Playlists appear empty on desktop app

[Keenright]

Plan

Free/Premium

Device

HP Pavilion Laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Spotify won't play any music in the app or in the web player. All of my playlists, favourite songs, and everybody else's playlists all show no songs. This is extremely frustrating. I was just thinking about upgrading to premium and now I can't play or listen to anything! I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app and everything related, and it never works. There must be a problem with my account. This is extremely frustrating! Please help me fix this.

I've attached a screenshot of what spotify looks like when I click the play button on a playlist from another page. When I open a playlist, it just tells me it's empty.

[Cadhylo]

Yep, apparently there was a line in the hosts file blocking a spotify address... Absolutely no clue how that got there. After removing it everything returned to normal

[FPSUsername]

Tried the hosts thing and no luck. I have this issue since I reinstalled spotify because I couldn't play a particular song (which does play on my phone).

It's all ruined, same on my laptop, also running windows 10.

It's not only the windows 10 app, the windows execution program, but also spotify web has the bug. The song I wanted to play is OG Eastbull - Bella giornata

[Skorps123]

I deleted all of the text and it worked. Quick question...

Would just deleting the host file work? Just asking for the convenience.

[Jemi]

Hey everyone, 

If you haven't already, can you also let us know when this started, and a timestamp of the last time you saw the issue?

@Skorps123 it's best just to edit it for now. Don't think it's a good idea to just delete it. 

Thanks!

[sickonexd]

About month ago

---

@Jemi wrote:

Hey everyone, 

If you haven't already, can you also let us know when this started, and a timestamp of the last time you saw the issue?

@Skorps123 it's best just to edit it for now. Don't think it's a good idea to just delete it. 

Thanks!

---

[cajunthunder]

i'm a premium user and can't play spotify on my desktop it tells me "can't play current song" and I've picked several so it is happening to everything i click on. i restarted, logged out, uninstalled and reinstall to no avail. I tried the edit the note pad host file but it didn't have any spotify site listed. this just started this morning as I was playing fine on a desktop yesterday afternoon.

[DaBoomhammer]

The solution literally just saved me from ragequitting from Spotify.

Although it is still infuriating that my desktop app gets absolutely thrashed every other time I add a song to a playlist. What a lovely "premium" service.

[1128487409]

Yeah having the same issue. Reinstalled multiple times. Logged out/in multiple times. It is still happening as of this message. All my playlists are empty on Desktop. iPhone is playing and working fine. Cannot connect it to another device. 

[Sebasty]

Hey!

I have a feeling that googletagservices or googletagmanager (whichever it is called) is also necessary for Spotify. I have seen it blocked, so if you have these lines too, add a # in front of it, save the changes and see if that does the trick.

You can empty the file completely, but I would advise against deleting the file.

Hope this helps anyone;
Have a nice day!

[nashal0]

Same problem

[1128487409]

Deezer works fine. Thanks 

[AMOhacker]

Thank you, you're a lifesaver

[User77715]

it worked!!! yo thank you so much

[Xuen]

This happened to me on my laptop too! It is perfectly fine when i play it through my phone, yet when i try to play on my laptop, i am unable to do so! Before this, the laptop application has been really buggy, and i had to use my phone as a controller in order to get any songs to play on my laptop. Please fix this asap!! Thank you so much! I have trier relogging, uninstalling and reinstalling from both the web download and from window store but to no avail. The web player also does not play my songs, but the songs on my playlists will show up there. Thank you for your help!

[evya2005]

Clean spotify-hosts from 'hosts' file  - Works for me! (Mac)

[Muhtoffel]

Same exact issue here. 

[hermidaraquel]

I have the same issue with desktop app and web player.  

Playlists are showing empty or with like 2 songs, not only mine but also the Spotify ones, and some songs just won't play. 

What it worked for me at first was installing an older version of the desktop app (1.0.98.78 the one before this all started happening, around 3 weeks) and these issues disappeared, but when I restart my pc the app updates itself, and back with the same issues.

So I basically uninstall Spotify and install the older version anytime I want to listen to some music now, which is unnaceptable. We need a solution.

I tried log out, restart the app, reinstall, etc. Nothing works. It's extremely annoying.

EDIT: Just tried this solution and seems to be working for me.

@Smexyskeletor wrote:

I FOUND THE SOLUTION!!!!

It even got my friend's activity tab working, that's been dead for months!

I recommend checking your hosts file for any Spotify-related entries.
The file is capable of redirecting traffic for addresses it contains, so it can break Spotify app when it contains Spotify addresses.

It's easy to check and edit, you'll need admin rights:

1. open Notepad as an administrator (right-click - Open as Administrator)
2. go to File - Open and navigate to

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

3. Choose "All Files" instead of "Text Documents" next to the File Name box. You'll see a handful of files. Pick hosts and click on Open.
4. The file is opened. You will see a block of text with # in front of each line and might see entries like

0.0.0.0 website.com
127.0.0.1 website2.com

Check for any entries with spotify or fastly in the address. Examples may look like:

0.0.0.0 weblb-wg.gslb.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 prod.b.ssl.us-eu.fastlylb.net 

(and any variations inbetween)
5. If you do find any, you can delete the line. You can also add a # in front of the line, that's 'commenting out'.
6. Save your changes. Restart Spotify.

[izushi123]

On windows desktop it works! Thanks.

[xico007]

Spotify's troubleshooting solved my problem! I just had to change the hosts file! Thanks

[el_pipila]

I had the same problem for about a week.

At first some playlists worked just fine and other kinda bugged out when switching between songs. And then, poof, stopped working altogether.

Tried all kind of things trying to get it to work again until stumbling with this thread. Did the recommendation on the status update as of today (3/08/19) for the Windows platform and it worked.