topic Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners in Android

Group Session is off-beat between listeners

slamhound — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 14:14:51 GMT

Really great Spotify recently got the Group Session for multiple listening devices! However the music is differently synchronized between the devices making them off-beat.

Running together - steps are off-beat.
Dancing together - stepping on eachother's toes.
Playing in multiple rooms at party - headache.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Xenia — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 17:14:08 GMT

Hello there @slamhound,

Glad to hear that you're enjoying the Group Session feature and thanks for the feedback – we appreciate it!

We always aim to improve, so we’ll get this passed on to the right team 🙂

Give us a shout if there's anything else you'd like a hand with!

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

SammySooser — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 16:06:23 GMT

I am having the same problem. I golf with a friend, we walk, and both play music through our phones. I initially tried the group session to see if it would allow us to listen together while we play. We experienced the off-beat or out of sync audio between our two devices. We were unable to use the group session feature for this purpose as the music clashed while we were together.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Ver — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 13:23:30 GMT

Hey @SammySooser,

Thanks for reaching out to us 🙂

This is an expected behavior. Currently there is no option to automatically start the songs at the same time. When you invite your friend to the group session, they can choose to listen on their own device or to listen on your device (and control it from their device). You can head here for more information about the group session.

We appreciate your feedback and will make sure to pass it on to the right team. You can also have a look in our Idea Exchange to see if someone else has already made a similar suggestion. If there isn't you can give these steps a go and submit your idea. That way other users can support it. Rest assured that the higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.

Hope this was helpful. If you have questions, we are here for you.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

AustinErlewein — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 03:36:48 GMT

For some reason, no matter what song is played it forces my buddy 7 seconds ahead. Even when starting a new song, it just throws him 7 seconds into it instead of at the beginning.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Jeremy — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 06:54:46 GMT

Hi there @AustinErlewein,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

Can you ask your friend to perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

It would be great if you can let us know which device/devices this occurs on.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

freshjive101 — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:59:58 GMT

Also have the exact same issue while golfing. We have a 1-3 second lag that makes it really hard to listen to. Hoping a solution is coming. This is such a great feature that Apple Music doesn’t yet have. Would like to see Spotify get this sorted out before the competition.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Alex — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 07:22:02 GMT

Hey @freshjive101,

Thanks for the post.

The right folks at Spotify are working on improving Group Sessions. The feature is still in testing, so it will improved in future releases.

All user feedback is valuable in such situations, as it helps the developer team focus on what's important for real users 🙂

Cheers.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Rockym1 — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 19:43:39 GMT

Hi there, just wanted to let you know this is still happening. No matter what my friend and I do, her device is ahead by a few seconds.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

LazerSkar — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 22:43:08 GMT

Happens every time for me with many other friends too. An idea. Sync devices every 2 songs. So problems fix themself and devices wait for each other to sync.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

SuperSpasm — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 21:09:05 GMT

Happened to me now.

My partner and I were in sync (I think), I then didaome playback actions (headphones came off, auto-paused, resumed, etc)

And she was ~42secs ahead of me.

When skipping to the next song- she was still 42 secs ahead of me.

Closed/reopened session- 42 seconds.

Closed the app and restarted- 42 seconds.

Restarted both phones + new session (!) - still 42 seconds ahead of me

After a while she fell out of sync completely so skipping would not affect her at all.

It was a terrible, infuriating experience- its worse than not jamming at all, because we were on complete different sections of the song.

This is obviously a server or caching bug- the delta was consistent no matter what we did.

The bug persisted across jam sessions when I tried closing it and opening another (sharing another link)

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

AMO05 — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 19:11:01 GMT

Seems like many people have the same issue why don't introduce one of two options.

1. Manually Synchronization by an option where u get a screen with plus and minus and with each click u can get closer to an synced up play.

2. Beeing able to play a sound from one device and the other listens and knows what difference those have and automatically syncs up.

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Gergelicious — Thu, 02 May 2024 12:59:44 GMT

I see this issue from 4 years ago, but I have the same problem. Any plan to fix? (Is there a fix?)

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Hackysaq — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:11:21 GMT

Have a running group in HK and we can never seem to start our music on the same beat when synced to a jam. Is it too tall an order for Spotify? We have all purchased premium hoping this would work…

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Tabird18 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:43:27 GMT

I still can’t get me and one other persons jam session even if we play the same song at the same time on beat. Always 3-7 seconds off and it’s so annoying! Why?!

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

ellie_tay — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:36:42 GMT

this problem is still happening, is there anything we can do?

Re: Group Session is off-beat between listeners

Kpears189 — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 14:40:36 GMT

This thread is 5 years old and spotify team still don't seem to come up with a solution to fix the problem. Offering customers a product that doesn't work as should.