Songs not playing on Ubuntu app. 'Spotify can't play this right now'

[jens-vlijtig]

I'm getting this error when I play any song on my Spotify desktop app on Ubuntu. The same songs play without any errors on my phone.

Saw other suggestions, like deleting local files (can't seem to find any when searching for 'local' in the spotify folder) and I've also tried reinstalling the app in terminal using [sudo snap install spotify], but that hasn't helped either.

Please help!
Thanks

[jens-vlijtig]

By the way, I just recently installed Ubuntu, version 22.04.02

[Sebasty · Accepted solution]

Hey @jens-vlijtig 

I suggest you go to Ubuntu's App Store (mine is called Software). Find Spotify there in the Installed Apps.
The app comes with permissions you can disable and enable. Among them is "Play Audio":

Make sure the Play Audio bit is enabled in your permissions. Browser-support and access to network would be necessary too.

Outside of that this issue is usually caused by improper audio settings (too high sample rate or wrong audio output), issues with cache and issues with firewall or antivirus software blocking Spotify's traffic.

You can wipe the cache and storage through Spotify's settings. Scroll down to the bottom, and there you'll find the settings.

Spotify will refuse to play when the sample rate gets above 192 kHz, so in case your audio card/interface supports high sample rates, set it to 192 at most.

Firewall should be turned off by default, but  you can check its status by running

sudo ufw status

 if it says it's not active/enabled, then that's definitely not the cause.

(mine is enabled and hasn't caused any trouble either, to be frank)

Let me know how you get on 🙂

[jens-vlijtig]

That quickly solved it. The 'play audio' permission was turned off.

Kind of a weird default setting for a music app if you ask me... 😉

Thanks a lot!

[Sebasty]

You're welcome!

Yes indeed. It was enabled for me when I installed the client, so I don't even know why it would be disabled by default for some users.

[RobG59]

Spotify did not play my local mp3 files either at first.
But this was due to my configuration: Laptop linked to Sonos speaker through Wifi.
By switching to bluetooth, local mp3 streamed correctly to speaker ...

[dawmd]

Spotify Premium won't play liked songs on my PC reporting the following:

---

Spotify can't play this right now. If you have the file on your computer you can import it.

---

The problem occurs both when trying to click the big green button as well as a specific song from the liked songs. Playing any other playlist proceeds smoothly; there's no issue on the phone either.

I didn't have an opportunity to test it well, but it seems the problem might only apply to the latest added songs; when trying to play a song that was liked a longer time ago, it does get played. Afterwards, the latest songs are played too. It might be worth noting here, though, that whenever the issue surfaced, it was always when I tried to play one of the recently added songs, but maybe the issue applies to any arbitrary one.

Chances are that this issue is related to another problem with the liked songs described here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Liked-songs-playlist-isn-t-updating-across-different-p....

Setups:

• PC: Fedora 42 Workstation Edition, kernel version: 6.15.3-200, x86-64. Spotify version: 1.2.60.564.gcc6305cb.
• Mobile: iPhone 15, iOS 18.5, Spotify version: 9.0.56.627.

[DanielHinojosa]

habilitamelo