Queue ignores playlist and repeats 4-5 tracks

[gran_cabrón]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

Moto X4

Operating System

Android 9

My Question or Issue

I have a playlist with a series of albums that play through in-order because there's a story. There are roughly 100 songs in the playlist, and I do have the playlist downloaded to save on mobile data. If I start playing the playlist and look at the queue, it shows the normal 80 songs you would expect.

However, spotify can seldom play all the way through the playlist because it will randomly cut off the queue to only 4 or 5 songs. This tiny segment of the playlist will play and then the music will stop (or switch to [artist] radio). There is no indication that this is happening until the music stops.

I figured out what was happening when I turned on repeat. Once the queue gets cut off, spotify will repeat those 4-5 songs only. If I skip to the previous song, it will skip "backwards" to the last song on the queue, as if I had built a tiny playlist.

It tends to happen most often when I am connected to my car or my JBL Flip 5 via bluetooth. I can sometimes induce this error by skipping a song with the forward button, or restarting a song with the back button.

I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling a clean app according to the instructions I've seen linked on so many other questions, but the problem still occurs. Given the absolute clownshoes design of spotify's queue in general, is this somehow just the intended behavior of spotify's queue, or some feature that I'm just using wrong?

[gran_cabrón]

Hey folks!

Sorry to see this is still ongoing.
We are going to try to prioritize this investigation in the hopes that we can finally get to the root cause and fix the issue.

If you haven't already, please let us know the following details:

• Your device + OS (+additional device (speaker, etc.) in case the issue manifests itself there)
• By rough estimations - the exact time the issue started to appear
• The last time it happened
• The number of songs that get repeated and the number of songs in the playlist overall
• The troubleshooting that has been done so far
• Any additional details/screenshots that come to mind which you believe might help us resolve the issue quicker
   

Many thanks in advance. We'll do our best to get to the bottom of this asap.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @snappydoodle,

Thank you for your reply.

We'll cross our fingers and hope for the best. Take your time as we're always one post away!

Have a great Friday and start of your weekend 🙂

[Merlin2001]

I experience the same issue "some times" (I know as a dev that this is an unhelpful thing to say, but I can't find any pattern yet :/) and was able to catch it while it happened recently:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GRd3Zhfos35veV1C7

I started playback from my Discover Weekly playlist and after some time I noticed that the 5 same songs were continuing to play instead of looping the entire playlist (you can see me skipping the songs and then it jumps to the first song again).

Currently, the only thing that breaks this vicious cycle is to manually start playback of a different song in the playlist.

It's really annoying because it undermines the main advantage of Spotify over having a local music collection: Getting to know new music you might like.

Best,

Marcus

[gran_cabrón]

I got a screen record of this happening. I can now reproduce it 100% of the time. 

Just as a side note, my moto x died, and I now have a Pixel 5a. New phone, fresh install. Same issue happens, in the exact same way. The screen record I attached is from the Pixel 5a.

To force the problem to happen, I connect my phone via bluetooth to my Ford Focus. Then I turn off the car, and turn on my JBL Flip5 bluetooth speaker. This shortens the queue to a total of 8 songs, of which 5 are unique before it loops back to the beginning of the 5-song block, filling the rest of the 8-song queue. If I let it play, it will play the 5 songs, then start the loop over and play the remaining 3, then start the queue over and play the first 5 again, etc.

link to video 

In this screen recording, the relevant chunk of the playlist is:

• Asteri
• Homeward
• Square One [now playing]
• Convergence
• Strangers
• Swarm
• Elysium
• Danger Close
• Harbour, Pt. I: Outer Space
• Harbour, Pt. II: Sanctuary
• Monolith to a Halcyon

If you watch the top of the screen, you can see the bluetooth icon when the JBL Flip5 powers up and connects. This causes the queue to cut off, ending at Strangers and looping back to Asteri. The queue thus becomes:

• Asteri
• Homeward
• Square One [now playing]
• Convergence
• Strangers
• Asteri
• Homeward
• Square One
• Convergence
• Strangers

I don't know if this helps at all, but let me know if I need to check anything else.

[CarlosE]

Hey @gran_cabrón,

Thanks for your reply in this thread 🙂
 

We'd like to fully confirm, if this happening only when connecting to a Bluetooth device, or does it also happen when using the app in the phone, or via Connect?

On another note, can you confirm to us if this is happening with another account as well? These details will help us have a better understanding of this inconvenience and check if it's related to the account. 

We'll keep an eye on your response! 

[moskrin]

This is exactly what I've been experiencing too.  The best solution I've come up with so far is to download my primary (60ish hours) playlist then flip my phone (pixel 5) into offline mode and that will keep it from playing other random songs, but it still cycles the same parts of the playlist over and over and of course I still have to toggle off offline mode when I want to use Connect, which makes it lose its place and usually its mind.

I just want to point it at a playlist and have it play that list sequentially whether it's on my phone bluetoothed to my headphones, then paused, then connected to my speaker at home and resumed, then maybe when I sit down at my computer the client will know where it was playing and I can hit play to resume it there.  Just a single account-wide cursor is all I want and it seems so much simpler than whatever nonsense is happening.

[gran_cabrón]

To answer your questions, I did some tests.

This issue (cutting down the queue to a short, repeating chunk of the original playlist) happens when using the android app on my Pixel 5a; specifically when going from my Ford Focus (via bluetooth) to my JBL Flip5 (via bluetooth) or vice versa. It does not happen when switching from a bluetooth device to phone speaker or a wifi defice (google speaker, google display, or smart TV).

It happens whether I am playing a playlist (shuffled or unshuffled), or just an album (shuffled or unshuffled).

I borrowed a phone from someone who was signed in to their Spotify account, and connected their phone to both the Ford Focus and the Flip5 as the default phone. I went back and forth several times and could not induce the error.

Furthermore, I can no longer induce the error with my phone/Spotify account.

It seems like this error might be resolved [edit: nope. see below] by connecting a different phone to one or both bluetooth devices. Perhaps even simply forgetting the bluetooth connection, then reconnecting, might do it? If someone else who's been having this problem would check, that might solve the issue. 

Edit: nevermind. It started doing it again. The first 20-minute car trip was normal, two hours of listening on the Flip5 with no issues, another 20 minute car ride home, and when I turned on the Flip5 just to see if it did the thing, it cut the queue again.

If this is a fix, it doesn't last long. The issue may have to do with a certain amount of time spent listening on a certain device? I don't know.

[dorotka3012]

I had the same problem. Forgetting the connection and then reconnecting with my bluettoth device (JBL Clip) helped. Thank you very much. Sorry for my English:-)

[moskrin]

I connect to the Bluetooth in my car, in my wife's car, and on my headphones. I use the client on my mac while I'm working, which bluetooths to another speaker,and I spotify connect to an alexa, a volumio, or to the laptop depending where I am in the house. Just re-pair the device is not a fix.

This is a bug that can be fixed if we can just get an engineer who's interested in hunting it down. I, for one, am happy to run any test versions of the clients if it would help. I'm a software engineer and would require minimal instruction.

[mmmerlin]

Just wanted to add that I also have this issue. It happens frequently, repeating 4-5 tracks of a given playlist instead of the whole thing. It happens both on my phone (Pixel 4XL) and the Mac desktop app. I tried reinstalling the desktop app recently - no change. I am always listening via Bluetooth.

[dorotka3012]

One day later the the problem started again.

[CarlosE]

Hey folks,

Thanks for your replies in this thread 🙂

In order to investigate this further, for those who haven't shared it, can you let us know the exact make/model and OS of your device along with the Spotify version you use?

On another note, can you send us a list of the troubleshooting steps you've followed so far? This will help us a lot.
 

We'll keep an eye on your response!

[moskrin]

I'm on a Pixel 5 with Android 12 fully updated. Spotify 8.7.48.1062 though
this problem has been happening for longer than this version. I can't
pinpoint exactly when it did start though.

It took me awhile to figure out what was happening. First I had an issue
where it would keep pausing, which I finally found out was because I had
the Roku app installed. I thought hearing the same songs frequently was
related to that, but persisted after I resolved the pausing problem. I've
tried with the playlist downloaded and not, tried clearing storage then
un/re-installing, tried going into the developer settings and changing the
Bluetooth MAP and AVRCP versions and disabling the "A2DP hardware offload"
none of which helped and are all back at their defaults. I've tried playing
with or without shuffle enabled and by picking a song in the list to start
or by adding the playlist to the queue.

If I turn off the autoplay switch, at some point the music just stops and
if I hit play at that point it replays the last 1-5ish songs. That's more
annoying than having autoplay on, in which case I eventually hear songs I
know aren't on the list I was playing, at which point the app says playing
songs related to playlist.

The majority of the time I have a large 60-something hour playlist that I
just let run, playing, pausing, and skipping as I move through life
changing location and devices, only checking the status of the list and
queue when I detect something is amiss.

[oqjnL]

SAME issue here - iPhone 6S+ running iOS15.5. This has been going on for several weeks (maybe months?). Since the Spotify app keeps auto updating, it may be a good idea (HINT, HINT engineers!!!) ot look into the latest release or back one rev. in order to determine what changes YOU may have made to the underlying code that are the root cause(s) for this behavior - now being reported by MANY people.

I too have a playlist that includes hundreds of songs - asking me to do a "clean" install is a complete cop out!!! All I have to do afterwards in download and rebuild all of my playlists and download saved albums?

BS!!!

FInd to root cause - ON YOUR (Spotify's) end and provide a fix for we the $ paying clients!

Thank you.

[anthonygrain]

I'm having the exact same issue ever since I updated to the latest version on Android a couple of weeks ago.

Sometimes I have the same song queuing up twice in a row and sometimes a song gets replayed 5-10 songs later before all of the other songs in the 2000+ playlist got played once.

I've tried logging in and out and restarting my phone, when that didn't worked I reinstalled the app but that also did not work.

I haven't had this issue up until a few weeks ago and I'm curious to know what could be causing it. 

[moskrin]

It's currently doing something new where it's playing on mobile, android client version 8.7.54.403, and says "playing from playlist" on the queue screen, but half the upcoming songs aren't actually on the playlist.  They seem related, but I definitely haven't run to the bottom of the playlist to have it go into auto play.

[bettybex]

What I’m experiencing is that I press play on a playlist and it’s fine until I pause it. When I then press play the playlist seems to become confused and will repeat songs that were played earlier. If I skip to the next song I will sometimes find a fresh song but will then realise I’m hearing songs that have already played. I find this frustrating as it skews my stats and doesn’t allow me to fully explore a lovingly curated playlist.

[DOZ23]

Hi I’m experiencing this issue as well iPhone XR software 15.6.1 the latest update. 124 hour playlist.  Please help. Thanks Tobe 

[DOZ23]

8.7.56.464

[DOZ23]

Hi still an issue with the latest version of Spotify.  I’m only using Bluetooth, DAC and headphones. Is this defect being actively worked? Rather a limiting function of the app. Don’t really want to dig out my MP3’s!  Help. 

[gran_cabrón]

Whenever I connect to a bluetooth speaker, I open the playlist I'm in and tap on the current song. It generates a new queue. It's a workaround, and it's a pain to do it every time, but it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯