Songs stop playing after 6 seconds or don't play at all

[collinvore]

Plan

Free

Country

US

Device

Desktop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Spotify has been suddenly doing this strange thing where a song will begin to play and stop after a few seconds (typically at the 6-second mark). If I try to play it again, it will refuse to play any of the song at all. Other songs will not load and play at all.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Spotify several times. I've reset my computer several times. I've gone into Spotify's files and deleted certain ones I think may be causing the issue. Nothing has solved it yet, and it's been going on for about a week.

I am at a complete loss here and need some help. 😞

[legendozixtynin]

Genius, i remember doing this, btw peeps it was something to do with blocking ads via hosts file pretty sure from my research it popped up online 😉

[user-removed]

For those still messing around with Spotify Desktop - following the instructions in the recommended link to turn off the auto-update feature does not work.  It just prevents you from being able to access the update folder to manually delete the update.  You then have to reset the security settings for the update folder to be able to manually delete the update.

[Aelahnor]

You're my new hero after Deadpool, Santa Klaus and Leslie Nielsen. 😄

Thank you so much!

[maaxaam]

Find your hosts file and remove any entries that pertain to Spotify. 

On the Mac:

/private/etc/hosts

Win:

c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

If you played by chance or on purpose with any type of ad blocker for Spotify this may be the reason behind it. 

Don't shoot the messenger.

This has fixed my issue. 

Cheers,

Max

[shreyas1527]

i couldnt find any file with spotify .com0.0.0.0 . what should i do ?

[user-removed]

Hi Shreyas1527,

You can always change streaming service providers. Pandora has several
plans from "free w/ads" up to a paid "premium" plan, and unlike Spotify
their apps/software/platform (or whatever you want to call it) actually
works.

srt

[CornFled]

worked, thanks

[Thealphabet]

Hey!

OS: Windows 10 64bit, latest spotify and Windows version. Spotify premium for students.

I had this issue also, most of my songs were refusing to play at all, some only a couple of seconds. I tried the solutions provided here, including logging out and back in, restarting my PC, checking the hosts-file for 0.0.0.0 or anything Spotify-related (nothing there).

Then after doing a clean install of Spotify and logging into my account, all the playlists, even the official top charts, and my own playlists, are empty. When attempting to play a song from an artist's page it refuses to start.

I have tried both install methods (windows app store and by downloading the installer) with same result.

Web player works fine, as does the Android app, apart from refusing to play more than 5 seconds occasionally and randomly disconnecting from my chromecast, but that's not the topic for today.

I have verified that I am using the correct account. I can see my playlists but they are empty. I can't access the windows application via the device menu in web player or Android app.

[Ver]

Hey there @Thealphabet,

Thanks for getting in touch with us 🙂

The troubleshooting steps you've tried so far are very good. We'd like to add a few more.

You can give these steps a go and clean the cache. If Firewall is enabled, we'd suggest to disable it.

If that doesn't help, we'd suggest you try with another account. If the issue persists, we'd suggest to click here and try the steps mentioned there. You can also add your +VOTE and Subscribe to the thread so you can stay up-to-date with any relevant news about this.

Hope this was helpful for you. If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.

[Thealphabet]

Hi, thanks for the tips!
Unfortunately none of them worked for me. 😐
My roommate also has the issue of songs stopping after a couple of seconds
with the message "Can't play the current song"

[Thealphabet]

Update:

The aforementioned issues still persist. Additionally the Search stopped functioning. Any query returns the "Something went wrong. Another try?" prompt.

Both Android and Windows 10. This happens on-and-off

[Elena]

Thanks for keeping us in the loop @Thealphabet!

The teams are aware of both of the issues you mention and they're working on a fix.

To keep better track of this we'll recommend leaving your +Vote and info in the respective threads for the issue with search and for the playback one.

Hopefully we'll have this sorted out soon, keep an eye on the page for any updates.
 
Let us know if there's anything else we can help out with 🙂

[wbirchfiel]

This worked for me.

I am using Windows 10.

>Settings

>Sound

>Advanced Sound Options

>App volume and device preferences

Under App volume

Make sure App volume (Output) is set to your speakers.

[Thealphabet]

Mate, I had that, and this was also on android.

[jetcool]

Spotify Desktop app cuts off audio after 4-6 seconds while I'm on the company VPN (Windows 10). It starts to work when I disconnect from corporate VPN or play songs in offline mode. It is pretty annoying. I know that there are different firewall rules at the company, but in that case I don't understand how I can listen to the first few seconds.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @jetcool,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

Spotify doesn't officially support VPN which can be the cause of this issue.

You can also head over to this ongoing issue and follow the troubleshooting steps that's provided in it, but keep in mind as mentioned above - the VPN can be the cause of this.

We hope that this information was helpful.

Take care!

[Leonelmontilla]

For anyone like me playing spotify in the cellphone, I read it has something to do with turning the crossfade to 0 seconds between songs through settings in playback section and then restarting the app. I tried it so let’s see if it works as the crossfade setting on mine was on “6 secs” and that might be the problem.

[corgiplex]

This worked. On a mac.. I found out where the song data was being cached and deleted the cache. This happened after I switched to a new mac using time machine. Songs kept failing to play.

More or less followed steps here -> https://macpaw.com/how-to/clear-spotify-cache-mac
Used that website to find where spotify was caching songs and deleted from the terminal personally.

[Elliot4444]

The same thing is happening to me but on mobile 😞 idk what to do