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It has been about four months since Garmin announced for the first time the integration of Spotify into portable technology compatible with music. This allowed people with music-enabled devices to download playlists and Spotify music on their watch and play them without a phone, using only Bluetooth headphones.
But when it was launched, the Spotify application was only compatible with the Fenix 5 Plus series, which was later followed by the Forerunner 645 Music. However, the cheapest Garmin device with music – the Vivoactive 3 Music – was left in the queue.
Of course, the reality of this situation was more simplistic for developers: the first two applications were non-touch screens, while the third device was only touch screen, requiring a completely different application. Add to that the usual intricacies when two distant businesses each try to develop applications in a new relationship and things have taken a little while. A long moment.
But as early as this morning, you can now download the Spotify app for Vivoactive 3 Music and Vivoactive 3 LTE Music. Vivoactive 3 standard does not have memory for music. If you have one, you must continue to use your phone.
(And if you have Fenix 5 Plus or Forerunner 645 music, you can see my previous post on that one.)
Configuration and use:
It is easy enough to configure everything. You will basically need four practical things to get started:
A) your phone
B) Your Vivoactive 3 music paired with your phone
C) A Spotify Premium account
D) WiFi configuration on your Vivoactive 3 Music
You may need Bluetooth headphones (or a Bluetooth speaker) to play the music, but we'll come back to that later.
*** Note: You must ensure that your Vivoactive 3 Music uses the latest firmware version, also released today. Therefore, if you just do it as soon as I publish this message, update your Garmin watch first because it will probably not update. You can do this via a computer with the cable, a smartphone (slower) or WiFi. ***
To get started, use your smartphone and the Garmin Connect Mobile app to search for the Spotify app in the Connect IQ app store. (Open Garmin Connect Mobile> Select "More …"> Select "Connect IQ Store"> Search for Spotify):
Once this is done, it will take about a minute for your phone to install / synchronize the application. In the meantime, once you finish on your watch, it will offer you a boot option that you can use to restart the Spotify setup process.
Alternatively, you can simply drag the widgets to the music widget, where Spotify will also wait for you to configure it. You will then be asked to go to your phone to authorize Vivoactive 3 Music as a device in your Spotify account. No different from the permission of Strava, Facebook or any other third party service. Fast and easy.
Once done, it will show you an option to add music and podcasts:
From there, you can choose from your recently played playlists, as well as workouts, custom playlists, and podcasts. Basically, everything you see in the Spotify application normally. You essentially select the items to download and download.
Note that the album art seems to take a few more seconds to display on the first download. But this may be just my Internet / WiFi shit.
For example, if I select this workout once, it will start to connect to WiFi:
At this point, the download begins. Download speeds vary depending on several factors. For previous units, I found that it was about 10 songs per minute as a reliable estimate. It seems a bit slower than my current state, but I'm pretty sure it's the horrible WiFi of my Airbnb this week (but hey, at least the food is today!).
Note that for the Vivoactive 3 Music LTE / Cellular edition, the process is almost identical to the difference that there is no WiFi. Instead, it uses your LTE connection for music downloads. However, it does not stream * music continuously and everything must be pre-downloaded, as in the non-LTE edition. Again, no Wi-Fi is used … because no WiFi chip is even found on the device.
Once done, you will see how the icon has changed from the green "Add" icon to the red "delete" icon, indicating that the playlist is downloaded.
If you go back to your general library, you will see the playlist that has just been added. Of course, you can also add other playlists – more or less up to the storage limit of your device. I have not tried to fill my device yet, but with previous Garmin Spotify apps, I downloaded over 1500 songs before I got tired of downloading random playlists.
Listening to music is as before – at this point, you no longer need your phone. Make sure to power your headphones and from there you can connect and play music on them as usual:
With the Spotify music app on a Garmin device, you do not select specific songs, but playlists to play. The logic here is that trying to find and play specific songs on a laptop is heavy and not a common scenario (I agree). You can skip / rewind / pause / play / volume without problems. So, if you do not like a song in a playlist, you can simply press the skip button on your watch or your headphones:
Again, everything is the same as any other music you already have on your Garmin device and, frankly, it works perfectly. A little nice when it works.
Finally, because many Spotify playlists are constantly changing, you can update them by choosing the "Update Downloads" option, which turns off and uses WiFi to search for new songs in the playlists. reading and download them accordingly. And below, you can edit the downloads, which are essentially the places where you delete playlists.
The Garmin app does not do it according to an automated schedule. So you have to remember to do it once in a while if you want to be sure you have the latest songs.
packing:
While the initial announcement of Spotify was certainly one of the biggest contracts for Garmin wearables for years (since neither Fitbit nor even the Apple Watch has yet downloaded Spotify) , adding Vivoactive 3 Music to the list is important for Garmin's place in more affordable wearables. . There is no doubt that Fitbit will also have a Spotify app at one time. Spotify will probably end up adding offline reading to their Apple Watch app. Meanwhile, WearOS has recovered this fall and Samsung already had it.
This allows Garmin to draw the attention of its developers and programs to other music providers. For the moment, it does not seem that something is not on the table, we just have to solve the complexity of each platform of streaming. Although Garmin has a very strong platform of music providers on which to work, the reality is that each streaming provider has extremely unique means, whether it's contractual issues or techniques. Whether Apple Music, Google Music, Amazon or Pandora – all possibilities, but all unique in their own way.
On that, thank you for reading!
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