Issue with the Web Player skipping tracks on multiple devices

[Yordan]

We received reports from users having issues with the Web Player skipping tracks after a few seconds of streaming (usually around 10) and occasionally displaying a "Spotify can't play this right now" error.

[Yordan]

IT's Finally FIXED - and can resume enjoying the music again !!! 🙂
Woah - waited a while in case the faults scame back but web player Spotify has been playing perfectly all afternoon.

Seems Spotify did some code changes the Mozilla Firefox Browser (and other browsers as well by sounds of it), didn't like very much.

Step 1 - Upgraded Mozilla Firefox 32 bit version from an earlier version up to version 115.0.3esr.

'esr' stands for - Extended Support Release'.
These ESR Mozilla releases are to keep the Firefox browser running on the ancient Windows 7 platform.

Version (115.0.3esr) was released (15-Jan-2024)
This made no change !!
Spotify Web Version was still not working.

Then upgraded again from (115.0.3esr) up to (115.17.0esr)
Version (115.17.0esr) was released (28-Oct-2024)
This is browser version is 9 months newer, and less than  3 weeks old as of 2024 11 15 (when this fix was posted).

So possibly (and hopefully) your issue will also be fixed by upgrading your browser to the very latest version 🙂
No idea what got broken, but the plan to Stubbornly Stay With Windows7 (along with the growing millions of other users), should definately be noted by Spotify please?

If the choice comes between W7 and Spotify, huge numbers of users (me included), will be hunting for another music streaming platform.

🙂 Thanks 🙂

[carl2130]

A month? Try years for users all over. Their lack of moderator replies here
and general timing says they won't. Cancel the service and find someone who
cares about their customers.

[AlienSpooti]

Op system: Windows 7

Browser: Opera 95.0.4635.90 (most up-to-date as of Dec 27, 2024)

Player does five (5) skips and then starts playing whatever song was in queue at that point. Plays it for nine to eleven seconds and then goes silent, but the but the progress bar continues going.

I just signed up for premium, so please hold off on starting the timer on that until this gets fixed, or just extend the expiration date accordingly.

[77lmnop]

The solution in the pinned Top Answer post worked for me. I upgraded my Firefox browser to Version 115.17.0esr (32-bit) and am able to once again listen to Spotify via a web browser on my PC.

However, I had previously listening to Spotify in my Opera browser up until early November. I still have the same error in the  Opera even though I have upgraded it to the lastest version - 95.0.4635.90.

[JohnFiorello]

For those that have been having this issue where changing to a firefox browser wasn't a fix (or wasn't a good solution), I'd like to share what I was eventually able to do in order to get it working. It took me multiple tries over multiple hours over multiple months of trying and giving up before I finally got it fixed just now.

The failure for me happened while I was running chrome on Win7 (so stable!) and I assumed (since HBO Max also stopped working at the same time late last year) that it was a conflict between Chrome or Win7, so I upgraded the machine to Win10 and then was stumped when that didn't fix the issue.

So, I did a bunch of googling and the consensus seemed to be that there was an issue with Widevine CDM (digital rights management). I checked all the buttons in chrome to allow protected content, checked to make sure Widevine was up to date in chrome, re-installed chrome, deleted cookies, etc. but nothing worked. I even tried deleting and re-creating the windows host file, checking for banned IP addresses, deleting all extensions... all of it!

But in developer mode, I could see that widevine was failing, so I assumed there was an issue where, even with chrome re-installing, it wasn't fully reinstalling all data. Or that Spotify had broken something with code that Google wasn't updating when re-installing.

• So, I went to: my pc>local disk (C:)>Users>"user name">AppData>Local>Google>Chrome>User Data and found the WidevineCdm folder.
• I re-named it as widevinecdm.old
• I went back to spotify and started to play a song, followed by immediately hitting ctrl+F5 (hard refresh) a bunch of times which led to spotify giving the error that I wasn't set up to play music without the proper permissions
• I went back to chrome and deleted cookies for Spotify (via settings>privacy and site settings>3rd party cookies>play.spotify.com and then deleted all settings.
• I re-installed chrome by deleting via program files and then re-downloading/reinstalling. I don't think this method was actually re-installing all folders and doing a fresh install (more on that below)
• I went to spotify again (play.spotify.com) and received the error message again that my computer wasn't set up to play music because of security (generic message about privacy or rights management, I don't remember)
• I went to check to see which version of chrome I was running and saw that there was now an error with updating (or checking for updates). This may have been because of deleting that folder or maybe it was some other random error that caused it to not work. So I re-downloaded chrome again and installed it while I was still using it INSTEAD of deleting through the typical windows Add Program process. It seems like, when doing it this way, chrome does more of a "repair" instead of a "re-install"
• This time, chrome re-populated the user data folder with a new WidevineCdm folder. I can see my widevinecdm.old folder just below it
• I went back to play.spotify.com, logged in, and now the music plays just fine.

Hope this helps somebody. If it does, let me know on twitter/bsky, this was a really annoying problem that could have gone any direction, and with no help from spotify/google I think I was just lucky to stumble upon the correct steps. Good luck!

John Fiorello

[MrKnobs]

First of all THANK you for the amazing amount of work you did to figure this out, wow!

OK, if one of us running Win7 with an older version of Chrome wants to try this fix what's the bottom line?

1. Can someone running WIN7 still download Chrome, and, if so where and what version of Chrome will you be able to get, given (I believe) that Chrome stopped at some version and also (I was told) no longer offers updated versions past the one you're running?

2. So if i understand you correctly it's possible to download a newer version of Chrome while running Chrome, and what version did you manage to get that works?

3. If the answer to #1 is yes please tell us what version of Chrome you know have that works. Thanks so much!

P.S. I'm now happily running Firefox which solves a host of problems, Spotify, logging into my bank to pay bills etc.   If anyone else needs the Firefox fix, it can found here and works perfectly for me (win7 64 bit)

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/desktop-esr/

[drigaco]

@MrKnobs 

Having a similar issue on web player on Chrome Version 132.0.6834.84 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Windows 10 Enterprise

I'm using my company laptop and the browser/settings are mainly managed by IT.

I can listen to some media, but most of it I have the "Spotify can't play this right now." error. I've tried clearing the cache, extensions, resetting audio output/devices, but nothing seems to work.

[EndaLok]

Guys try to upgrade your browser to the latest version or several newer one. I'm currently running 133.0.3 (64-bit) for Arch Linux.

I fixed the problem by upgrading my Firefox browser. The fault still remains on the server-side because they've updated something in their code and it doesn't work on all browser version anymore🗣

[Sujalseth]

No problem solve