Songs immediately pause whenever I hit play

[thenetsarenear]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

Macbook Pro

Operating System

Ventura

My Question or Issue

Recently after playing a few songs, one song will just immediately pause upon playing, and trying to make it play again makes it pause after half a second. All following songs face the same issue until I quit and re-open Spotify—only for the problem to eventually return. I've tried clearing my cache, disconnecting Spotify from Discord, and restarted my device, but none of those fixed it. It's not an internet issue since my PC doesn't have the issue my Mac has.

I haven't seen anyone post about this specific issue save for one person from 2016, but they were using an Android and theirs was solved by rebooting their device.

[Versica]

Spotify songs randomly pause every couple of seconds after playing. I've tried restarting, reinstalling the app, de-syncing from discord, signing out everywhere and clearing cache. None of them have worked this time around. I've had the issue going on for a couple weeks and I seemed to have fixed it last week by clearing cache. This time, none of the previous solutions have worked.

On MacBook Air M3.

[chill389cc]

Hello! I'm new to the thread but I was also having this issue intermittently.

((https://youtu.be/iXbQ6xlguaU) Note that in the video, I was recording my mic (so you can hear me clicking) but not the system audio, so you can't hear music playback. When the songs were unpaused, there was audio playback as expected.)

Here is a screen recording of the issue happening, though it is hard to reproduce for me because it doesn't always happen. In this screen recording, you can see it happen as soon as I open the app and play a song (that has music). I switch to a local track and it doesn't occur. I switch back to the song where it had the issue at first, and it again doesn't occur. I switched to another song and it also didn't occur. I am not sure what causes it or what solves it. When I first experienced it, I was just listening to my playlist on shuffle (If it matters, I had just switched from playback from my phone to my laptop). Then suddenly, this one song paused (the one that I used in the video first, "Happy Where We Are" by Tritonal), and when I tried to unpause, it immediately repaused. When I started the screen recording, I had quit the app (Cmd + Q) and re-opened it with spotlight, and it happened again. I'm having trouble reproducing it again though, so I'm glad I caught it that one time on the recording.

Anyway, not that big of a deal for me at least since it solves itself but I'm not sure if it will happen again. As a developer, I understand that this is pretty mysterious. Best of luck!

I'm on an Apple M1 Macbook Air (8GB ram) Running MacOS Sequoia 15.0.1 (24A348) with "Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.49.439.gfae492c7".

[Jahjurlz]

I am not the person you may have been replying to, but I wanted to thank you! The no proxy setting has been working so far!

[akahyper]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

US

Device

(Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System

(MacOs)

My Question or Issue

Spotify won't let me play a song when I click on it because it pauses itself the nanosecond I press play. But if I start a different song and then play the original song, it works. But I don't want to do this every time. I need help!

[OscarDC]

Hey @akahyper,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

To start investigating this behavior, would you mind confirming if you've already performed a clean reinstall of the app? If not, we'd recommend following the steps mentioned in this article to see if it makes any difference.

If the issue persists, could you check with a different Wi-Fi network? If you don't have another one available, you can use a mobile data hotspot to test it. 

Lastly, include in your next response the OS version of your device, along with the Spotify version you're currently running.

We'll be waiting for your response. 

[Kenny_77]

Logging out and in again solved the issue for me.

[akahyper]

I've tried all of this. This issue is occurring across my account. Xbox,
Mac, Iphone, Android, everything. In fact, the web version is worse,
straight up skipping through every song in the entire playlist in a matter
of seconds before playing an ad.

[Eni]

Hey @akahyper, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Since you mentioned this is happening across devices, could you ask a friend or a relative to log in to their account on one of your affected devices to see if they can replicate this behavior? This will help us determine if the issue is account-related. 

On another note, would you mind sending us a short screen recording of the issue happening so we can take a closer look? You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert Video option in the post editor. You can also upload it to Google Drive and share the link with us (make sure the video has the permissions for anyone to see it).

We'll be on the lookout for your reply. 

[Halvorius]

Good day sir, 

Apologies for the late reply. For the iPad, I tried restarting the device and playing from there instead of transferring the playback because that also pauses, and it still paused when I keep pressing play so it's not just the playback transfer from my laptop (I also tried this on other songs and some of it still paused I can't seem to figure out the trigger). So far I have found a workaround this by playing another song on my playlist then just playing the previous song I want to play.

Other than that the bug is still present and I did try clearing the cache, reinstalling, and turning off the hardware acceleration and nothing works but when it works properly, the pause doesn't happen anymore until I go close the app and open it again then it does it again.

[AlejaR]

Hey there @Halvorius,

Thanks for your reply and for the info shared. 

Kudos for the troubleshooting performed. In this case, we'd suggest:

• Make sure the Background refresh option is enabled for Spotify on your iPad. You can do this by going to settings> General> Background app refresh.
• We understand you reinstall the app on your laptop, but we'd like you to try a clean (more thorough) reinstall of the Spotify app. You can find out the steps to do it here.

If issues persist afterwards, we'd like to gather some additional info. Please send us:

• The exact OS version of both your devices.
• The exact Spotify version you're running there.
• Does this happen over WiFi? 3G/4G? Both? Do you notice any difference if you switch the internet connection you're using?  You can create, if possible, a hotspot from a phone and connect both devices.

Keep us in the loop!

[akahyper]

This seems to be happening across all of my devices. This is the issue happening on my Mac

[junglejon]

Hitting the same issue on PC.

Press play, it plays for  seconds, then pauses.
Same issue on web player.

Then if I skip the next song it plays and I can then rewind and play the song that was previously queued with no issues.
Fixing it on one client fixes it for all clients.

[mrated]

Hi Maria, 

I've had this problem off and on for a few weeks now (Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon) 1.2.50.335.g5e2860a8 on Sequoia 15.0.1). The app was misbehaving badly just now, even restarting it did nothing. I saw your message to try the web player so I closed the Mac app, click your link and bam, it's playing in Chrome. I reopened the Mac app and it showed the play progress with the message saying it was playing in Chrome, as you'd expect. I then closed the Chrome tab and now it's playing again in the Mac app as it should. Not sure if this is helpful information but at least I now have a second workaround until a fix is found.

Cheers, 

Michael

[OscarDC]

Hey everyone,

Thank you for your messages and for the info shared.

The relevant team is already aware of this behavior and it's working on it. To continue gathering examples and in case you haven't sent the complete info yet, let us know the following details:

- Your device info (make/model) and OS version
- Exact Spotify version
- Troubleshooting tried so far

We'll be on the lookout for your responses.

[1234274305]

This happening on my iphone 16 pro max. Typically in the morning. I can rsolvr by powering down my iphone, bit tge it happens again the next day. Frustrating.

[1234274305]

This is very similar to my issue. The phone has been quiet overnight, with spotify one of my unclosed apps. I go to use it and no joy.

[ianpas]

Exciting new update today: As of this morning I can no longer work-around the issue. Quitting and restarting doesn't resolve it, signing out and back in doesn't resolve it either.

Spotify for macOS (Apple Silicon)
1.2.51.345.gcc39d911

[ianpas]

This is happening on both my personal laptop and my work laptop so it's clearly an issue with Spotify, either in the app or the back-end, not users' computers.

Getting very annoying, I'm getting close to demanding a refund for this month.

[Yordan]

Hey folks,

Thanks for the details.

Could you try playing from the Web Player, then switching the playback to the app to see if that helps? If possible, check if the issue persists on another account: you can ask someone (like a friend or a relative who uses Spotify) to log in to their account on your device to see if they'd experience the same behavior.

In case you haven't already, it's worth trying the steps provided by @Dessi to flush your DNS cache + restart the app afterwards.

Keep us posted on this 👍

[ianpas]

Yep. Same behavior on the web player. Hence was not able to listen to music while working yesterday via personal laptop, work laptop, or web player.