All sounds are muted if I pause music while using Spotify in a car with a Bluetooth connection

[lukyanov]

Hey.

Please help me to solve the issue.

I always use Spotify in my car with a Bluetooth connection but if I pause the music (no matter from smartphone or from multimedia system) - all sounds including navigator, apps notifications, phone calls etc are muted until i press play or force close the Spotify app.

If I increase the volume using the multimedia system (or from the steering wheel) while the Spotify paused - it automatically starts playing music.

Also I noticed that if music is playing and I open any video in the Spotify app itself - music automaticly pauses, it starts playing the video and volume turnes off after 2 seconds of playing video, if I close the video, music starts playing again.

This causes huge problems due to the impossibility of using the navigator in silence with the Spotify application running. I also missed a few important calls while Spotify was on pause that is not good too.

Smartphone: Google Pixel 9, car: Volkswagen Tiguan MK2, Spotify Premium user.

Thanks in advance

[Maria]

Hey @lukyanov,

Thanks for reaching out on the Community!

Could you make sure that Spotify has all necessary permissions enabled in the device settings? We've seen this help in similar situations.

If you're using any battery optimization option or power saving settings on your Pixel device, it's worth switching them off as well.

Also, do you experience this behavior if you're connected to any other Bluetooth device?

Let us know how it goes!

[lukyanov]

Hey Maria

I'm sure that Spotify has all necessary permissions enabled in the device settings, no battery optimization.

Also we tried the same thing in iPhone 13 with the same result, other sounds just turned to 0 after pausing Spotify

[MihailY]

Hey @lukyanov,

Thanks for your response.

If this happens with both Android and iOS devices, this strongly suggests some issue with the car's Bluetooth settings. Can you please go through them and look for any options related to audio priority or background playback. You can also send us a few screenshots of the settings menu and we'll check for you.

It's also a good idea to test if the muting happens when playing audio from any other app. If possible, try reaching out to VW support as they might've seen similar reports in the past and could have a solution.

Keep us posted!