacgnichol]

I'm also having this issue.. I can't figure out why.. My AirPods connect perfectly fine to my Apple Watch and work with Apple Podcasts and Apple Music but trying to move to Spotify and it won't play anything out of my AirPods even with a wifi connection and next to my phone. Trying to play out of the Apple Watch device list in Spotify just doesn't give me any sound. I meet all requirements, I have Spotify premium.. so confusing.