Spotify Desktop won't play songs that aren't on my playlists

[Koenator2]

Plan

Premium

Country

 USA

Device

Lenovo Y700 Laptop

Operating System

Win 10

 My Question or Issue

Spotify refuses to play anything that isn't on my playlists. The problem is always occuring on songs that aren't part of my playlists or current radios, and the album cover doesn't show up, as well as the track name and length are missing. I just get that blank cd logo instead.

I can always play these songs on my phone no issues, but the second I try on desktop it doesn't work. 

Something peculiar is if I close spotify, add the song into a playlist on my phone, then restart the desktop one, I can occasionally get it working. However I cannot add any songs at all to my playlists on the desktop version.

I do not have any files downloaded to my computer so that is not the issue. I also have reinstalled multiple times, but the problem only gets solved for about a day and then reverts and persists until I do it again. I'm sick of this and would appreciate any help.

EDIT: I have reinstalled for the thousandth time, and now spotify has completely eradicated all my playlists, and nothing at all will play on the desktop app. Everything is gone. The web player is the same and will not work either. I can still use my phone though. I'm beyond frustrated.

[DanielOak]

I have the same exact problem. I had to frequently reinstall spotify on PC because it wasn't playing certain songs, and now I can't play anything and all my ''favorite songs'' are gone and playists are empty. Web player doesn't work either. I've tried other accounts, but they don't work either. Everything on my phone works fine though so it has something to do with my PC.

[user-removed · Accepted solution]

I found the solution and it worked 100% for me!

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Desktop-Playlists-empty-after-update/td-p/4679818

[Koenator2]

Still didn't work. It boots me to a hosts file that is an "example" hosts file and doesn't contain any actual code in it. I don't know how to find whatever one you are talking about.

[user-removed]

Woah, I'm sorry 😞 because this was exactly my problem. I couldn't play songs on the desktop app or on the web player. I think it will be solved when the next update comes out. I'm using Windows 10 too and somehow worked really well. I wish I could show you through a video. Do you want me to screenshot to show you the process?

[Koenator2]

Hey so I’m actually an **bleep**... I have both a school and personal laptop, and the laptop I tried the solution on wasn’t my personal laptop (the one having the problem) so of course there wasnt an issue in that file for me to solve because my school laptop works fine and i dont use spotify there.

I just (5 seconds ago) used my personal laptop, deleted the spotify web address that was in that file, and it worked like a charm. Spotify is working 100% for the first time in months, thanks so much for getting me the solution.

[user-removed]

Yay!!! I'm happy it worked for you too. I hope they can fix all the bugs on the next update, but for now, this solution is worth it. (sorry for any mistakes, english isn't my first language hehe)

[666satan666]

I had the same issue that only songs in my playlists were playing.

Solution for me was to turn VPN off.