Windows 10, Song is playing, PC has sound, but Spotify doesn't. (until I [...] every time)

[fefe1920]

Plan

Free

Country

Japan

Device

Laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Hi, after last week's Windows 10 Update or so, I've been unable to play any song on Spotify on my laptop, other apps have sound and when I play it from my cellphone it plays as usual too, but on my laptop it shows the song playing and the time passing, and "playing on this device", sound is max on the app and on the speaker's mixer thing.

I found however a temporary fix that I have to go through every time I open Spotify, which is annoying:
1. Open Spotify on Laptop and hit play on a song or playlist. (no sound yet only time passing)
2. Open Spotify on my Cellphone. (It shows that I'm listening on my Desktop/Laptop)
3. On my Cellphone, select "play on this device". (It'll play as usual)
4. On my Laptop, select "play on this device". (I'll stop playing from cellphone and play, with sound, on my laptop)

Then it'll play as usual until I close and open the window again, if I do that I have to restart my laptop and go through all these steps again. Which is very annoying. It also doesn't work every time, I have managed to get it to work only twice so far.

I was hoping that someone have an actual fix for that. Otherwise, I'll have to listen to Spotify from my cellphone, which is much worse than listening from pc since the sound is trash and you're very limited there. Or go back to old school and get copies of my fav songs so I don't rely on unstable services XP

[Eni]

Hey there @fefe1920, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this and welcome to the Community. 

Just to confirm, are you getting any error messages in the app? If so, sending us a screenshot of it would come in handy. You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert image option in the post editor. Make sure not to send any private info.

On another note, would you mind checking if the sound output is set to the onboard soundcard of your PC? It's also worth checking if the drivers are up to date. 

If this doesn't do the trick, could you check if it works on the web player? 

We'll be waiting for your reply.

[fefe1920]

Hi Eni, thanks for the response! ^^

I'm not getting any error messages in the app or anywhere else. 

Drivers seem to be all up to date.

I'm not sure what you mean by checking the sound output, but when I read your message, I was with my earphones plugged in, and after hitting play, and unplugging the earphones, there was audio coming out of my speakers, but as soon as I close and open the Spotify again, nothing, silence once more, and I couldn't replicate the situation of unplugging the earphone and having sound again with success.

I also tried using the web player, and the situation is the same as of the app, I could replicate the earphone plug and unplug thing once tho, but it also worked just the first time.

[Eni]

Hey there @fefe1920, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

That's odd. In this case, would you mind checking if the OS of your PC has any pending updates? If everything's up to date, it's worth try clearing your hosts file to see if that makes the difference. 

If the issue persists, could you ask a friend or a relative to log in to their account on your PC to see if they can replicate this with their own account? This will help us determine if the issue is account-related. 

We'll be waiting for your reply. 

[fefe1920]

Hmm, ok I've checked for updates, and everything seems ok, I'm not sure if I checked on the right place tho:

As for the "host files" I've followed the steps from the link you sent, but there was no line with "spotify" or "fastly" to be erased, there were only two lines written "localhost" and nothing else.

I'm about to try it with another account, but I got this error when I tried opening it, so I'll restart the PC and be right back.

[fefe1920]

Ok, so I tested with another account, and the other account seems to work just fine! So the problem must be account-related then.

[MihailY]

Hey @fefe1920,

Thanks for your reply.

It's a good idea to log back in your own account and check if the issue persists, as it could've been the log out that had actually fixed the issue 🙂 If you're still seeing the same behavior, try using the new/other account for a full day so we can be certain that it works normally.

Keep us posted.

[fefe1920]

Hi Mihail, ^^

So I ended up doing just as you said, I've been using the other account today the whole day, since the message I sent yesterday. But logging in again with my own account didn't solve the issue, it's still muted. 

I don't think this will solve the problem because when I was asked to use another account to see if the problem is account related or machine related, I tried using the first account I ever created for Spotify with an old email several years ago, (I was using another computer in another country by then) and realized/remembered that I had to change account because I got into the same glitch, but because it happened so soon, and I didn't do much with this first account, I just created a new one and never contacted support. This current account tho, I have been using for the past 7 years or so, and I have several Playlists including some shared ones, and it would be quite annoying to set up a new account, copy all the playlists, request access to the shared ones, share the playlists I'm the host, and all that trouble just to risk this happening again. (sorry for the big txt. just hoping we find a solution for when this happens again or with others, and ended up being carried away after the relevant bit :))

[fefe1920]

oh, and what I wanted to point out when telling about my first account, is that it's still with the same trouble, exactly the same thing, after all these years not using it, when I opened it, it worked once after switching from app to web, and then silence after closing and opening again. 

This doesn't happen with the temporary account tho, the temporary one works just fine, I can close and open the app as much as I want and it works fine every time.

[MihailY]

Hey @fefe1920,

Thanks for your detailed response.

Since the issue happens with your old and with your current account, but not the new one, there's a chance that a 3rd party service is causing the issue. We'd suggest heading over to your account page and removing access for all apps that are linked to your account (don't worry, you can re-add the relevant ones later) and checking again.

In regard to the transfer of music to your new account - don't worry, this can be handled by our Customer Support team in case it's needed.

Let us know how it goes.

[fefe1920]

Hmmm, it didn't work as well. I've removed all the linked apps and restarted the laptop, but the problem still persists. So if you don't have any other ideas, I think we can proceed with changing the account and transferring all the library. But if you do have more ideas, I'd be happy to try them! ^^

Thanks for all the support so far btw, sometimes it feels like this kind of good client assistance is getting rarer nowadays! 🙂

[OscarDC · Accepted solution]

Hey @fefe1920,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared.

In this case, since the issue doesn't seem to happen with a different account, we'd recommend following the steps mentioned in this article to transfer your content to the other account as you suggested. 

We appreciate the time you took following the troubleshooting process.

If anything else comes up, the Community will be here for you. 

[fefe1920]

Thanks for all the support, I hope someday we get a better solution to this or a bug fix, but meanwhile, that should do. It's more like a last-resource kind of solution but it's better than nothing, I guess. (RIP my dear account XP)