Apple fixes Spotify streaming issue in WatchOS 9

Apple has issued a firmware update that fixes a bug which caused Spotify streaming on the Apple Watch to stop working on watchOS 9.

The patch comes as part of software version 9.0.2. This comes along with a few other updates. Here’s the full change-log.

The bug was flagged up by Spotify a couple of weeks ago. They sent out an email as well as a notification in the app advising their users not to install the Watch OS 9 update until this was resolved.

Because of the issue, you could only listen to Spotify content on your Apple Watch by downloading content directly to the device. That’s for offline listening. The other option was to stream content from a connected iPhone.

Was this an issue with Spotify, or Apple watchOS 9?

We wondered if this was the case of Spotify running late with updating their app to the latest version of Apple’s operating system? It was not clear. The company has phrased this as if the issue was with Apple, not them. It turns out they were correct.

A long thread discussing the problem appeared on the Spotify community forums. Needless to say, users are not happy.

Oddly enough, some people on Reddit had reported they were running the latest version of Apple’s watch operating system with zero playback issues. Other users, though, reported the bug when streaming to their watch without an iPhone. Playback stops after a while and the app needs a force close and reopen to play another song.

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The Spotify app was first introduced on the Apple Watch around three years ago, but with limited functionality. Some would argue that it still has limited functionality!

In November 2020, the software was upgraded with standalone streaming over WiFi or cellular without the need for an iPhone. Last year it got another useful update. That one allows users to download music to their Apple Watch and listen to content without a smartphone nearby. Useful if don’t have cellular and like to listen to music while exercising.

Despite all these upgrades, the software has been buggy – particularly when used independently from the iPhone. The one feature, however, which consistently gets praise is the sync ecosystem. When you play something on Spotify, it is synced to all your devices. So you can play a song on the phone, for example, and control the playback from the watch, iPad, laptop, etc. This is better implemented than Apple’s native solution.

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