12 April 2023
Look, I’m a sucker for Spotify integration in anything. Be it watches, Ikea speakers because I’m too cheap to buy the fancy-proper SONOS ones, or as is the case today, Strava. Don’t worry, this post is a quickie, and more notably, your price isn’t changing again.
Instead, from today Spotify users can now control Spotify from within the Strava app. This allows browsing of Spotify favorites, as well as controlling play/pause/resume/skip from within the Strava app. This is available for both free & premium Spotify users. Essentially, the idea is that if you normally open up the Strava app to record a workout, then the Spotify app, this shortcuts opening the Spotify app.
Obviously, for many readers of this site (including myself), you probably primarily use a dedicated device that uploads to Strava, rather than recording in the default Strava app. I really only tend to record in the Strava app a few times a year when my watch battery has died. Still, with 100 million+ users, many of them are going to use the default app. And if you’re like my wife who hates background app clutter with a surprising amount of fury, this resolves that.
Anyways, here’s how it works.
You’ll crack open the Strava app, and then tap as if you were toing to start a new workout (from within the app). You’ll either see the Spotify icon in the lower right corner, or get a new prompt to connect your Strava account to your Spotify account. Also, you’ll be reminded that some people still apparently run with wired headphones, but then again, she’s running with an 8 year old Forerunner 225 – so, it fits the bill. From there you’ll tapity-tap to complete the authorization, just like authorizing any other Spotify app
At that point you’ve got a new shelf that shows up along the bottom (assuming you tap that ‘Spotify’ icon you see in the lower right). This exposes you or your children’s music habits to the few hundred thousand people that’ll read this post. You can swipe left/right to different collections of playlists. Along the top there’s a play/pause button, as well as well as a skip and favorite button. Plus of course title album/title information.
Once playing, you’ll notice along the bottom is the playlist name. You can swipe up from that to see other songs in the list, though it appears to always be in shuffle mode, because it doesn’t go to the next song in that list for me. Kinda odd then to display what is the upcoming songs, but not actually do that next. But hey, can’t win them all.
Note that all this is the same whether you’re in a pre-workout state, actively working out, or paused state. You can swipe this all down to the bottom, out of the way.
There isn’t any method to go beyond the selections of playlists, so you’ll need to do that within the Spotify app directly.
It does not appear that Strava saves the music you listened to within the activity profile. Garmin used to do that back in the day when they first launched music support on the Forerunner 645M, then people got upset that their Britney and Bieber music preferences were being exposed to their previously authorized circle of friends.
Look, I’ll likely never use this feature – for the very simple reason I just don’t generally record workouts in the Strava phone app. But I do appreciate that lots of people do both today. I use Strava daily, and I use Spotify virtually every waking hour of the day, and I even use Spotify while doing things that I upload to Strava. But this particular item isn’t something I’ll use, even if it’s cool for other people.
With that, thanks for reading!