topic Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices? in Desktop (Windows)

Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

afchaffee06 — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 14:58:38 GMT

I have lots of chromecast devices including multiple Google Homes, Chromecast Audio, Chromecast and Chromecast Ultra. I've updated Spotify and it doesn't see any of them. They're all on the same WiFi network, and Google Home can see them just fine. I can even ask Google Home to play to them from Spotify and it works. I've done all the standard IT 101 stuff (turn it off, turn it back on again, update everything, reboot, etc).

However, it gets complicated trying to give Google Home instructions for playlists, etc. I'd rather just control it from my desktop. Why isn't it recognizing ANY of my chromecasts like it did a couple days ago?

...but I have tons of chromecast audio devices 😞

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

BjornRoth — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:04:21 GMT

Chromecast discovery and authentication is unfortunately not supported from Desktop at this time. Cast devices will appear in the Desktop device menu once you have started playback on them from a mobile device – even if you're not on the same WiFi. After you've stopped playing, they will disappear after a short while.

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

brunovdg — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 10:23:04 GMT

I have the same problem but on my android mobile samsung s7. Very very very annoying, google home on my s7 sees both devices, spotify completely at random. Can this be a wifi issue? I ve been looking for an answer online for weeks since I bought both chromecast (linked to Bowers Wilkins zeppelin and bw a5). Thx forhelping!

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

Lutzio — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 00:53:18 GMT

Try turning Bluetooth off and restart the app. My E5 couldn't see my chromecast 2 and audio, but it happens to be that I was also using Bluetooth on a speaker. Turned off Bluetooth and the Spotify saw my devises.
Good luck

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

tonyrodriguez17 — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 03:58:10 GMT

I'm having this issue now in 2018. Any chance of fixing this?

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

Sextee9 — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 18:12:03 GMT

Same Here.

An hour ago it was just fine.

Now, it doesn't recognise not only 1 but my 3 Chromecast devices.

I want it back but how ???

Usualy I cast Spotify from my

Samsung Galaxy S7 (not edge) to Chromecast 2nd Generation (my 3 devices are from the 2nd Generation)

(Jan 15, 2018)

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

afchaffee06 — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 18:52:57 GMT

IoT and home automation is turning out to be a pretty big connectivity mess.

I've got about 60 Google devices in my house including Chromecast Audio,
Chromecast Ultra and Google Home, but the UX for connecting with them
through Pandora, Spotify and even the Google Home app is terrible.

When I want to get music playing on my house audio system, it shouldn't be
this difficult -but usually the process goes something like this:

(1) Open up "Apps" under my phone settings and force Home, Spotify and
Pandora all to stop (the only way I know to "reset" them).

(2) Turn off WiFi, then turn WiFi back on again.

(3) Open the app you want to use (Spotify/Pandora).

(4) Open up whatever you're trying to play

(5) Try to use the cast button to play it on something else (sometimes it
needs several minutes after reconnecting to WiFi to realize that there are
devices there waiting for you, and sometimes it won't recognize them until
I reboot the phone).

(6) Scroll through a really poorly organized list of devices to try to
find the one you're trying to play to.

(7) Maybe it plays, but if you're walking around the house and your phone
moves from one Wireless Access Point (WAP) to another, then it often drops
the connection. For me this does one of 2 things:
--It might keep playing indefinitely on the Chromecast device(s) I had
selected before the connection was lost, but the control over the
track/volume is lost. I'll need to try to reconnect again, which may or
may not work without repeating steps 1-6. Often, when it reconnects, it
interrupts the music that was playing by skipping to the next track.
Sometimes when this connection is lost, it will simultaneously play on both
the Chromecast devices, and start a new, different song on my phone.
--It stops playing on the Chromecast device(s) and starts playing on my
phone instead (I am most annoyed by this outcome).

(8) If you've started it playing from your phone, and you then open it on
your desktop, you can sometimes control it from your desktop. The
advantage here is that your desktop isn't going to be moving around the
house with you as much as your phone probably will -so you should be able
to maintain connected more easily.

Really frustrating things that I wish Spotify/Pandora/Google would fix:

(1) Where the list of available devices is shown, do the following:
--Condense the size of each item when there are more than 10 available so
that people don't need to scroll as much to see everything.
--Remember which devices/groups you last cast to and put those at the top
of the list.
--Organize the rest of the list alpha-numerically instead of randomly so
that people don't need to do a scavenger hunt each time they're scrolling
around a list of devices/groups trying to find the one they're looking for.

(2) Fix or add an musical alarm clock:
--Pandora has an alarm clock feature, but it is completely unreliable and
can't be depended on at all. If you want to wake up to music, it will
often load the "are you still listening" button instead of actually loading
music. ...sorry, I'm asleep waiting for you to wake me up with music, and
you're not playing music because you're waiting for me to press this
button. This is not helpful.
--Spotify really should have an alarm clock. This isn't a complicated,
rocket-science feature. Why doesn't it exist?!?!?!

(3) Spotify/Google/Pandora should add the capability to sync things via
your calendar. For example, you could just set your alarm for each day of
the week and it will trigger Spotify/Pandora to start playing music. This
way you could pick different music/playlists for different days/times. It
would also be great to be able to trigger different ambient music for
different times of day (morning/afternoon/evening). I basically always
have music playing when I'm home and view it as synonymous with turning the
lights on when I'm in the room. There should always be music -it should
just be easier to control it than the present nightmare.

(4) Someone needs to make a web-app that's a home automation dashboard.
Right now everything is geared towards mobile. I get it, lots of people
are doing more and more of their activities/controls from their phones.
But when you need to do a lot of stuff, or complicated stuff -it makes
sense that you'd sit down at your computer to do it. You shouldn't need a
desktop app for that, since the valuable parts of the service require
connectivity anyway. You really just need a good web-app... and that's
lacking across the board. 3 huge multi-billion dollar organizations that
are all failing their users here by not doing something that's ultimately
fairly simple. Epic fail.

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

Guy_B — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 21:20:43 GMT

I have the same problem. It was all working perfectly this morning. I went to work, and when I got home this evening, nothing is working properly anymore.

I deleted everything, did factory resets on the devices, rebooted routers, rebooted computers, rebooted phone.

Nada. It is just not working anymore.

Windows 10

Android 6

2 Chromecast Audio devices

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

afchaffee06 — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 22:57:33 GMT

I've noticed that sometimes when there are lots of updates/firmware pushes, it makes the connectivity issues worse.

Samsung Smart Things did a push this weekend which broke my controller. This is a consistent problem, and sometimes it takes up to a week plus troubleshooting to get it back online. They sent me a replacement controller, but there's no way to migrate from the old controller to the new one without just starting from scratch and manually re-programming everything. This is a huge nightmare -a multi-workday project most likely. They don't seem to care. I'd love it if their product manager added "automated migration feature" to the top of their priority list -but from what I can tell they just don't plan to ever do that. I've been thinking of switching everything from Z-wave to WiFi to try to cut Samsung out completely, but that's a project also, and it's expensive.

For your purposes, when Google does an update but Spotify doesn't do one simultaneously, it can break the connectivity for a while in between. Even if Google doesn't do one, if Spotify does, they can introduce bugs that break connectivity.

All this stuff from all these different companies is patched together without strong standards and change management practices -if different teams at the same company can work on updates without talking to each other, then teams at different companies are definitely guilty. Everyone creates problems for someone else to solve, with the assumption that they will -and we're stuck with the frustrating mess.

Same Issue

miltonayala_ — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 12:29:27 GMT

Everything was working fine but today it stopped working, Spotify doesn't recognize or see the Chromecast device in my home network. I did extensive TS and nothing seems to work. This is really frustrating... Using LG G5 SE Android 6.0.1

Re: Same Issue

Guy_B — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 13:29:53 GMT

@miltonayala_ wrote:
Everything was working fine but today it stopped working, Spotify doesn't recognize or see the Chromecast device in my home network. I did extensive TS and nothing seems to work. This is really frustrating... Using LG G5 SE Android 6.0.1

Had a long support chat last night, and it seems Spotify is aware that there is a problem.

The relevant parts:

"We understand and thanks for reporting this. Our best tech folks are on the case as we speak. Hopefully we'll have a fix soon! /RB"

"There have been similar cases as yours, but we're still looking into this at the moment. Don't worry, we hope to have everything working right away. In the meantime, if you need anything else, give us a shout /RB"

"We understand how you feel. Rest assured, we're doing everything we can to get this sorted out right away. Just keep an eye out for updates /RB"

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

magasati — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 21:47:15 GMT

I realized almost the same. It occurred when I halted a track in pause for almost 10 minutes. Chromecast just turned back to the basic surface ( background images) instead of displaying the current track with cover. After it clicking on play on other devices brings up an explanation something how to play on TV, computer and WiFi sound device. Tried to reset Spotify and even uninstall but nothing. Anyone has an idea?

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

Guy_B — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 21:45:23 GMT

This is definitely a problem with the Chromecast/Spotify communication. I got it working again, was working fine for about a week, and now it has gone bad again. This happened again tonight, so now I'm going through the whole mess again to try and sort it out.

Very frustrating.

Re: Why won't Spotify recognize my chromecast devices?

Guy_B — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 14:53:21 GMT

And once again it is all sorted out on my end. This time I didn't need to do anything, just went to bed and it was working again in the morning, so this is clearly stemming from a problem with the Spotify streaming service, and nothing to do with our own internal networks or devices.

I tweeted the helpdesk, and they once again said that they have engineers working on the problem, so they know there is a problem, although I doubt they are admitting how large or widespread it is.

Hopefully they will find the bugs and fix it permanently very soon.