How do I keep what is playing on different devices separate?

[BillTerri]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 7, iPad (6th Generation), Windows Desktop

Operating System

iOS 12,  Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Spotify has lately started to treat all my devices as one device, continuing what I was listening to on one device to a different device when I start the new device up.  Sometimes this is okay, but more often, it's not what I want to have happen.  Mostly, I like to use my different devices in different places, and in different ways.  For example, I may want to listen to an album I found under the Spotify "Discover" heading when I'm working at my desktop, but when I get into my car, I want to resume listening where I left off the previous day to a playlist that I've downloaded to my iPhone.  Similarly, while I'm preparing my breakfast, I'm likely to want to use my iPad to continue listening to an Album that I started listening to there the previous day, not to continue to listen to what was last playing on my desktop.  This is the way Spotify used to act, but now it has changed.

Is there some setting I can change in Spotify to keep my listening choices on the different devices separate, the way I used to do? 

[argolis]

Totally agree with many previous commenters. I listen to podcasts on my phone and music on my work laptop. I want to pick up each of them separately and it's pretty irritating to have to search back to a podcast episode on my phone to pick up where I left off.

The suggestion to create and maintain separate accounts is a lazy workaround. At least admit that it's not ideal and what you're suggesting is a workaround but don't pretend that having your users create and maintain multiple logins is the ideal solution.

Just implement a feature that allows people to keep their device activity linked or separated. That's it. Basta.

That doesn't mean people are trying to cheat Spotify out of revenue by sharing multiple devices. Spotify can still stop a user playing on two devices at once but allow users to keep what each device activity totally separate.

[Jeremy]

Hey there folks,

Thank you for your posts and feedback.

If you think your suggestion will appeal to other users you can always create an idea on the relevant idea board. We always take new ideas and feedback into consideration to improve the app.

You can read more about how your feedback reach Spotify here.

One again - thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help with anything else. We're always one reply away.

[argolis]

For anyone that's willing to vote on this to show Spotify you really want this, here's the idea page where you can vote for it:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Connect-Don-t-automatically-sync-what-I-am-playing-acros...

The idea has been sitting there since 2014!

[BillTerri]

Thanks so much for posting this link. With that, people who agree with what's posted here can go there to register a vote with at least a small expectation that Spotify will pay attention. However, as you said, it's been sitting there as an idea since 2014, and nothing has been done about it, so we shouldn't hold our breath for a solution.
How can Spotify justify this lack of responsiveness?

[Cbc3]

Quick update, I no longer use this as a solution. Spotify stopped working for me in Android Auto and after attempting troubleshooting, I decided to cancel my subscription. I now use YouTube Music, which doesn't seem to share the problems we're discussing in this thread.

I miss the Spotify playlists a bit, but it doesn't matter if I can't actually use them in my car, which is where I listen to music most often. 

[kdSpartan]

What an absurd suggestion. Your app lacks a very simple feature (to turn off forced syncing across devices) and you suggest that I create a 2nd account to bypass this? So now my PC playlists are only for my PC and my mobile playlists are only for mobile? I bet you'd love if I paid for both account subscriptions as well?? Ha. Right. OOORRR... you could just enable a very simple feature to turn off forced syncing between devices. I get it, an account can only play on one device at a time. That's fine and fair. But when I'm listening to a playlist on my PC, then a few hours later listen to a podcast on my phone, and go back to my PC, and the playlist progress is gone and the podcast is there, it's infuriartingly annoying.

[BillTerri]

Unbelievable!  Spotify just posted the following response to the thread in the ideas section that addresses this topic:

Thanks for coming to the Spotify Idea Exchange.
We've discussed this idea multiple times internally and while it is interesting, we don't have any immediate plans to implement this.
If we do have any new information to share, rest assured we'll check back in here with a new status.

So much for listening to customer concerns.  Thanks a lot, Spotify!

[Johny6]

I also have this problem - it started happening to me only recently though.

I listen to different music while working and different while walking or driving. It's especially troublesome when I work - walk the dog - back to work.

It would be great to have a way of desyncing currently played for a specific device or all of them.

[jessicalynn01]

I have the same issue.  My Alexa defaults to my account, so when my kids are listening to Alexa, I can't listen to anything different on my phone.  And my alexa always defaults to the account that I have on my phone (even when I try to switch to one of my family members).  Please help!

[Alex]

Hi there @jessicalynn01,

Thanks for the post.

The best thing to do is to unlink your account from the Alexa speaker and link a new separate account under the Family Plan. This way when the kids are playing music from the speaker it won't interrupt your playback 🙂

More info on that can be found here.

Hope this helps.

[1h3bq287byzlk7i]

Hi,

It's far easier and faster if spotify provides a simple setting that we can put a checkmark thingy to wether the user wants to continue listening the song based by last song played in general across every device he has that account or last song played ON THAT SPECIFIC DEVICE.

Thanks,

D.B.

[argolis]

Spotify closed the feature request last year:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Connect-Don-t-automatically-sync-what-I-am-playing-acros...

So, you can't even continue to vote for the idea because they don't want to implement it.

If I had to guess, I'd say some bean counter is afraid of people sharing an account and they'd lose revenue or something along those lines. The only option is the shitty "create and maintain multiple accounts" workaround.

[AlekJ]

This**bleep** solution. I have to pay for a family premium bundle to have separate playing songs on MY devices? **bleep** this. Bad solution. 

[Arlo36]

I have the same issue as others here. I like to listen to podcasts and workout music on my phone, and chilled & classical on my work laptop. I know it might seem like a small thing but can get super frustrating when my phone has music and I have to go back to my podcasts and find which one I was listening to.

I can see you offer a premium duo account, will that solve the issue of being able to play on two different devices? 

That might raise a different problem as it's more convenient to have all my music on one account so that I don't have to go back and find and like all the stuff I have on my other account.

[Fransson]

And I’m sitting here, furious, because I’m on the other side and want my devices to work as one. But they don’t. I can listen to a podcast, for example, on my phone, then I jump into my car and would like to continue to listen on the podcast. But no, the car app starts to play from where I last listened to on that device. That’s really annoying for me and I have no idea how to get them to “work as one”. I’ve tried to reinstall the app, both on the phone and in the car. Nothing works. 

[brianchapman]

I came across this while looking for a solution to the problem and was disappointed to hear that Spotify doesn't seem to understand the problem nor offer a solution.

Recently this has become more annoying since when I return to my laptop after listening on my phone and press play (from the laptop) it starts playing on my phone. In addition to being non-intuitive, this seems like a security issue to me as pressing play on my laptop should not control my phone.  At a minimum it is embarrassing to have your music start blaring on your phone when you thought it would start playing on your earphones connected to the laptop.

[MaKaMaErKi]

I agree, this is crazy annoying.
Please, Spotify, listen to Your customers, and fix this so it
can be a choice!

/Mats

[iua]

Why I need split queue on my devices? It's that simple:
While I'm near laptop I would like to listen new music, to find tracks I like and to add them to my playlists.
Then, I'm listening my playlists on my smartphone on a walk or in the car, I prefer it since I can't add to playlists new songs I liked while on the go.
And I don't want my queues to be replaced on any device, cause I'll forget where I stopped before, then probably will repeat listening something I was listening before, instead of continue to discover new tracks/or my favorites.

[musus]

I like to listen to one playlist in my car, podcast on my phone and new music/other playlist at work.  Is really annoying that each device can't be treated separately.  Spotify please make this configurable!

[SuperScopeSix]

User of Spotify for 7 years now.  I'd also love to have this ability.  At least let us choose in the options or in our account to cross-play on all our devices or to retain what we were playing on each device.