No control for phone's music?

[S_Shepard]

(Skip to the last paragraph if you don't need to know what I've done to troubleshoot this issue so far.)

I've worn and used a Garmin Vivoactive for almost five years; it suddenly crashed and burned.  "Maybe smartwatches have gotten better since I bought that!" I found the Fitbit Ionic did most of what I wanted, and although its battery lasts only 30% as long, I thought it was worth a buy.  Got it at Target for $204.  Beautiful Scandinavian design, clean, artful lines worthy of B&O.  Built-in cardiometer (an upgrade!) and actually less of a nuisance to wear than my ol' Vivoactive.

It has the ability to store about 2GB of music locally, and bluetooth it to earbuds with no phone required.  Thanks, no; I have 128GB of music on my phone, and wired earbuds never need to be charged or paired.  But where are my music controls?  Bad news:  there aren't any.  There's ONE app for playing Spotify, and ONE app for playing Pandora, and NONE for flat player control.  (Though developers have written over a dozen for the Vivoactive, I have the most success with the stock app to control Google Play.)

Well, all right.  If I'm not going to be stuck with the Vivoactive just because I liked it, maybe I should expand my horizons a little further.  Installed Spotify...

https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen-to-local-files/

This page indicates that to play local songs on your phone using Spotify, you have to first import these songs from a desktop, create a playlist, and then clone the songs to your phone. (Never mind the songs are already on the phone, and I can play them from Google play or a dozen other apps.)

Thus it points you to the Desktop installation instructions. But once you get done following those instructions, the Mobile or Tablet installation starts with the words "For: Premium" at the top. (So does the page that talks about how to control playback from a Fitbit Ionic; https://support.spotify.com/us/listen_everywhere/smart_watches/fitbit/)  And the "Benefits of Premium" indicates this is the Only Way to listen whilst offline, which I almost always am. You're not going to prise $10/month out of me to listen to my own effing music, thank you so very much.

Even Google Play doesn't give me this much trouble, and it's a PITA because I can't sort at all, I have to know how the songs are named, and find them in a single, alphabetically-arranged list.  But at least I can easily skip to the next track with my watch.

So instead, let's try "troubleshooting" this playback control issue:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Answers/How-do-you-add-Local-Files-to-the-Desktop-app/ta-p/...

"We have an extensive record collection, but if the track you’re after hasn’t found its way on to Spotify yet, don’t worry! You can add any personal music you have with a feature called Local Files."
And then it shows "Screen Shot 2018-07-10 at 17.36.03.png"...and what do I tap to see that? This menu does not exist on my phone!

"In Settings, scroll down to Local Files and select ADD A SOURCE. Any files you add can be found in Your Music under Local Files. They’ll be listed like any other standard playlist."[Fine...where is Settings on the phone version? Because it's not on mine.]  And then another useless..."Screen Shot 2018-07-10 at 17.37.09.png"..."If your Local Files won't play, check out this Spotify Answer."

No answer there. An entire half day has been wasted in finding these conflicting non-answers; my impression is that Spotify has little idea of how it does what it does, or even what it can do at various levels of "membership." I expect I shall be better off to return my Fitbit Ionic and get a replacement Garmin Vivoactive, which did nearly everything I wanted and had multiple apps for local music playback control over various apps on my phone that did so by default.

Seriously, this is not a complex issue: Why can I not play back local files that are Already On The Phone? Because some mercenary company wants its hand in my pocket?!  I say thee, Nay!
A foul and pestilent congregation of vapours; thou odious spot, thou worse than senseless things. Darken my eyes no more!

Never mind the songs are already on the phone, and I can play them from other phone apps.  This is an epic fail.  The Ionic has been out for years, it seems scores of people have fought with this issue, and Fitbit only wanted to gobble up Pebble, hoping to get its customer base, or eliminate their technologically superior competitor (or both.)

Is there anyone who has developed a music control app for the Ionic that works on Google Play?  Or perhaps a Fitbit music player on your phone that any fitbit can control (certainly the Surge or Versa, but maybe even the smaller ones)?  Come along, Fitbit, this is the 21st century.  Sure, it's cute that Fitbit put 2GB of storage on the Ionic, but if I can't play songs already on my phone, you lose.  I'll be perfectly happy with 3x the battery life, a slimmer watch, and remote control of my phone...and for half the price!

[aqular]

After reading all of this i think i'm confused.

What is it you want to do at the root level? "Control music that is playing on my phone through my fitbit ionic?"

Try this. My ionic is on the charger, but this is a picture of my wifes Versa 2 with music controls. She is playing music through apple music on her phone and the media controls show up.

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1976

[SunsetRunner]

Hi @S_Shepard not quite sure what you mean and also some of the info you listed is plain wrong.  As long as you have Spotify on your phone, the Ionic app (which is basically just a remote) will control it with onscreen controls.  Just no volume controls though, no need to move from desktop, just use your phone playlists and all good.

Premium refers to Spotify Premium and NOT Fitbit premium, for that blame Spotify for imposing that restriction.  You can always transfer any locally stored music direct to the Ionic and play from that, Pandora is only available in the US though.  Hope that helps.

[SunsetRunner]

Also the Ionic has a native music app built in to control local music, you just need to transfer the music using the Fitbit PC app to your Ionic.

[S_Shepard]

Hi, aqular!

Though I'm using a Google Pixel, that's what I tried first; it seemed a credible default.  Start Google Play on the phone, scroll right once on the watch to the magenta music icon: "No music loaded."  (It gives me the option to transfer music.)  Scrolling in any direction yields nothing further.  The controls you show there would be quite enough for my purposes!  I had also tried the "Classic Music" bluetooth connection you linked and not only got no other change, but see that it's a larger power draw.

As for what I want to do, yes, I want to control playback of the 100GB of music already on my phone; play/pause, Skip Fwd, Skip Bk, volume up/down.  50x the available storage, and no dropouts when the watch goes behind me while walking.  Also no ongoing drain on an already ephemeral charge (I'll admit I was spoiled by the Vivoactive's 3-week battery.)

Have any developers cobbled a stylised music player for the Ionic?  I was surprised to see nothing in the App store, free or not.

Thanks, though!

[S_Shepard]

Hi, Markw47;

Yes, I can control Spotify on my phone from my watch, but I have to listen to ads and only get 6 skips per day (or some such.)  I certainly don't get to listen to my own music, as the links to the Spotify make abundantly clear.  (The "For: Premium" is rather indicative as well.)  Yes, the blame for Spotify's recalcitrance and fecklessness if on Spotify, not Fitbit.  But is there truly no Fitbit app for the Ionic that lets me control music playback of the music I have on my phone (which can be played by any number of phone apps, and many of those were able to be controlled from my Vivoactive...for which there were several stylised apps to boot!

My intent is to leave the phone in my pocket and be able to skip a song or pause playback to talk with someone.  Play/pause, SkipFwd, SkipBk, Volume Up/Down is all I'm really looking for.

(And for clarity's sake, I'll repeat that I have simply No Interest in transferring songs to my Ionic to play and eat into its already puny battery life, or depend upon wireless earbuds.)

Thanks for the recommendations, though.

[SunsetRunner · Accepted solution]

RIght @S_Shepard let's clear this up a bit.  The reason you have to import a playlist to the phone app of Spotify is that only the desktop app supports the playing of local files and even then they aren't grouped by album.  

The Spotify Premium subscription is to allow you to download playlists for offline play, remove the ads, have gapless playback etc.  So it is actually allowing you to play THEIR playlists without the ads NOT your own music.

As regards the Local Files, as the link clearly makes out that the provision to play local files is ONLY available on the desktop app NOT the mobile one I don't see your confusion here.

I also own a Garmin Venu and that does have a Spotify app which allows me to play music stored on the watch, but again playlists only.  Again it DOES NOT allow me to play music from the phone and again as the phone app DOES NOT allow me to access local files I can't play those from the watch either!  Yes my Venu allows me to play music stored on the phone but I would rather keep my phone at home and just use the watch.  

So in short, no there is no app available for the Ionic that allows you to control music locally stored on your phone.  Basically the choice is yours as to what you want to do.

[S_Shepard]

> "No, there is no app available for the Ionic that allows you to control music [playback of files] stored locally on your phone."  Now why doesn't Fitbit just say that?  The Surge apparently does it, and Fitbit brag loudly about the array of apps that are available for download.

I suppose that's the best way to play music for running...which is probably constrained to music at a particular beat.  I live in my music, and 2GB isn't going to do it for me, especially if I have to run down my watch battery to do it.

Still, that's what I needed to know.  Sorry to hear the Fitbit developers are napping, even after years of product presence.  There must be a dozen players of varying technological sophistication and competence for the Garmin Vivoactive, and they've been there since 2015.

I suppose I'll just have to make due with a 3-week battery again.  Thanks for clearing that up, markw47