External monitors disconnect when opening Spotify

[jackspencer]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Operating System

Windows10

My Question or Issue

Whenever Spotify is active my monitors will constantly disconnect and reconnect (and my bluetooth mouse). This happens with the web player, the desktop app, and on webpages with embedded Spotify songs. 

[jackspencer]

The fix is going to depend on your cabling setup. HDMI to HDMI should be fine, but where you will confuse Widevine is using HDMI adapters to things like USB-c or Display Port. Widevine is not smart enough to tell the difference between this and a video capture device, so it overreacts. Buy a cable that states it is HDCP compliant and you can probably get use of your monitor back. 

Of course Spotify could also just not use Widevine DRM on these short loop video streams, or at least admit they are doing it and prompting for opt-in, or even updating their TOS if using DRM is now required. Like I said, solving this was hard because Spotify made it a mystery, unlike other Widevine using services that are upfront about it. 

[jackspencer]

Got this problem too. In my case with a Lenovo Thunderbolt USB C hub under Windows 10. Also changed from HDMI to DP but didn't fix the issue.
Maybe we are thinking too much about the video stream since we know the monitor is causing the issue. But maybe it's more the audio stream to the monitor that I think spotify wants to protect and if the hub doesn't support it or can't handle it properly, we get these crazy issues.

MY 2 SOLUTIONS (under Windows):

Both solutions aim at the same fix, but 2 ways to get there:

Via sound settings:
Disable all audio playback devices connected to your display. Mostly they are called something like Nvidia High Definition Audio, Intel Display Audio etc. Click the speaker icon in the right corner -> Sounds -> Playback -> [Disable all screen audio devices].
This solution will not work if you need your screen audio somehow, because it disables the screen audio at all.

Via Device Manager:
Open Device Manager -> Go to Sound, Video and Game Controllers -> Disable Nvidia High Definition Audio, Intel Display Audio, etc (any output connected to your display via USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.).

After that you can trigger the screen crashes and blinking issues by clicking the home button in the spotify app and then if it doesn't crash just start playing some music. Normally after disabling the screen audio stuff it should stop (in my case)

[gashnjir]

Here is a clip of it happening

[ninjawolfess]

Win10, RTX 3060 - this is still a persistent issue. Has been for weeks to months for me, but I'm appalled that this has been a widespread issue for others for literal years. Spotify, get off your lazy assets and fix it before I leave.

[Ivelina]

Hey folks,

Thank you for posting in the thread. 

Since this issue seems to have resurfaced, we've let the right team know so that they can investigate. To help us, we would really appreciate it if you could send us the requested details in this post, if you've not already done so.

Additionally, please make sure to check the info in the pinned responses of @Simitus here and @hannelore123 here and give them a try in case any of them make a difference for you.

In the meantime, we're here if anything else comes up.

[Dessi]

Hi folks,

Thanks for all the comments about this!

We've heard back from our tech team and can confirm that we haven't made any changes since the last fix, so it looks like this might be caused by specific setups. We recommend checking out the answer marked as solution in the thread, as well as the top answers for more info, since they are still valid.

If you haven't already, it's worth making sure you're running the latest version of Widevine. There's a detailed guide on how to do that here.

The Community is here in case you have any other questions.

[drwhois]

this is still an issue on windows11 25H2... since this only occurs with the web and local player from spotify i guess the problem lies in the spotify code...

[rehills]

This continues to be an ongoing issue with my laptop and external monitor.  It happens all day long if I have Spotify desktop or web open.  Only happens when Spotify is active.  

[Dewi]

This is still a problem whenever I attach a monitor via USB. None of the devices allow disabling HDCP, so Spotify should not be probing it if we never watch videos, or should at least allow disabling it.

Please fix this problem; it's clear many of us are experiencing it.

[epitaph8]

Same issue here, RTX 5070. Interesting thing is, I'm connecting HDMI to HDMI, no adapters whatsoever. But if i have spotify app open sometimes my monitor will go black for 1-2s and come back on. I can consistently reproduce it by having firefox + spotify open, opening reddit front page scrolling a bit, then turning on spotify/interacting with it.

[epitaph8]

Forgot to add video.

[danibanan]

I recently turned g-sync on for my gigabyte M32Q in the nvidia control panel. Since doing that, every time I launch spotify my M32Q loses signal briefly before coming back on. This is my main monitor and is plugged in directly to my 4070 Super via display port. My secondary monitor (gigabyte M27Q) does not lose signal and is also plugged directly into my graphics card but with hdmi.
Also, playing music in spotify while gaming makes me lose around 100 frames per second and causes terrible stuttering. It's terrible. I'm on the prepice on finding a replacement for spotify.

[epitaph8]

This worked for me, try disabling all nvidia audio devices in device manager (not audio panel, has to be in manager).