Spotify extremely buggy on Kubuntu 19.04 (Ubuntu KDE) but runs great on Ubuntu 19.04 (Ubunutu Gnome)

[sam-ulrich]

I have been using Spotify on Ubuntu for a while and it has always been great. I switched to from Gnome to KDE yesterday and have had nothing but problems with Spotify. All the problems I will detail do not occur if I open Ubuntu in the Gnome shell. All problems occur exclusively in the KDE shell.

I have uninstalled Spotify and reinstalled all available ways:

    - Snap Install (Current install)

    - Apt install (BTW your repository keys detailed in your install guide are expired)

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Desktop (AMD 64)

Operating System

Kubuntu 19.04 (Ubuntu KDE)

Plasma 5.15.4

KDE Framework 5.56.0

Qt 5.12.2

Kernel 5.0.0-21-generic

64Bit

My Question or Issue

1. Spotify takes 20-30 seconds to reflect a pause/play change. This is in both sound and UI.

2. Spotify continues music after being closed. To stop music playback I have to manually kill all Spotify processes.

3. Spotify does not recognize keyboard pause/play, forward, and backward buttons.

4. When clicking the forward button there is about a 60-70% chance nothing happens.

5. When clinking the backward button there is about an 80-90% chance nothing happens.

[ArtGravity]

Media keys not working as expected on some systems has unfortunately been an issue that dates back to around October 2018. I found the workaround detailed by @BlackDex  in the following post solved my problem on Ubuntu 16.04.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Media-Keys-Don-t-Work/m-p/4676590/highlight/true#M172...

I'm on different device running OpenSUSE 15.1 most of the time these days, but I presume the aforementioned solution still works.

[nvmdpc]

I actually came to challenge your claim of running fine on Gnome.

If you're running Gnome, and I tested this both on Ubuntu 19.04 as well as Clear Linux, occasionally, the audio will stutter. It happens intermittently, but has happened to me twice or thrice in less than 5 minutes, as well as not once for an hour or so.

This is annoying as **bleep** because there sees to be no apparent cause, especially considering that I'm running nothing other than the Spotify app.

In May, I switched to Kubuntu 19.04 after trying the same version of Ubuntu for a few weeks since the release, and one thing I noticed is that it did not stutter. At all. From that, it's easy to conclude that Gnome might have something to do with it, but I can't tell for sure.

I hope I'm not hijacking the thread with something unrelated. If I am, I'm happy to open a new thread about this.

[sam-ulrich]

@ArtGravity

Thanks for the link. I had seen that there was a bash script for the keyboard button issue but I wanted to hold off on additional scripts until I was able to determine if a more broad fix for all the issues was available.

Thank you again for your help!

[sam-ulrich]

@nvmdpc

That's actually kind of funny that your situation is reversed. I have been a steady Gnome user but I added KDE to my install after about a year of use. There are a lot of nuances to my install. I started this install on Gnome based Ubuntu 18.04.2, upgraded to Gnome based Ubuntu 18.10, upgraded again to Gnome based Ubuntu 19.04, and then finally added the KDE DE in the past few days. This could be why I am having issues but I find it hard to believe because I have tons of third-party programs (IDEs, Browsers, Git clients, VPNs, etc.) that function exactly as expected.

I can confirm, on my personal install, that using the Gnome DE produces a flawless Spotify experience. I also find it odd that the issues are so widespread across Spotify's functionality. I have a hankering suspicion that there is some form of conflict between Spotify and a KDE based music program but I have been unable to find evidence to support this theory.

I can also add that I get the following warnings when launching Spotify from the teminal:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gail"
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "atk-bridge"

This is quite odd though because I have confirmed that the necessary libraries are properly installed and the latest release.

[chan5n]

I have been a paying member for quite some time, initially on a Mac, but have also used this service on Kubuntu, up until 19.04. This current LTS version has been around for some time now, and ever since upgrading to 19.04, the client immediately crashes, rendering it utterly useless.

Now, I do get that bugs happen... thats not uncommon. I even get that bugs sometimes persist for a very long time, when it comes from the open source community. People coding for free, have no obligation to answer to the demands of their users false sense of entitlement.

But in this case, I have been paying for a premium membership for a piece of useless software for months now. I see a lot of so called 'fixes', around... even some marked as 'Solved'. It may be that I can resolve it by downgrading here and there, but honestly... that may be acceptable had it not been for the timely manner in which Spotify take their monthly payment from my PayPal account, still charging for a defunct service as far as I'm concerned.

So... that's it for me. I've had enough of this **bleep**, and cancelling.
This used to be a cool service, well worth the subsciption charge.
You guys are losing it... get a grip.

[nvmdpc]

Maybe it's too late or not, but perhaps it's useful for who lands here in the future, as it keeps happening to this day.
This issue only happens when I'm on a X session. I'm using Clear Linux now, and I've done some testing between the 2 window systems. Ever since I switched to Wayland, I stopped having this issue altogether, along with another issue with X that causes system freezes when I alternate between using my laptop keyboard and my external USB keyboard.
Just switch to Wayland, and be happy.