Spotify Android keeps buffering or pausing on mobile networks

[UniCav]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Samsung Galaxy S9+

Operating System

Android 9 One Touch UI 1.0

Spotify Version

8.4.98.866

Spotify has become practically unusable since the Android 9 updates. It takes forever to load any content, sometimes won't even connect and goes into offline mode, searches don't work, Takes forever to start to play, and then it will play just a bit then start pausingor buffering for seconds at a time, play another second or two, pause again, and on and on until I either restart the song or just shut it down and give up trying. Doesn't seem to matter how strong my mobile signal is, or if it's 4G or even 5G service. I've done the full list of fixes: Restarted phone, cleared cache, cleared all data (restarting every time), uninstalling, rebooting and reinstalling. I've tried setting Data Saver to Off, Behind the Lyrics is Off (I have no use for that on my phone), Car View On or Off (I have no use for that feature either and I wish it was not enabled by default), Waze Navigation Off (again, please quit trying to shove that down my throat), Streaming Auto, Normal, Low, High, Download Using Cellular On/Off,   Absolutely NOTHING makes any difference. it just refuses to connect in a decent amount of time, load any content properly, or stream properly. And many times after a phone call or message comes in on my phone it won't start up again.

Seriously about ready to dump my account for another service because this is useless right now and it's been going on like this for weeks.

[UniCav]

Update as I continue fighting this daily. Spotify is apparently not buffering at all. If it ever does start playing and pausing, hitting back to restart the song a few times will eventually allow it to catch up and normally will keep playing afterwards. It still comes up with "Something sent wrong" or offline or simply never start playing most of the time. 

[UniCav]

It now appears that it this may finally be fixed on Spotify's end! The latest update to 8.5.5.853 has worked flawlessly in testing the last couple of days. Fingers Crossed!

Meanwhile: During the last few weeks I've kept looking for ideas and testing different things. Oddly,  I had determined that my wife's phone, an identical S9+ with the same service (AT&T), the same version of Android, Samsung Experience, and Spotify, did not have as many issues as I was having. She did have the delays starting, loading, and some pausing/skipping, but overall it was nothing as severe as mine.  I determined at one point that part of my problem was my data plan. My phone service is provided by my employer, and apparently the data plan they have us on is not unlimited. Someone in the group is apparently eating up ALL our data and toward the end of the month I suddenly get zero bandwidth on LTE, only calls and text. Took me awhile to figure that out, but the last week of April I couldn't get anything to load on LTE (Google searches, web pages, Facebook, Reddit, and of cousre Spotify). Sitting right beside my wife's phone (separate data plan), a speed test would show me at DEAD ZERO while she'd have 100mb.  May 1 I suddenly had full bandwidth again, so that's one issue I'm dealing with and nothing to do with Spotify.

While on WIFI on my deck, about 15 feet from my BT Receiver hooked to my stereo, I was getting horrendous skipping and stuttering. I switched from my phone to my Windows 10 Laptop and it ALSO had the same problem. I started to wonder if the BT was the problem, but it would have to be both the one at the house and e in all 3 of our vehicles.  I did a few searches and discovered the option to change BT Codecs.  I switch from the default SBC to AAC to give it a try.

At the same time I changed the BT Codec to AAC, Spotify applied the latest release, and since that time I've not had issues in any of my vehicles. Loading is immediate, playback is smooth. I'll test on my deck again ASAP to see if that's solved or if my BT Receiver or home wifi actually has issues as well.

[Sixminutemile]

This has something to do with Blue Tooth. I get buffering when I use some peripherals on my laptop near my BT headphones. If I move the BT mouse rapidly spotify buffers. Then comes back in a few seconds. It doesn't happen with other audio.

[Jeremy · Accepted solution]

Hey there @Sixminutemile,

Thank you for your post here in the Community. We're happy to help.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

If that doesn't do the trick, can you try to connect it so another bluetooth device to see if the issue persist?

It would also be great if you can let us which device/devices this occurs on?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!