Podcasts unplayable

[SummerSaison]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Dell laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

podcasts are unplayable. this problem has occurred in the past but is marked as resolved (which it currently is not)

I am unable to play podcasts on mobile and desktop app. When playing podcasts, the progress bar is stuck at 0:00. There are no issues when playing music.
Link to locked post:
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Random-podcasts-are-unplayable/idi-p/5388220

[Lyubka]

Hey @SummerSaison,

Thank you for reaching out here in the Community.

This sounds a bit odd and we'll do our best to help you out here.

Would you mind testing this with a different account? If a family member has a Spotify account, it'd be great to ask them to log in on your devices to see if they'll be able to play the podcasts. This will help us understand if it's account related or not. 

We'd also recommend giving this a try on a different network, for example try to connect to another Wi-Fi or test with a hotspot network (if possible). 

In case the issue persists, could you let us know which podcast you are trying to listen? 
 

Hope this helps. We'll be on the lookout for your reply 🙂

[SummerSaison]

Hi, so this only occurs when I am on my work's network. They don't have anything blocking spotify on the firewall or anything, so I'm not sure why it only happens at work.  It plays music fine, but any podcast it won't play. Specifically at this moment Welcome to Nightvale and Within the Wires. I have tried a few others and they also will not play. Audio books also still work.

[Vasil]

Hey @SummerSaison,

Thanks for letting us know!
If you're using a VPN connection at work, it might be disrupting the app functionality 🙂
If you don't use VPN though, your best bet would be to ask your company technicians to take a look.
There might be additional restrictions for the work network we can't know from here, so it's worth reaching out to them if appropriate.

Hope this helps! Keep us posted on how things go.

[janer101]

Hi

I'm having the same trouble as others in relation to podcasts not playing. When playing certain podcasts, the progress bar is stuck at 0:00. There are no issues when playing music though. The podcasts I can't play are:

The Dropout,

Allen Carr - Life's a Beach and

FearLess.

The podcasts play in the car, TV and Sonos but not on my iphone. It's a work phone and I've already spoken with the IT team and they have no restrictions on Spotify. I've deleted the app and reinstalled but made no differnce. 

Based in Ireland

Iphone 14

[Maria]

Hey there @janer101,

Thanks for posting in the thread!

Just to check, do you notice any difference after clearing stored cache from the device? Once it's done, make sure to log out from the app and back in again. Completing these actions should resync your account info.

Shouldn't that do the trick, could you sign in to another Spotify account on your device to see if the same thing happens there? For example, you can ask a friend or a family member to log in to their own account on your device and check if the podcast(s) plays.

Let us know how it goes.