Spotify Hanging / Distracting While Driving After Dec 2022 Update

[ahoopi]

Square of Death!

Frequent hanging of Spotify after playing a song - sometimes 1 song, sometimes after 4-5.  At the end of a song, randomly, it stops at SQUARE on the control display and blocks itself.  The UI is NOT frozen but NO music will play.  This is so regularly distracting, TBH its not safe to use while driving in this state.

Tried:

Clearing cache - no change

Removed and reinstalled Spotify - no change

Different USB cable - no change

Different Vehicle - no change

Redownloaded all offline lists - no change

Disabled all features that effect end of song play like overlap, etc, - no change

Work Arounds:

#1

Go back to the Home screen in Spotify

Go to a different Playlist and play a song, any song, let that song start playing

Go back to the list you WANTED to listen to

Choose any OTHER song from that list

Hit Play

Drive a few miles

Repeat

Work Around #2

Pull over

Disconnect phone from Android Auto

Play any other song on the the playlist

Reconnect Android Auto (though sometimes this will only play 1 song before hanging again)

Work Around #3

YouTube Music works fine.

Hoping for a fix, but this seems a really obvious bug, so could not be more disappointed with Spotify right now that this slipped through.  Ironically I left YouTube Music because its offline mode was so terrible.  Serious regrets about that now.

[ahoopi]

Temporary Fix:  Downgrade.  

8.7.88.496 does not have this problem.

Ten years using Android, I've never had to force downgrade an app.