Not music storage on Sense - My opinion

[Rinopopo]

I think they know their firmware and software is still buggy and there are some missing features (speaker and google assistant support). Maybe they don't want us to put some songs on the device because the next firmware (or the update that enables those features) is going to be a big one and they don't want problems with the update.

what do you think?

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Teo86]

It's a smart watch, not an iPod.

[Rich_Laue]

Fitbit has always stated that Google and the ability to answer a call through the tracker will be in a future update? 

As do music, you can, right now, load both Deezer and Pandora on the tracker and leave the phone home. 

What do I think? This is no different then what was released with previous trackers. 

[mikchaos]

Fitbit has a lot of usage data about how we use their app and the smartwatches/trackers. I expect that they simply have seen two things:

1. Less and less people were using the MP3 storage feature on previous watches. If you look at the forum here you might feel like everyone needs it but realistically I would guess that 95% of Fitbit owners never used the Feature in the first place. Looking at the bigger picture of how people are consuming music, we are clearly moving towards a dominance of streaming services.
2. Less and less people are using the Desktop app. Afaik the desktop app is the only way to load music to the watches. Other than that, they probably want to get rid of it. 

All in all I think this is simply a reflection of changing user behavior and Fitbit is optimizing where they invest their resources. What boggles my mind is the missing support for Spotify. By now my only explanation for this is that they either can't agree on a deal that makes sense for both of them or they have other contractual obligations which prevents them from adding Spotify offline playlists. 

[Rich_Laue]

Personally I would love to be able to load audio book podcasts. But... 

• No resume function
• Can't easily load what I want. 
• Fitbit says yes they support podcasts, but is Pandora really a podcast 

[rwilson254]

I'm betting it is more of a business decision based on their partnerships with Deezer and Pandora than anything else. Obviously the Sense and Versa 3 are more than capable of storing and playing MP3s as they can play and store both provided by the aforementioned companies and they had this feature on their last generation watches. Having the ability for users to store their own music would hurt potential subscriber bases of both those services.  Though to me it might be a short-sighted decision as they risk undermining the loyalty of their base fans at the expense of getting a few extra bucks from these companies. I am hoping they have ability to get out of this arrangement and let fans again have more freedom regarding musical/audio content they can store on their device. 

[SunsetRunner]

Especially as Pandora is USA only and no-one I know uses Deezer, their best bet would have been a deal with Spotify to allow playlists to be downloaded to the tracker and not used as solely a remote or maybe even Youtube Music with the forthcoming acquisition by Google.

[Rich_Laue]

I also don't know anyone who uses Deezer, but this service was a popular request after the original Versa was released. 

I'm not sure why Spotify could not be buffered to the tracker, I'm hoping it is a Spotify and not Fitbit decision. 

[SunsetRunner]

Really can't see how it was popular when there are only 7m paying subscribers (14m total) compared to 113m for Spotify (248m total) with the vast majority in France.  It's like comparing the population of London to that of the UK.

[BigRalphN]

My thoughts on this are as follows. First, the audio quality on any smartwatch is horrible, amplified by the fact Bluetooth audio is still mediocre at best (if you are an audiophile). I have to have an LG V60 even with my phone so I have a, Quad dac to make wired phones listenable.

And if transfer takes as long as my old Ionic took, who even wants to mess with it. Maybe Ionic improved after I got rid of mine. 

Now before people flip, I understand wants are different a d no offense is intended to those that want the option. For me, it has always been a useless feature. 

Now that said I realize most are not that picky. But without fall detection how many will they xercise, at least outdoor exercise, without their phone? And the phone stores a whole lot more music, and at higher quality. If your ogi e is with you why would you hook up to the watch?

As for streaming services only Amozin and Tidal offer a high enough quality if ran through a, DAC. I don't know what happened to Spotify CD quality that was supposed to come out. My boys use Spotify. It's so compressed it makes my ears hurt. 

[Rich_Laue]

I'm just saying that the feature request board had many non USA users voting for Deezer long before Spotify was requested. 

I'm still curious if the Spotify decision was Fitbit's or Spotify's, I've gotten no answer. 

[sanman202]

I think it's advertised as a fitness watch with some smartwatch features. There are other options out there that can store music. That's the great part of freedom of choice. 

[CBV2]

I think Mikchaos has it right - to quote "I would guess that 95% of Fitbit owners never used the Feature in the first place".  I had formed the same conclusion. However, I had also assumed that Fitbit made the decision to drop the facility after using all the Sense's silicon for the additions over the Versa, but looking at the system data on my Sense I see that I have 2554MB of memory available.  Enough for either storing a substantial collection of music/podcasts, either from transfer of a personal library or through Spotify. Happy with either, but maybe the Spotify option could be made simpler than the transfer option, which was not simple.

[t.parker]

I have never used offline storage myself. I don't store music files. I use Spotify for streaming music. Also, the syncing process with the use of PC wasn't the simplest (while on Garmin I just upload the Spotify playlists to the watch using UI on the watch, so simple and just works). I believe that there is a number of people who would want to use offline music storage and have plenty of music/podcasts files they would like to have access directly on the watch however I don't think the majority of users ever bothered to use this feature. I'd rather see support for more streaming services (including offline access) than offline MP3 storage. On Ionic, it always felt like a chore.

[sockatume]

It would be nice to have this. If I go running and I want to listen to music, I have to take my iPhone with me, at which point my Sense is basically just acting as a heart rate monitor. (My iPhone has far better GPS and just as good of a motion sensor.) However I expect that this is a relatively complicated feature to implement and from what I've seen the number of people who keep actual MP3 files around that the could drag on to their device is limited these days, so I'm not expecting it.