Spotify plays without sound, in Ubuntu

[gufosowa]

Plan

Premium

Device

Dell Latitude Laptop

Operating System

Ubuntu 18.04

My Question or Issue

Spotify opens OK and when I click play, the play bar moves as if it is playing but there is no sound. Other system sounds are there, Youtube and VLC player work well, only Spotify is mute. I could suspect Skype to mute it, as its habit, but the problem persisted after restarting the system. It used to play well on this system since a few months, except a few times it would mute like this, but it would be solved when I kill the process and restart.

What I tried?

Restarting the system, deleting cache, killing all Spotify processes do not solve. When I  start Spotify in terminal I see this:

[0422/114804.710443:ERROR:buffer_manager.cc(488)] [.DisplayCompositor]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_OPERATION : glBufferData: <- error from previous GL command

I tried the solution mentioned here, no luck. 

Even reinstalling the program did not solve.

I think this time it died forever unless you can help it.

I attached the output of "strace spotify > $HOME/spotify-dump 2>&1"

[gufosowa]

A week has passed. I still cannot use Spotify services on my PC. Anyone checks here?

[OlegElantsev]

Already a month =(
web version works however

[matthisw94 · Accepted solution]

Hey, I had the same problem. My suspicion was that Spotify might just be muted for some reason. I installed "pavucontrol" (the pulse audio volume control) and found that Spotify was actually muted.
Maybe that helps you, too.
Best of luck!

[thoma711]

was having exactly the same problem as Oleg Elantsev today. PulsAudioControl was part of the software-center, and it's been the solution!

[OlegElantsev]

That indeed fixed the problem. Thanks!

[smashu]

indeed, that was it

[ianturton]

I don't suppose anyone knows how it gets muted?

[matthisw94]

Unfortunately I don't know why it happens. I've only encountered this problem once, so did not have any chance to investigate it. If it's recurring for you, maybe you could figure out how it happens. I'd be curious to know.

[Moxo26]

This happened to me, I solved it using the following:

Settings -> Sound -> Applications->spotify-> switch "on"

[tekinalp]

in my case it was giving the audio to the mic jack, but I was using bt headphones. In any case pavucontrol helped me fix that

[lcrost]

Pules audio helped: The output was not muted as others mentioned, but audio was going to a different output source

[farhanarrafi]

The option can be found in ubuntu Settings > Sound > Applications (Tab)

[marduc]

@matthisw94 suggestion solved this for me.

On my manjaro, spotify was not muted, but pavucontrol shows that even if I launch spotify after starting jackd and the pulseaudio bridge, spotify's output is still redirected to my sound card, hence outputs no sound. Switching it to the jack sink using pavucontrol brings back my sound \m/

[palinejs]

This error is for another app like discord or skype. If you have close them

[Kleison]

This appears to be a PulseAudio thing and thus should be fixable by doing the following:
1. Open Terminal, open this file using whatever you like (I use nano):

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

2. Look for this line and comment it out:

load-module module-role-cork

3. Restart Pulseaudio.

According to the file, this module will mute/stop audio and video playback when a phone stream is active.

Original post: 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Microsoft-teams-mutes-Spotify/td-p/5061607

[so0p]

Hit same problem just now and found a different solution. May be it helps some one. Spotify was not producing any sound when i run it in app or browser (Opera browser). Tried pavucontrol, but playback was not even appearing there, when spotify was "playing". I launched spotify player in Firefox and Firefox asked for a permission to install DRM (i assume its Direct rendering manager). After this Spotify started to play everywhere (app, opera, Firefox etc.)

[fshjgfkjsdgfSDJKFHKJ]

this actually works thaks alot i started spotify using in browser but now i can jump back to the app. you made my day 

[Akhoury]

Using pavucontrol solved it for me. It was somehow pointed to play through HDMI, not my headphones. (my monitors dont have speakers!