After playing for a short while, desktop app refuses to load album or artist info

[darkowl]

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

Desktop PC

Operating System

Windows 11

My Question or Issue

This is a weird one, and it only seems to affect Windows 11; My iOS device and Mac laptop work as expected. When using my Windows PC, after Spotify first loads, it will usually display album info. But after playing music for about 30s, or if I leave it for a while, it stops loading any album or artist info pages. When it quits, there's also often a few Spotify processes in Task Manager which refuse to quit and have to be forcibly ended.

I've gone through some time with Spotify's chat and they were as perplexed as me. It hasn't always been this way - it's maybe only in the last two months or so?

Things I've tried that sometimes only help temporarily, and do not fix it:

- Clearing cache

- Manually deleting the whole AppData cache folder

- Uninstalling and reinstalling

- Using the standalone vs Windows Store versions of Spotify

- Restarting

- ipconfig /flushdns

- Turning on/off HW acceleration (not sure why but...?)

- Turning off Windows Firewall

- Inspecting what Spotify is doing over the network with Fiddler Classic (nothing seems to be blocked)

It's only the display of the album/artist pages I can't access after a while. Music plays just fine. I can play any music even after it stops loading the artist/album pages.

I'm at a bit of a loss. Any help or things to try that I haven't already tried appreciated.

[AlejaR]

Hey there @darkowl,

Thanks for posting in the Community and welcome.

Kudos for all the troubleshooting steps you've tried so far. As a next step, we'd recommend you run the app in Safe Mode to rule out any issues with your default Windows settings and basic device drivers. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.
 

You also mentioned that you're monitoring what Spotify is doing on your network. It might be worth ruling out any issues network-wise, nonetheless. We'd recommend you connect your computer to a different red; if possible, you can create a hotspot with a phone and connect the computer to see how it goes.

On another note, we'd like to gather some additional info. Please send us:

• The exact Spotify version you're running.
• Does this happen over the web player?
• Since you mentioned this started about 2 months ago, did you notice if this started to happen after a specific event such as an OS update?

Keep us in the loop!

[darkowl]

Sure. The app version is Spotify for Windows (64 bit) 1.2.77.358.g4339a634.

It does not happen with the web player - it works just fine, as does the iOS app and MacOS desktop app. It's particular to the Windows desktop app, at least as I experience it.

I can't say for certain that a Windows update didn't cause some issues (I mean... Windows 11's recent updates haven't exactly been confidence-inspiring...), or whether it was a Spotify version update. That one of the Spotify processes seems to often stick around once the app is closed, suggesting it's locked up on something (maybe a network request?) seems to be a question mark in my mind but it's hard to know.

I'll give Windows' Safe Mode a go and see if anything comes of that.

[darkowl]

Safe Mode, sadly no dice. One other thing I've noticed - if I leave it for a while, if it's in its "Can't load" state, eventually it does start working just fine - until the app is restarted. It's like there's something getting caught when Spotify starts, like something it can't read or access, and it hangs waiting for that to do its thing, and eventually it does time out and then it just works normally. Hmm.

[Dessi]

Hey @darkowl,

Thanks for all the input!

We tried testing this out on our end, but weren't able to reproduce the issue and it seems to be quite sporadic and could also be Windows-related since it doesn't affect any other devices or platforms. We suspect there might be some settings blocking the connection and causing delays in loading. 

In case you're using a VPN or any related services, try disabling them temporarily to see if that makes a difference. Something else that might be useful to try is clearing the hosts file and using a wired internet connection, if possible, just to rule out any connectivity issues. This shouldn't be the case, since this works on your other devices, but it's worth the shot.

Let us know how it goes.