Spotify skipping songs every ~0.5 seconds before reporting 'Spotify can't play this right now'

[BreachSheff]

Plan

Premium

Country

United Kingdom

Device

HP ProDesk 400

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

As the subject says, when playing songs from any playlist or any part of the library, currently spotify is skipping songs every ~0.5 seconds until it eventually reaches a point where it kicks back with an error showing 'Spotify can't play this right now. If you have the file on your computer you can import it.'

I've done some testing and noticed if you skip forwards manually, it will continue skipping forwards endlessly; if you skip backwards manually, it will proceed to skip backwards until it exhausts the list and then provides the same error.

I am not the only one this is affecting either; currently there are 3 people on my team at work all encountering this issue, all on different makes of PC's. We have all tried uninstalling and reinstalling, restarting the devices and I have tried some of the more historical fixes which seem similar to problems reported in previous years such as reinstalling the audio drivers etc.

Any suggestions for a fix, or is this looking to be a widespread problem across Spotify currently?

Thanks

[leviE]

Hey @BreachSheff

You can try ensuring that the soundcard is selected as an output device for Spotify app. Windows 10 allows to select inputs and outputs per app and this is how to find the dialog:

1. Right-click on speaker icon on Taskbar's notification area, select "Open Sound Settings"

2. In Sound Settings scroll down to "Other sound options" and click on "App Volume And Device Preferences"

3. At the top you'll find general system-wide settings, below you find dedicated settings for each open app. You'll need to have Spotify open to see it there.

Another thing that might help is reinstalling Spotify, maybe it is just a little bit broken and needs a refresh. Here's how to reinstall, I also recommend restarting your PC before installing Spotify.

Hope this helps, let me know if this solution worked for you!

have a nice day!

~levi

[BreachSheff]

Hi leviE

We tried that, that didn't work unfortunately. Reinstalling the app through the windows store hasn't worked either - as it stands, the desktop app is now completely unusable as attempting to play any song now results in 'Spotify can't play this right now. If you have the file on your computer you can import it' after ~0.5 seconds of playing it; the skipping issue no longer exists because you can't get to the point to skip a song haha.

Tried connecting a mobile as a device and controlling the desktop app via this, that also yielded no results. The mobile app itself is actually fine though, it's whenever the desktop is attempted to be used.

Thanks for your assistance though

[imutau]

Yup same issue been going on for a few days now. 

[BreachSheff]

Oddly enough, it seemed to be fixed this afternoon - suspect Spotify deployed a fix in the back office as nothing changed on our end to warrant it working again suddenly.

[leviE]

I'm happy to hear this!
Have a nice day!
~levi

[knightpt]

Woah, thanks Levi.ehlers

. I had this problem for over a week now and your answer hit the bulseye ! it was exactly that my problem... all my songs were skiping, nothing played. For some odd reason my windows 10 aplication output was blank for Spotify specificaly (all others were as default output sound).

Picked the default windows setting for it, and voilá. Works again.

Thanks buddy