topic Re: Cant listen to music without premium in iOS (iPhone, iPad)

Cant listen to music without premium

Elrisha — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 07:19:00 GMT

Plan

Free

Country

Caribbean Netherlands

Device

iPhone 13

Operating System

(iOS 18.5)

My Question or Issue

I recently canceled my spotify subscription because I got a free trial for apple music. When I came back to save an album (now using spotify free) I was told that it was a premium feature to listen to the album. I recall in the past years once you pressed the play button it would shuffle and play a mix of songs in the album, along with related tunes. Now I cant listen to anything with the free version? I hope theres a resolution.

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Vasil — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 10:51:41 GMT

Hey @Elrisha,

Sorry to see you've been having issues with the album playback!
When selecting the play button, albums on mobile on the free tier should be playable in Smart Shuffle mode 🙂
Could you let us know how you're attempting to start the playback? It'd be awesome if you could send us a screenshot/ video recording of where you click and the error message you get!

Much appreciated! We'll be on the lookout for your response 🙌🏼

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Elrisha — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:42:56 GMT

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Elrisha — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:49:33 GMT

I couldnt post a video so I provided a screenshot. This popped up as a result of me pressing the play button for tthe album. I tried going to the artists page and the song bar popped up but there wasn’t any music playing. When i paused it id see the song and when i tried playing it i would see a black screen.

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

MihailY — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:05:32 GMT

Hey @Elrisha,

Thanks for the additional info.

Do you get the same behavior with playlists created by you? What about a different device? Can you try running a clean reinstall of the app and make sure you're not using a VPN on your device?

Keep us posted.

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

31vkpoeeu5z4mvuzndns — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 22:40:43 GMT

I am facing a similar situation. Spotify says that I’m trying to access content that will unlock with premium only. This is happening for all content that I could use freely until two days ago.

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Joan — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 09:06:17 GMT

Hi @31vkpoeeu5z4mvuzndns,

Thanks for reaching out.

Could you confirm if you've tried the steps provided by @MihailY? If you haven't done so, then give it a go so we can cover our bases. Additionally, does this happen for you on mobile only or across all devices? And when you say it started happening two days ago, was that when your account reverted to free, or was it already working as expected on free before?

Let us know how it goes.

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Xannon — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:36:38 GMT

I'm also facing the same issue and had reinstalled my spotify app but the problem remains

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Xannon — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:40:46 GMT

here's the reference

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

Yordan — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 10:42:35 GMT

Thanks for joining the thread, @Xannon!

This error may show up if you've been abroad recently, so if you folks haven't already, I'd recommend checking your account settings, namely the country registered on your account page and making sure it's set up properly (you may need to update it, if the wrong one is showing instead).

That should do the trick, but in case it doesn't, try logging out and signing back in to your account afterwards to force a resync.

Cheers 🤘

Re: Cant listen to music without premium

riri131aww — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:43:20 GMT

How come we can’t do anything without spotify premium. I can’t go backwards, I can’t pick a song, and now I have limited skips what’s going on?? I might just switch to apple music.