Can't play song on PC but works on Phone

[Devfine]

Plan

Premium

Country

England

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10 Home

My Question or Issue

I am trying to listen to some songs on spotify but whenever I go to play one on my computer I get this message "Spotify can't play this song right now. If you have the files on your computer you can import it" It's the same sort of message I would get offline but I am watching YouTube and messaging while getting this message so it couldn't be that. When I play a song on my phone and having the audio come out of my phone it works fine, I just can't play the audio through my PC.

Can I get some help here

[Ivan]

Hey @Devfine, 

Help’s here!

First thing you can try here is a clean reinstall of the Spotify desktop app. This will remove corrupted data from previous installations that could be causing the issue.  

In case you still experience this, check the hosts file on your PC for entries that need to be removed. Follow the steps described here on how to do that. 

Let us know how you get on! We'll be here in case you need any further help with this.

[Devfine]

Re-install didn't fix anything and nor did checking the host files

[Ivan]

Hey @Devfine, 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. 

In case the clean reinstall and cleaning up the host file didn't do the trick for you it's also a good idea to try troubleshooting your Internet connection. Make sure you restart the network device (router or modem), then log out and log back in to the Spotify app.

If this persists after the network restart, test if you observe the same when using a different connection. If it works with another connection, it's best to contact the service provider of the original network for more information.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted.  

[Devfine]

It works fine on another device on the same network and my internet connection is perfectly sturdy while I'm experiencing these issues

[Alex]

Hi there @Devfine,

Thanks for the reply.

There are a few things that could be causing the app to behave this way so we have to go through several steps of troubleshooting to find what's going on exactly 🙂

Can you try clearing the local file cache. To do this go to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Spotify and delete the entire folder called Spotify.

If that doesn't work try switching Windows's default audio output to something below 192000 Hz you can access that from Control Panel > Sounds, Advanced tab.

Let us know how you get on with this.

[Devfine]

Hi, There was no folder called "Spotify" and with the second test I couldn't find a category named "Advanced" but my output is below 192000 Hz

[Mihail]

Hey @Devfine,

Thanks for getting back to us.

It would seem that the issue is related to the set up on that specific device. Could you check your Windows hosts file for Spotify entries and remove any you find? You can use this guide, it was written for another topic, but you'll find the relevant steps a bit further down there. 

Keep us posted. We’ll keep an eye out for your reply.

[Devfine]

I already tried this in a previous test, no luck.

[Mihail]

Hey @Devfine,

Thanks for your post and apologies for the confusion.

Could you check if disabling hardware acceleration makes a differences? You can find this option in the advanced settings. Make sure to restart your device after the change.

Also - are only specific songs affected, all, or random ones? If you could send the links/Spotify URI of a few of them, we'd be happy to take a closer look.

Hope you find this useful. Let us know how you get on.