Having trouble with stream

[franzl020202]

Hello,

i´m using spotify free and thinking about an upgrade. BUT in the last time the music has an very poor quality. The stream is hitting and stumbling like an old record player when I´m using ist on desktop. On Android its no problem in some network.

I have already emptied the cache and reinstalled the program three times. Nothing helps. I have four playlists with about 20 songs. The songs in the first two playlists run without problems but those in the two (new) playlists do not work. I can not understand. Does this change, if one makes an upgrade or remains so. Then I do not need Spotify. Any idea? Thank you.

Franz

[Sebasty]

Hey @franzl020202

That doesn't sound nice! I wonder if it's some hardware based issue or something...
Try turning off the hardware acceleration in Spotify preferences. Restart Spotify after that!

If you're using a laptop, then changing the power plan to High Performance might help for then the machine will let everything run optimally instead of trying to save power in all possible ways.

In case you're using Avast, it may interrupt the stream too in some ways. This thread has other possible solutions such as bluetooth issues and so.

I hope any of this ends up being helpful 🙂

[franzl020202]

Hello and thank you for the ideas,

unfortunately nothing helps. I'm using AVIRA Antivir und Windows firewall. Should I turn them off?

Anyway: I have four different playlists. One from january 2017 with 15 songs and one from february with 20 songs and they play well without any problem. The two playlists from april 2017 and may 2017 are those with the awfull sound. The playlists contain mainly recent pop music. Only the playlist from april has some older music i.e. 10CC or Kraftwerk and some songs are not very common. I have the idea, that problems began with this music.... stupid or not? Possible?

[Sebasty]

@franzl020202

Uh eh... Please give me the Spotify URI to the playlists, intrigued to hear if I have same issues with them!
So if you make another playlist and put those awfully sounding tracks there, they'll still sound awful? And if you go to the song's artists page and put the song to your playlist from there?
Looking forward to your reply!

[franzl020202]

I moved the songs from the two "bad playlists" allready in a new playlist but it´s the same result (Sampler).

However: If I´m using my mobil with android everything ist working fine... Has it  somthing to do with my Laptop and Windows? May be Wlan? But the mobil is also running with the same wlan...

OK:

not OK:

Sampler:

.

[Sebasty]

@franzl020202

If you go to the web player (open.spotify.com), do they sound ok? I'm on web player and they sound flawless so far.

A stronger version of reinstall may help here actually, and it goes like this:
Log out and quit Spotify. Then uninstall it from the Control Panel.
Open Windows Explorer and navigate to Spotify's cache, the default location is C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\Spotify\Storage (replace the %username% with your computer's username). Delete everything that's inside the folder.
Also navigate to the following folder: C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\Spotify\Users\ and delete those folders inside it.
After that, restart your machine and then install the client from here (click Desktop and click on Download).

I don't think your wlan would be so selective that only the new playlists are terrorised. 🙂 Keep me posted!

[franzl020202]

Hello,web-player is working fine.

I have done everything as suggested. Result: The first two songs were OK. From the third song on the same problems have come again ... no chance. Something is wrong.

[Sebasty]

@franzl020202

Could you try turning off local file syncing in your Preferences? That may sometimes cause issues as well.

[franzl020202]

Sorry, I can´t find local file syncing in my spotify preferences. Any idea?

[Sebasty]

@franzl020202

Oh..? You should be able to see something unless you haven't synced anything. When there's something added, like mine is monitoring Music library, there's that checkbox that you should try unticking.

[franzl020202]

Thank you that you give so much trouble but the problem is and will persist. I need Spotify only for music I do not have. Therefore I have the checkboxes in the settings for the local files all switched off: Downloads, Windows Media Player and Music Library.

But on the left side (My Music) there is the possibility to display all my local files. When I click on it all my files on the hard disk are displayed and I can listen to them. No matter what I choose with the settings, this always works. So it is obviously not completely turned off. Mysterious.

[Sebasty]

@franzl020202

Spotify makes a file when local files are synced. Removing the ticks doesn't remove already synced content apparently. If you want to try deleting them completely, here's how to:

1. Close Spotify.
2. Navigate to "%appdata%\Spotify\Users\" in your file browser.
3. There should be a folder "username-user" - enter the folder.
4. Delete the file named "local-files.bnk"
5. Start Spotify.

If the issue persists, could you try making another account and try listening to these problematic playlists?
Looking forward to your reply!

[franzl020202]

Hi, I found this file and deleted it. No effect.

Thinking now to make a new account. What do you mean with "listening to these problematic playlists". From the new account? Should I copy the playlists, the urls? Or search all the songs new and make new playlistes. I´m not shure how to do it right. I dont want to copy the troubles to the new account.

May be its better to delete this account and the program und run ccleaner and start completly new with everthing...

[Sebasty]

@franzl020202

I meant that you should try making a new account and go to your real account with it and play those playlists. There's no point in starting brand new yet if we haven't tried that yet - maybe that doesn't work either!

Do you have another computer to try Spotify on (and more specifically, those playlists)?

A third thing that may work (I am really unsure) is deleting these problematic playlists and then going to Spotify account to recover these playlists.

[franzl020202 · Accepted solution]

Hurray!!! Believe it or not. It´s working!

I started with your last suggestion an did these steps:

1. delete the app "Lithium Community - Production" (seems to me mistery and I don´t want it)
2. delete those awfull playlists
3. delete storage as done before
4. delete *.bnk file again
5. restore playlists as mentioned

Anyway, I don´t realy trust the peace yet. Do you have any explanation for "this solution". Why did this happen? What was my mistake? Will problems come back again?

Final Question: How can I thank you and praise you? How can I give you Kudos?

[Sebasty · Accepted solution]

@franzl020202

Oooh excellent! 🙂

I don't really know, actually, but this method you went through seems good to me. I don't really see why it should return - you removed the playlists, you removed the storage file that possibly contains traces of these playlists, you cleared the local file cache and then you restored the playlists from the Spotify server...

The app is for the Lithium-powered boards (such as this forum), and as far as I know it doesn't really do anything to Spotify playback, but maybe that was a necessary move as well, I don't know. 😄 An user actually asked what it is in here.

Kudos are a nickname to the "like-button" in here.
I'm glad I could help. If you have more questions, feel free to ask, I'll try to help! 🙂


Edit - marked your post as a solution, so other users that suffer from similar problems can take a look. 🙂