music won't play on my laptop

[#1]

whenever I open the app on my desktop to play music, I get a notification that says "Spotify can't play this right now. If you have the file on your computer you can import it." I'm not playing music from local files, I'm playing official releases.

[RayyW0]

Hi and welcome to the community!

Try these following steps to see if it helps:

• Restart the Spotify app.
• Update the app.
• Reinstall the app.

Other things to try:

• Make sure your internet connection is stable.
• Update your device’s operating system.
• Close any other apps you aren't using.
• Clear cache on your device.
• Make sure your device is supported for Spotify and up-to-date
• Ensure your device has at least 250MB of available memory.
• Check your firewall isn’t blocking Spotify (desktop only).
• Ensure your device's battery is sufficiently charged.

For sound issues, see Can’t hear Spotify. For offline listening issues, see Listen offline. 

If you have any further questions, please let me know! Have a great day!

[jonramm70]

I am having the same issue as described in the OP been happening for the last couple of weeks on multiple computers, I have rebooted, cleared history, cache, cookies, etc. 

[yini]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

Macbook Pro

Operating System

M1 Pro

My Question or Issue

I'm unsure if the lyrics window or just the artist page itself has an issue. I couldn't continue playing the song for some artists, especially Korean, due to getting the 'Spotify can't play this right now...' message. This could be fixed by restarting the app, but it does occur again with the same message soon after. Sometimes, it happens after closing the lyric. Sometimes, the message appears when I try to play another song by clicking play or next. I noticed this only on the desktop, for both Mac and Windows. Also, if I try to play my playlist, the music will play, but if I want to go back to playing the music from the artist's page, the same message will appear and won't play. 

[Yordan]

Hey folks,

This error usually shows up when the app can't communicate with the audio output device properly. To make sure everything's okay with yours, I'd recommend trying out all of the troubleshooting steps from this article.

Should the issue persists, it might be related to your network instead. It's worth connecting to a different one to see if that does the trick. I'd also recommend flushing your DNS cache:

1. Open Terminal.app.
2. Enter one of the following commands:
   - sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
   - sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder (for older Macs)

Hope this helps! Let us know how it goes 👍

[j_wa]

@yordan We are in the Desktop Windows area, how is this applicable? Please provide answer to the applicable operating system.

[Susan_GP]

Hi @j_wa,

Thanks for your reply in this thread.

No worries, you'll find the steps to follow for Windows in that article. Did you have issues following any of them? What Windows version are you using? Let us know which one and we'll check.

We'll be here.

[j_wa]

@susan_gp that is a much more helpful link. 
I am experiencing this issue also on my Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (OS Build 19045.5679).
I have done the steps previously from the link you provided, which do help for a small while, but this keep on being a recurring issue and keep doing them is not a great customer experience.
Would like to have a more permanent solution or better know why this keeps on happening?

[Susan_GP]

Thanks for your prompt reply @j_wa,

Are you using the desktop app or the Web Player? And what is the exact issue you're experiencing? Are you getting the "Spotify can't play this right now" message when tying to play something on Spotify? If not, could you give us a more detailed description of what's happening?

On another note, you can try restarting your router. And it's also a good idea to check if you observe the same behavior when connected to a different network. A mobile hotspot is usually a convenient way to test this.

We'll be on the lookout!

[j_wa]

Yes I am using the Spotify Windows app and trying to play something on spotify.

Yes the message I am receiving is "Spotify can't play this right now".

I had restarted my router and also tried to turn off my adblocker built in my Ubiquiti router as I thought that might be the issue somehow, even though I am on Spotify Premium, but no joy. I had not tried another network, but I might try that.. But the issue has now become much less frequent. But it is still happening, sporadically.

[Dessi]

Hey @j_wa,

Thanks for all the info you've provided!

We wanted to go through as much troubleshooting as possible in order to isolate the issue and investigate it further, so we really appreciate all your effort and input so far! It'd be really helpful if you can also let us know if it happens with a specific section of the app - an artist's discography or a specific playlist, for example? 

Something else worth testing is reseting the audio settings of your Windows to the defaults, and in case you have several audio output devices connected to your PC, you might want to check if the correct one is set for Spotify.

Keep us posted.

[j_wa]

It happens most frequently when double clicking on one of my playlists.
Doesn't matter which one.

Yes I am using Steelseries Sonar to split apps between different "drivers", but even without it i still experience this.
Don't know if more often or less often, just that it still happens.

[Yordan]

Thanks for the reply, @j_wa.

The sporadic nature of the specific issue you're having makes it a bit difficult to pinpoint and troubleshoot, but something that comes to mind is checking if there are any greyed out/corrupted local files in your playlists - perhaps the app tries to play those when you double-click and since they're no longer available, the error message is displayed. You can try adding them back or removing them entirely from the affected playlists to see if that does the trick.

In any case, we’re regularly looking for opportunities to enhance the user experience for everyone, so your feedback & assistance with this is greatly appreciated. While we're unable to provide an ETA for a fix at the moment, I'd recommend making sure you're always running the latest version of Spotify so you don't miss out on any future updates.

The Community is just a post away if something else comes up with in the meantime.