New iPad app stops playing.. buffers... (longtime) ... plays few seconds...again buffering...

[Juite]

Hi,

I got an iPad 1 (fyi not jailbroken). Installed yesterday the new Spotify app for iPad. Super... I thought. But it stops playing all the time and after a few minutes it continues... Why? 

Internet connection 120 Mb

WLAN N router

LAN 1Gbps 

Please Help...

[GhostlyFriend]

Nope, hickups here on the iPad since I started Spotify three days ago. I run glassfiber 100/100 and 5Gb WiFi. IPhone with 3G seems to run fine so far. Haven't tested that extensively.

[Tuur]

You win.

[PieterKleine]

This evening again hickups in the ipad. Crashes and so on.

[Gijs1337]

Yep, more hiccups since the newest update it seems. Seems to work better with synced files though.

[AHG]

I'm a Premium user for a year now and the streaming quality of the iOS apps is getting worse and worse... Every time I play a song at my iPad 3 or iPhone 4S, the playback freezes. It SCARES me, especially when I play at a loud volume.

Using a new iPad and iPhone 4s, both on iOS 5.1.1 and the latest version of the Spotify app. I stream at the highest quality but hey, that why I pay €10 a month, right? 

If this isn't going to be fixed, I'm off to another service.

[Dezorian]

Glad to have found this topic. I have the same problems on both iPhone 4 and iPad 1. Less problems when playing offline music but still some. Most of the time it helps when unlocking and pressing pause,play. But its very anoying. Also tried Deezer and it didn't have any problems. When this doesn't get resolved in an acceptable time it does give me reason to check on other services. Too bad because I really liked Spotify so far! Hoping it gets resolved soon!

[Tuur]

Offline probs? That's should be a pretty obvious bug...

[Dezorian]

That could also be caused because not the entire playlist is offline, but some songs are. Ill will check this day if even offline songs have the issue. But for streaming it definitely is!

[IanGude]

Fixed - my @ss.

It's actually been fine for the last week or so on my 100mb Virgin Media line.  Today, the new version dropped in, and now I'm getting drop outs continually again.

I'd cancel my subscription, if it wasn't part of the free offer from Virgin media.  I can see a battle with them now, as it's been unusable for most of the past 2 months.

[meahtenoha]

Hi IanGude - I've just moved your post over to this more relevant thread. Sounds like you're having a different issue to the one in the 10.5.8 thread.

I can assure you guys we're keeping an eye on this thread. As soon as we have an update we'll post it right here. 

[IanGude]

Thanks Meredith.  It's the same problem I (and others, according to the Virgin site) have had for ages.   Plays fine for a bit, then a dropout, and it it picks up and carries on.  

[RicardoM]

I'm also a Premium user, furthermore we have two Unlimited accounts (one for my wife and one for my father) and have planned one for the kids. But lately we experience lot's of hickups on both iPad 1 iOS 5.1.1 and iPod Touch 4 iOS 5.1.1 running the latest version of the Spotify app (0.5.2.374.g2c5b1077). Also searching often is very slow. We experience the same problems with either my Premium account or my wife's Unlimited account on both Windows XP PC's. Our ISP is Ziggo with a 50 Mbit download. And if that's not enough trouble, also my Sonos system regularly pauses or skips tracks, loses connection with Spotify, can not browse through my playlist, etc. I think Spotify has grown rapidly, without expanding their server capacity at the same amount. It's time that the paying customers are served first, and the non-paying last, otherwise Spotify will lose some now very unhappy customers.

[Canyonred]

@Ricardo! I fully agree, it is also very frustrating that Spotify doesn't respond at all about all these complaints! Where are they?

[Dezorian · Accepted solution]

I think i've found the cause of the problem. When using Carat for anayzing my battery usage, i've found that my "memory used"  most of the time is completely filled. "Memory active" is 30/50%. This means that the memory of my iPhone most of the time is filled with processes of apps I have used. Not all memory is active though, so this means that whenever an app needs more memory, it will free up the inactive memory, in order for the running app to use that memory.

Today I removed all the apps from my multitask bar (and thus, freeing up the memory used). I checked this with Carat. When I would then play streaming playlist with Spotify, not a single hickup or stutter occured!

My guess is that when the "memory used" is almost full, Spotify is not getting enough memory from the operating system, to continue to buffer the songs, thus stuttering and hickups follow. Maybe when the device is locked the memory management is even more strict?

Hopefully this information can lead to a succesfull fix for the app!

For now, my workaround for stutter free playing works for me!

[RicardoM]

@Dezorian! You might be right. This afternoon I have had no hickup or at least a few hours. I just checked, and Spotify was the only app running, I recently have cleared the app bar. I will continue to monitor this aspect. Thank you for your reaction.

[PieterKleine]

Have been test ipod with clean ap bar. First 35 minutes no hickups, than in the middle of a song playback stopped. Hitting pause and play buttong has no effect. By the way this afternoon I also managed to have continous playback on ipad.

[RicardoM]

@PieterKleine and @Dezorian. Had continues play until 5 to 10 minutes ago. Keeps stopping at the start or just a few seconds playing a song. Clecked memory. Only about 5 megabytes free. Used System Status to free up memory, but this had no positive effect. Probably rush-hour now?

[RicardoM]

I did some more tests on memory. When I moved Spotify from the app bar free memory raised from about 10 megabytes to about 95 megabytes. So Spotify indeed consumes a lot of memory. Restarted Spotify and memory dropped immediately under 20 megabytes, shortly to 5 megabytes. Now it seems to play ok, but memory is still very low, about 15 megabytes. And just when I wanted to end and post this message it stopped again!?

[Janskerkhof]

I'm on ipad 2.please stop telling everybody it is the settings. --->it is the app. Friends have same experience. The app is useless as it is now. Please escalate, and not suggest to solve. I have spotify premium.

[donkerekamer]

This is not solved, repeat not solved....