Music stops playing after 10 seconds (or plays, but there is no sound)

[sylcas]

SOLUTION (TL/DR):

1. if you are connected via mobile try disconnecting from your mobile provider. if you get a new ip your problem is gone.
2. if you have an internet provider that gives you a dynamic ip restart your router
3. use a vpn or stop using it if your are currently using one
4. basically do anything to get a new ip

i have read a lot of reports regarding this problem in some way or another. nothing worked for me, but fortunately i am a software engineer and devops. opening firefox webconsole reported the following call:

https://gew1-spclient.spotify.com/widevine-license/v1/audio/license
with a response code 403 a few times (thats when the app skips songs until it starts playing one for 10 seconds).

so i did a lookup with dig and got the ip address of the call. routing that one over a vpn resulted in instantly solving the issue. deleting the route from the vpn resulted in the next song (thats when the next licence call goes out and gets blocked) having the 10 seconds problem again.

so what is the real issue here?

my best guess is that spotify has a web application firewall running and at some point (e.g. reaching a defined number of songs played from that ip) the request gets blocked for a certain amount of time. if there are coming new requests in the block time gets increased or at least not reset.

my second best guess is that this has something to do with a software update, that results in blocking ips during the update and since calls from the same ip are always route to the same machine this problem persists until the machine is back online (which could be a long time of the update has a problem).

so spotify... if you really want to stop annoying people up to the point that they rage quit your application i suggest that you fix this problem.

i do not need a response to this thread since i know how to fix it for me. if you need support fixing it for yourself... well you got my mailaddress and can drop a job offer with a "competitive salary" 😉

Plan

Free

Country

currently spain, but normally austria

Device

firefox 119.0 (64-bit)

Operating System

archlinux