Podcast Won't Play

[cbeer86]

Plan

Free

Country

USA

Device

Multiple

Operating System

Multiple

My Question or Issue

A podcast I have been listening to for months, Behind the Bastards, suddenly won't play on any device.  I've tried both the web player and app on two different Windows 10 computers and on my Android phone (Samsung Note 9).  The progress bar shows up as if the podcast is playing (shows the episode title and "Play" button turns to "Pause" button as if playing), but it never actually plays.  I've tried multiple different episodes.  Other podcasts and music play just fine, but I suddenly can't keep listening to this podcast that has become a big part of my office routine at all.  Extremely frustrating.  Does anyone have any idea how to fix this issue?  I have seen a couple old posts with similar problems, but no solutions on any of them, and the latest one was nearly a year old.  Thank you.

[cbeer86]

Okay, so it seems that at least one episode will play...eventually... I left the player open, and probably 10-15 minutes later, it started playing. Tried another episode, and that one is now sitting and not playing just like before. If I have to wait 10-15 minutes every time to start or resume an episode, that's effectively worthless, so any help on this would be great.

[Peter]

Hey @cbeer86,

Thanks for reaching out to us and for trying out some steps already.

We've tried playing the podcast and haven't encountered any issues on our end. This suggests that there might be an issue which is specific to your account.

With that in mind, do you mind creating a new account and trying to play an episode of the podcast to see if you can recreate the issue there?

If it's working alright on the new account, you can transfer all your saved content over to your new account in a few easy steps - just check out this Spotify Answer for more info.

Hope that helps! If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out 🙂

[Sir_Flankerton]

Yeah im actually having the same problem with the Liberty podcasts. It's not playing at all, it's been like this since yesterday I've reinstalled the app on my phone and tried playing it on my pc. I would appreciate some help on it

[Sir_Flankerton]

Actually all the other fool and scholar productions podcasts have the same problem

[al3xenic]

I was just about to complain about the same issue. Not sure if it’s a coincidence, but I turned on the sleep timer and then turned it off and it worked? Pretty sure it’s a coincidence but not sure if that’s worked for someone else. Still really frustrating, I’ve been waiting 3 hours to listen to The Adventure Zone /:

[al3xenic]

Nevermind lol it dont work again

[fnies]

Has anyone solved this? I'm having this exact problem with my favorite podcast. I have a premium account, and migrating it all over to a new account isn't a feasible option.

[deltaace16]

Im having the same problem right now with one of the podcasts I listen to, very annoying. 

[voidirium]

having the same issue with the podcast 'stuff you should know', which afaik is under the same publisher

[Ver]

Hey folks,

Thanks for reaching out to us. Don't worry. Help is here 🙂

We'd suggest you give these steps a go and run a clean reinstall. That way you can make sure the cache is not leading to this issue.

If this doesn't do the trick, you can try playing the podcasts while being logged into another account. That way we can see if it is an account-related issue. Does the issue persist?

You can also send us screenshot of what you are seeing. We'll investigate this further.

Let us know how it goes. If you have questions, we are here for you.
 

[jwilder24]

I have Android 8. I followed the instructions and unfortunately it didn't fix the issue. I'm not able to get any podcasts to work from my phone. I tried on my wife's phone and my laptop and those both work.  When I try to play a poscast it does start to play but it immediately starts skipping, as though there's a bug or something. 

I've tried downloading the podcast and playing it with wifi turned off and there's no change. I've also tried playing a downloaded version with wifi and data turned off altogether and still no better.  Songs work fine, but podcasts do not.

Please help me fix this because both podcasts I listen to are Spotify exclusive and I've had a Premium membership for several years now. This is SUPER frustrating.

[Alex]

Hey there @jwilder24,

Thanks for reaching out about this.

Could you ask your wife to log in with her account on your phone and check whether she can play podcasts normally? It'd also be helpful if you can tell us the make, model and OS version of your phone.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[jwilder24]

Her account won't play podcast on my phone either so it's evidently my phone that has an issue. I have an LG Stylo 4 with Android 8.1.0.

[Alex]

Hey there @jwilder24,

Thanks for your troubleshooting.

In this case you can try a few other things.

Try checking whether permissions for Spotify are being blocked by any sort of phone settings/firewall on your device. We know that user data is very sensitive, however some apps don't function properly if they don't have permissions on certain phones.

Go to:

1. Mobile Settings> Apps> Spotify> Permissions. Allow everything you see there.

2. Mobile settings> Apps> Spotify> Battery> Optimize battery usage> select top All (not optimized for apps)> Spotify> disable.

3. Last step - restart the phone. 

Note: Menu order may vary depending on the device.

Let us know how it goes!

[jwilder24]

That didn't work either. All music plays, I have no problems with music. It's just podcasts and audiobooks (just discovered).  So unless podcasts have different requirements than songs it shouldn't have anything to do with permissions.

I previously had issues playing certain podcasts on my laptop because I was using a VPN. That has been resolved.  The phone issue is new as of a few weeks ago.  And now it's ALL podcasts.

[Alex]

Hi again @jwilder24,

Thanks for your quick reply and for going through this troubleshooting process.

If you're using an SD card on your phone, could you try to remove it and see if that makes any difference? 

Also check if your SD card is formatted as Portable. Make sure the SD Card is not formatted as Internal memory. Formatting an SD Card to be used as Internal memory called Adoptable Storage will cause issues with the Spotify cache, as well as possibly causing an SD card to fail. If the SD Card has already been formatted in this way the user will need to reformat the card.

Some devices that run an older version of Android will have issues using an SD Card with Spotify. 

[jwilder24]

I don't have an SD card. Also, this is a new problem with a non-new phone.  I've had this phone for about 2 years and have not experienced this problem until a couple weeks ago.

[Alex]

Hey there @jwilder24,

Thanks for your reply.

In this case it looks like the only option would be to try a factory reset of your phone. However we cannot guarantee that this will enable you to listen to podcasts as it sounds like it's an issue related to the the specific device.

Alternatively you can try to create a new test account and check whether you can stream all content through that one.

Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have more questions.

[jwilder24]

Well I don't know what happened but magically they're working again. I tried everything I could think of, updating the app, re-installing the app, restarting my phone, clearing the cache, all advice that was given.  None of them worked.  I gave up for about a week and then randomly tried again and for whatever reason after about 2 months of them not working it started to work again.  I have no advice or fix that I can share.  Must have been a gremlin in my phone.

Thanks all!