CarPlay does not list all artists when iPhone is connected

[mwolkin3]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 12 Mini

Operating System

iOS 15.2.1

My Question or Issue

When I connect my iPhone via CarPlay to my car (2021 Subaru Crosstrek Premium), not all of my artists are listed, regardless of whether I follow them. I can see them all on the Spotify app on my phone, but it doesn’t list artists last the letter V on my car display. I have a handful of favorite artists beyond V, and it seems silly to have to pick up my phone when I’m driving to access them. I have tried literally everything to fix the issue (deleted Spotify, reinstalled, disconnected my car from CarPlay, reconnected, factory reset of car display) and nothing has worked. Any help would be appreciated!

[Elena]

Hey everyone 🙂

Thanks for the provided information!

We've got an update for you:
Longer lists of songs, albums and/or artists seem to be getting cut short and this is a safety feature of Car Play.

We've forwarded the info for further investigation and we'll get back to you when we have more info to share!

In the meantime, you can always find out more about Car Play here.

Cheers!

[mwolkin3]

Yet nothing is truncated when I use Apple Music - all of my artists from A to Z are available, whereas with Spotify I can only view artists A to T (sometimes U randomly). This suggests that it’s not a CarPlay issue, but rather a Spotify/CarPlay interface issue. 

[Jasemansky]

Any update? This isn't really a great answer considering other music functions don't do this, i.e Apple Music, as someone else has mentioned as well. It should be fixed in a software update or bug fix quite easily. 

[Ver]

Hey folks,

We want to check one more thing.

Could you please try playing a handful of artists that don't appear in the alphabetical list on another device and see if your recently played section in CarPlay reflects the artists that aren't on the alphabetical list?

Let us know how it goes.

[Jasemansky]

I tried this test on my phone and my laptop. They both showed different results in terms of which artists they added to my 'recently played' sections in spotify. None of the artists i used in this test reflected into the 'recently played' section in my car though so this has not worked. 

[Yordan]

Hi @Jasemansky,

Thank you for your cooperation!

We heard back from the developers and they informed us that they are working on introducing improvements to the recently added and recently played sections in the near future, so stay tuned and keep the app up to date.

The Community is always here if there's anything else you need assistance with.
 

Cheers!

[tchgrbr]

hi @yordan, I don't know when this conversation got about the recently played section. It was about the Artists and Albums section showing not all artists. Please read the thread before answering
@elena no this is not a safety feature from carplay, when on other accounts all artists are shown and in other music-streaming apps this isn't a problem. Apart from that, the safety feature you're talking about would show all items when the car is not moving. Again, if you would have read the thread, that should have been clear to you. I'm really annoyed with the whole Support from Spotify. Every reply is from another moderator who obviously doesn't know what the whole problem is about and everyone just talks past each other. I switched to another service, problem solved.

[Jasemansky]

Well said! Such unhelpful responses from the moderators. Quite simply, if every other service can offer a complete library search, then Spotify off all services should be able to as well! 

[tchgrbr]

And excuse me for being salty with my answer. It just amazes me how incapable you guys from Spotify are. The only one who got the problem was @ver before being replaced with another useless phrasemonger.

[mwolkin3]

As the original poster of this issue, I’m not sure how the conversation got derailed vis-à-vis recently played artists. To reiterate, the issue has been that when searching BY ARTIST, not all artists are listed, i.e. my list stops at the letter T. It happens when the car is in motion and also parked. However, this is not an issue with Apple Music - honestly thinking about switching. Let’s get back on point here!

[5teve1]

I don't have an issue when searching by Artist (they are all listed), but when searching by Album it only shows my A-R artists, none later in the alphabet.

And before a Spotify moderator asks for details such as car model, spotify version, phone model and software being run etc..... that information is irrelevant to you..... enough users on this and other forums have previously supplied this detail and it is clearly an issue at the Spotify end of the interface with Carplay and is still an ongoing problem for all Carplay users.

And it can't be a safety issue with a restricted list of albums being shown either..... If I search by Artist, all of their respective Albums are listed - it's just the search by Album (not Artist, then Album) list that is restricted.

It should be such an easy fix.

[Spaceboy88]

I didn't see this thread when I started mine about the CarPlay bugs, but I echo what everyone says here. 

I'm in the Spotify Alpha program and have been sharing feedback about these issues for over a year and they never get fixed. If the developer team is telling you that's a safety feature, that's just plain false. I have MANY more albums/artists in my Apple Music library and they are able to show me an A-Z view. All that navigation shortcut on the sidebar is supposed to do is open up an alphabetical grid so you can jump right to that letter in your artists/albums view. If anything, the "wth am I looking at" face when tapping that button is obscuring my driving safety more than an actually functioning display.

Also, while it's not called out in here, I'd love to know how many others are having the issue where tapping the "now playing" shortcut on the top right never ever works on the first touch?

[AndresM]

Hi @5teve1,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community.

We've moved your post to a new thread as it's not the exact same issue of the original post (CarPlay does not list all artists when iPhone is connected).

Changing tunes, the issue with Albums searching started after any firmware update? Also, send us over the make, model, firmware version, OS version and Spotify version related to your CarThing and phone as this info is important in order to investigate further.

In case you've followed any troubleshooting, let us know what steps have you followed so far. 

We'll stay tuned. 

[jgerv26]

So the last post on this was over a month ago and no resolution. I’m so frustrated with this issue. The only thing keeping me from leaving Spotify is my family members on my family plan, but I’m at the point where I’m going to tell them I’m cancelling and they’ll have to deal with it. It’s unacceptable that other music apps do not have this issue and yet Spotify can’t fix it and wants to explore recently played!! I can’t get past P and some of my favorite artists are I R, T, Y. Picking up my iPhone, tapping that I’m not driving, switching from Car view to std view so that I can navigate to my library, then Artist and start scrolling down to Y does not seem very safe to me!

iPhone 12 iOS v.15.4.1

Spotify version 8.7.22.1405

Hyundai Santa Fe

[remcomeeder]

I have the exact same issue as well.

Spotify version: 8.7.36

Phone: iPhone XR on iOS 15.5

Car: 2019 Toyota Corolla TS (European version).

It is only present in Spotify, other music apps don't display the same issue.

[Remko_NL]

Same problem here, artist list stops at 'L'.

Also the small letters on the right for fast scrolling stop at L.

Spotify 8.7.38

iPhone 12 Pro Max

Volvo XC40 MY2022

No other app has the same issue, just Spotify 😠...

[RollingJ]

Looks like they've catered for an arbitrary number of artists (albums too? I haven't looked) and once the table is filled they stop - my choices are limited to A-J but others have mentioned different ranges and even seeing the full list with a small number of favourites.
Come on Spotify development, this isn't hard. Maybe someone hardcoded the limit by accident.

[mwolkin3]

Update: my artists originally went from A-T - turned on my car the other day, hooked up my phone, and now it’s A-S 🤔🤷🏼‍♀️

[RollingJ]

I'm guessing you added some in the lower ranks of the alphabet?

[mwolkin3]

I hadn’t added any artists - just a random occurrence. Sometimes it only shows artists through N. No rhyme or reason.