Own Listening Activity not Updated for Friends

[lemora]

Hey.

A week ago my listening activity stopped being updated for my friends and completely vanished from their side bars today, although I have been listening to music via Spotify almost every day. The settings remained unchanged and the same on each device, namely not having activated a private session and enabling "share my listening activity".



The last activity that was shown to two of my friends relates to listening activities on device 2, the next (unrecorded) listening activity took place on device 3. Since then Spotify was used to listen to music on all three devices, none of these activities was successfully broadcasted to friends, which seems to indicate a general account-related issue not specific to the client.



Besides updating the clients on all devices, logging out of and back into my Spotify Account and keeping the OS-es up to date, I have tried unfollowing and following affected friends again, yet even them doing the same did not help.



Many other "listening activity" community forum questions seem to relate to not seeing the activities of one's friends, which I seem to be able to do. Maybe this illustrates the same/a related problem from the perspective of one of the vanishing accounts.
 
Device 1:                    MacBook Pro, Mid 2015
Operating System 1: MacOS 10.15.7
Spotify Version 1:       1.1.48.625



Device 2:                    iPhone 6s
Operating System 2: iOS 14.2
Spotify Version 2:       8.5.86.739



Device 3:                    Dell Latitude E7440
Operating System 3: Fedora 33
Spotify Version 3:       1.1.46.916 (installed via snap)

[Eni]

Hi @lemora,

Welcome to the Community!

First up, we suggest that you run a clean reinstall on all your devices following these specific steps. This one is more thorough than the usual one.

On another note, could you try disconnecting and then connecting your Facebook profile again to check if that makes the difference?

Keep us in the loop!

[lemora]

Hello Eni,

thank you for the reply and suggestions.

fortunately the issue seems to have resolved itself earlier today without intervention when my listening activity started being shown to at least one friend again, so there is currently no need for further measures on my side.
If the issue reappears I will try the suggested steps. However, I don't have a Facebook account, so none is or was connected.

Is this by any chance a known issue, is it being investigated? What is the cause, could it be connected to a faulty state in a particular client that is propagated? Are there logs one could send in in order to assist the issue being better understood and reproducible?

Thank you

[lemora]

Hey @Eni ,

unfortunately the issue resurfaced a mere day later. Again, I am puzzled, as nothing changed on my side. Are there any ongoing changes happening to the system on the back-end side? Is there any official information on this issue; is it known, being addressed?
Is there anything a user might do in order to help track down the cause?

Thank you very much.

[Ivan]

Hey @lemora, 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. 

Next thing you can try is checking if the same happens when logging in to a different Spotify account. You can create a new free account following these steps in order to test whether your friends will see your listening activity. 

If it works with another account, you can follow the steps in this Spotify Answer next.

We'll look out for your reply. 

[lemora]

Hello @Ivan ,

thank you for your suggestions and sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

After clean reinstalls of all three clients, the situation remained the same: occasionally my listening activity would be shared with friends, at other times the activity was not updated again for days. The same was true for the newly created second account.

After a while of trying to reproduce the error and its occasional disappearance, I noticed another correlation that I did not consider to be relevant before. My listening activity was never updated when listening on wireless or smart speakers through the local network (in this case three different models all of brand Bose that are listed as being supported on the Spotify web page), yet tracked when listening directly on the device of the respective clients (iPhone, MacBook and Dell Laptop) or any connected bluetooth devices (even the mentioned speakers themselves).

The same pattern of not showing listening activity to friends when listening over external speakers over the local network was reproducible using my partner’s account and devices as well.

The synchronization of listening activity between clients seems to work fine and real-time when having multiple clients opened on different devices at the same time. It is not a general issue of having a different destination device for the playback either; Listening on my Laptop but controlling the playback from the iOS device correctly updates the listening activity in my friends’ overviews (and vice versa).

Now, why would the synchronization between one’s clients work in these cases, but not be broadcast to friends? Last.fm was also kept up to date while friends weren’t.

Is there anything else I can do?

[Ver]

Hey @lemora,

Thanks for keeping us posted 🙂

If the issue persists when you're using Connect, it's a good idea to check if there are updates for the speakers, your devices and the app.

In case the speakers have Bluetooth, we'd suggest you also try connecting the devices via Bluetooth. Are there any changes?

Let us know how it goes. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[lemora]

Hey @Ver,

thank you for the fast reply.

Since it was suggested before, I can confirm that all device OSes and the Spotify applications are up to date.

The same goes for the speakers.

As mentioned, connecting any devices via bluetooth works, even concerning the speakers in question. The issue seems to be specific to speakers accessed via the local network.

[Ver]

Hey @lemora,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop 🙂

We'd suggest you also check the steps mentioned in this article.

Your partner can also try playing songs directly through the app rather than using Spotify Connect to a device. Are there any changes?

Tip: It's important that all devices are on the same network.

Hope this helps. We'll be right here if you have any further questions.
 

[lemora]

Hey @Ver,

well, I *am* the friend that keeps vanishing, I have no problems seeing my friends' listening activity myself. 🙂

Both for my partner and myself our listening activity is shown to friends
1) when listening directly on the device running the client,
2) when connecting to an external speaker via bluetooth
3) or when listening on another device that is also running a Spotify client, such as controlling the listening activity from my iPhone but listening on a laptop.
So it does not seem to be a general Spotify Connect issue. Please also mind that these are only the cases that I was able to discover.

Also yes, the devices are on the same network. (; And it works as intended, Spotify just does not publish listening activity to friends.

However, the link you provided explicitly mentions the following:
"Other users that you follow are listening on Spotify through the native app itself rather than using Spotify Connect to a device".

Does that mean that Spotify in general makes no guarantees about showing listening activity to friends when listening on an external device via Spotify Connect; there is no fix or workaround? Why is that and why does it work in the scenarios mentioned above?

[lemora]

Oh, and just to be thorough -- my friends don"t suffer from the problem described in the linked-to article. They just don't see updates on my listening activity, while the activities of their other friends continue showing.

[Ver]

Hey @lemora,

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

This could indeed happen when using Connect. In this case it's a good idea to play the songs directly through the app. 

We always strive to improve our app and the experience with it and will make sure to pass your feedback 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 one, you can give these steps a go and submit your idea. That way other users can also support it. Rest assured that the higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.   

Here you can find more information about how your feedback reaches Spotify. 

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be happy to help. 
 

[lemora]

Hey @Ver,

thank you for the confirmation, passing the feedback on and the suggestions as to how I might use/contribute to the Idea Exchange in this matter.

It would be nice if using Connect was fully supported, as connecting via Bluetooth does not allow connecting to coupled speakers as a single device, for example. And not every device supports Bluetoth.

One last thought -- it would be great to find this information regarding potential problems with Spotify Connect and friend activity in a more accessible location such as
here https://support.spotify.com/us/article/friend-feed/
or
here https://support.spotify.com/us/article/spotify-connect/or maybe an FAQ. That would have saved us all some time and might be useful for other people who might stumble across similar issues. 🙂

Thanks again for your help!

[Ver]

Hey @lemora,

Thanks for keeping us posted 🙂

We appreciate you taking the time to share these suggestions with us as ideas help us improve the app and the overall experience. Regarding the different options that Connect offers- you can always submit your idea so other users can also add their votes to it.

If you have questions, we are here for you.
 

Stay safe!