Podcasts freeze and stop

[Darrickprp]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States 

Device

Samsung Galaxy S10

Operating System

Android one UI version 2.1

My Question or Issue

My podcasts keeps freezing and stopping for no reason. The only way to fix it is to close and re open the app. Occasionally after I pause a podcast it will start playing again on its own.

[veetisinisalo]

Accidentally sent the wrong file but here shpuld be the right ones. Had to send them separately because the files were too big.

[veetisinisalo]

The photo i sent was the wrong one and I cant sen the screen recordings for some reason adn they are under 5MB...

[MafeG]

Hi @veetisinisalo,

Thank you for your reply and for sending those videos!

Since the issue is still persisting, can you log in with another account, such as a friend's or a family member's to see if the issue persists? Alternatively, you can create a free account here, just make sure you're logged out of your own account before creating a new one.  

And in case you're using any battery optimization or power saving apps, you can deactivate them for Spotify. Does that make a difference?

Let us know how this goes.

[draggedbyrogan]

Same problem for me while listening to JRE at 1.5x without video. The problem feels just like when you're on Youtube and play too high a resolution or 60fps. My network can't handle large amounts of data like that, so I bet this Spotify problem is due to video data (or maybe super hi-fi audio, which I also don't need for a chat podcast). The high-res video of JRE can be opened perfectly in-sync at any time, so I assume the data is still being received on my end even when I've switched off the "Show video" button.

Please allow for low-fi audio only podcast listening. I don't need the video or super hi-fi audio, just 2x speed without drops.

[Kiril]

Hey @draggedbyrogan,

Thanks for reaching out in the Community!

We'll gladly share some more info on this topic. The current audio quality of podcasts is equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s on all devices except the web player, where it’s 128kbit/s.

On mobile/tablet, if you change the audio quality to low, the podcast quality will lower to approximately 24kbit/s. We hope this info helps, and for more details and steps about changing the audio quality settings for your devices - check out this page here.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[Homie1]

What worked for me in android was activating "show notifications in status bar"

Long tap spotify app icon, select app info, notifications, playing, show in status bar

[draggedbyrogan]

Can't you let Desktop client users to lower it to 24kb/s as an advanced option?

Also, the desktop client, if you let your PC hibernate or maybe just walk away for a few hours, it will start artifacting across the entire client. Everything gets garbled into visual chunks.

[MafeG]

Hi folks,

Thank you for keeping in touch. 

At the moment there isn't an option to lower the audio quality below the current standard. However, we recommend searching in our Ideas board to see if someone else has already suggested that so you can add your vote. If there aren't any ideas about it, you can add your own so others can then vote for it or add to the conversation to show their support. You can find the steps to submit a new idea in this article.

About the second issue you mention, could you share with us some screenshots so we can take a better look at what's happening from your side? 

Keep us posted.

[NickiD]

Hi everyone, I have been experiencing thse same extremely frustrating issues for 6months - a year. 

I often lay in bed listening and to podcasts through my earbuds and the podcast would constantly and erratically cut in and out once my phone screen locked. Not pause, but just cut in and out like it had bad signal and couldn't stream - except I have great service and wifi where I am.

I had changed every setting spotify support had suggested, uninstaller, reinstalled, logged in logged out, cleared memory, cleared cache, changed battery settings, changed phone settings, changed spotify settings, I tried everything and nothing fixed it. I gave up. It was beyond frustrating and found myself barely using spotify as it was unlistenable. 

However recently I tried again as I'd simply forgot about the issue and hadn't used spotify in months. It did the same thing, cutting in and our erratically once my phone screen locked. Out of frustration I would tap my locked screen to make sure I was on wifi and when the screen was activated the cutting out stopped until the screen went dark again. 

So out of sheer frustration and curiosity, I tried something else and I think I have fixed it.

In your phone settings, turn on 'always on display'

Once you have done that, in the always on display settings, go to widgets, and turn on display music.

This is what fixed the issue for me, on my S20. I hope it helps you guys too!!

[lexnicnel]

It's great to know Spotify doesn't have any desire to fix this. I have tried EVERY fix in this thread - other accounts, clean restalls, sign-ins and -outs, hardware accelerator, all of it. Issue popped up one day and never went away. I'm on desktop and genuinely thought my work was throttling Spotify, but no, my wired-in connection is perfect.

I am a premium member and have always used Spotify for podcasts, but one day in June this just began and never stopped. Incredibly disappointed and this thread didn't help.

[Tiphaine13]

Have the same problem as all these people:

I have the same problem with the guardian long read as well as Tortoise.... We should not have to restart Spotify ... only joined spotify a year ago max... have tried signing out resigning changing my password in case hacked etc.... music never interrupted  but podcasts interrupted every 5 minutes and have to stop and restart them ...completely putting me off  listening to podcasts on Spotify .. paying premium so not happy about it  ... it used to work perfectly fine at the beginnig ...getting worse and worse

[trustmegowithit]

cool to know Spotify still doesn’t care to fix this, since I’ve also tried everything to no avail. It’s incredibly annoying to have the audio cut out entirely after every podcast episode. The only thing that fixes it is to close out the app and reopen it, but I have to do it after every episode. At this point I’ll just go back to Apple