Gapless Playback for Bluetooth Devices - Official Bluetooth Support

[rytymu]

This is pretty simple, I noticed that whenever I have Spotify streaming through a Bluetooth connection (phone / tablet), gapless playback works about 25% of the time, maybe less.

It's completely random when it works. For example:

If I hear a gap between songs in a gapless album (basically anything from Armin Van Buuren), I can go back and listen to the same two songs again and (sometimes) the gap won't be there.

I would imagine that a very large portion of the Spotify user base is using at least one Bluetooth device by now, and it only makes sense to add full funcionality for these users. I've been using Bluetooth streaming for headphones and my car for about two years now, and this is the one feature that just kills the listening experience when going wireless. 

Please add gapless Bluetooth streaming support!

On a side note, this would go really great with gapless support for local files, but lets at least get the streaming side of things patched up!

[blake]

Hi @rytymu , thanks for your post! I've moved this topic to the Help - Android subforum, as it sounds to me like this is a glitch in need of troubleshooting. If it's determined that there is no official support for Bluetooth devices, I can move it back to the Ideas Exchange.

[Daniel]

I have no problems with gapless & crossfade using Bluetooth. Maybe see if a clean install will help:

[GUIDE] How to fix common issues for Spotify on Android

[rytymu]

I will try the above troubleshooting steps.

In the mean time, the only post I've seen asking about official Bluetooth support is from 2013, in which a forum member stated that Bluetooth was not officially suported at that point. I don't know if anything has changed since then, but here is the link:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Android/Listening-to-Spotify-via-Bluetooth/td-p/568418

I will update with the results of the clean install in a few days. For the record, I have experienced this on multiple phones, and multiple Bluetooth devices (both old and new). Currently I'm using a T-Mobile Galaxy Note 4, and streaming to a 2014 Nissan Altima SV, Sennheiser MM200, or a Bose Soundlink Color. I do have a memory card, but it's brand-new, and has only been used in this device (64GB Samsung EVO, class 10).

[rytymu]

Update: After a clean install it definitely works better, but still pauses in between tracks about 20% of the time. It seems to happen more often if the phone has been left with the screen off for a while. I was listening to a gapless set, and in the first hour it skipped once or twice, but after the phone had been sitting with the screen off for a while, it skipped 4 or 5 times in a row. It only stopped when I turned the screen on, made sure the app was running in the forground, and then locked it again.

[camillo75]

If you don't care about battery draining you could try setting in developer settings "screen always on" to see if something changes?
Camillo

[rytymu]

Update:
After a few days, it's back to square one. Gaps about 75% of the time.

I do have a theory on why:

I noticed that right after I followed the instructions for wiping the cache (posted above), gapless worked quite well, probably over 90% of the time. I'll leave a little allowance there for network congestion, buffering, etc. So 90% or more seems reasonable. HOWEVER, upon repeated replays of the same gapless albums, no dice. Back to square one again. It seems as though Spotify uses a temporary cache for recently played tracks. Consequently, we all know that "local" files (in this case temporary), do not fully support gapless playback. So it seems as though gapless only works semi-reliably on the first play-through. Bearing in mind I'm only talking about Android here; desktop gapless is nearly flawless.

I tried wiping the cache again to test my theory, and so far it has only skipped once in the first 7 tracks. No, not acceptable, but it's much more tolerable than not working at all like normal. Unless of course I want to listen to the same tracks again. Then, well, I hope you have wifi to re-download your offline playlists.

Please fix.

[Daniel]

I recommend you contact Spotify Support using the form here. They should be able to pass your findings onto the dev team.

You will get an automated reply at first, however if you need to chase them just reply to the email as it does get monitored.

[rytymu]

Will do. Thanks for the link. And for the record, I just tried pugging in an AUX cable into a speaker, and gapless playback is equally inconsistent. So it appears that it is an app issue, and might not be a Bluetooth issue like I thought.

[rytymu]

Update:

After a few weeks of going through support, I learned two things.

1 - My gapless playback is still not working very well (and I wish it worked on cached files).

2 - Gapless playback over Bluetooth is NOT officially supported. I was told this on my last message from Spotify support:

"Hey there, 

Thanks for getting in touch, how are you? 

I'm afraid to say Spotify doesn't actually officially support bluetooth, so we can not guarantee Spotify will work correctly.
As for the the EQ Spotify will use the devices inbuilt EQ system so if you changed the setting via your device this will alter the EQ for Spotify.

Hope this answers your questions.

Have a nice day,


Kind regards," [removed name]

Note that I never said anything about an EQ, so this was just a dodge of the issue...  

[rytymu]

And oh yeah @gprocess, since this isn't a supported feature, can this be moved back to the the ideas exchange? Or because of my general gapless issues posted here, should I start a new thread on the ideas exchange?