Issues with playing tunes outside of Liked Songs or playlists on the desktop app

[Dian]

Hey there,

We're aware of issues with playing songs outside of the Liked Songs collection or playlists.

This is being investigated.

[Dian]

Awesome! Thanks for confirming folks! I'm honestly so happy to finally hear that!

A massive thank you to each and every one of you in this thread. The help and dedication you've shown here is beyond admirable, and for that you have our utmost respect!

We'll give this a few more days so that the others can also confirm the desktop app's working normally now. Fingers crossed!

Cheers everyone! You rock!

[GeirGrusom]

Adding to playlist or liking the songs make them work though this is by no means a solution. It just indicates very strongly that this is a bug in Spotify.

I've reinstalled both from Spotify download and from the Microsoft Store and neither resolved the issue.

I've tried to disable network adapters I'm not using and disabling VPN and connecting to different networks without it helping.

I've deleted the cache many times and it doesn't help.

It's been like this for over a month on my work computer but it works everywhere else. The behavior started shortly after the outage at the start of September.

[tallgirl13]

Adding songs to playlists does make them work, but I don't always want to add a song to a playlist in order to listen to it, nor should I have to. I deleted and reinstalled the app on my desktop, but it didn't help. I don't use any VPNs, either. This is only a problem in the desktop version of the app, not on my mobile, or on web player. 

[Razzemans]

Hi all, and Alex,

I found a fix which is easy for most users and should give a good idea on the engineering team how to fix this.

In Windows, go to the Spotify user directory, something like C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Spotify

In it is a folder "Users" where you will find a folder with your signed in username. In that folder is a file named context_player_state_restore. Delete it (make sure Spotify is not running). Start Spotify.

Works for me. When I restore my old file, I can't play any file that is not on my playlist. When I delete it, it works like a charm again. Seems to be some sort of configuration file, I didn't try to find the exact setting which is the culprit because I am limited on time, but this should be a quick fix.

[Razzemans]

Well I was a bit too hasty it seems. I tested it by searching for Haley Reinhart and playing "Can't help falling in love". This doesn't work with my old file present. It works when I delete the file.

The other songs that are not in my playlist still don't play even when I delete the file. So it seems like one song starts working? That is... weird.

[MaximumHats]

I'll have to check that out when I get home. Good find.

[mouser_rumble]

Really appreciate the suggestion--didn't solve the issue for me, but I'm always happy to try anything 🙂

[pathtracer]

This didn't work for me, but thanks for the suggestion. It's the first new one I've seen in weeks lol

[Duma3421]

no luck with this approach. 

I previously had a colleague log into Spotify on my PC and they also experienced the same issue. Seems to be something on the windows or windows user level.

[Razzemans]

Yeah sorry for the false suggestion all, but really the first item in the "Popular" section of Haley Reinhart starts working when I delete the file!

I can now furthermore confirm that even some songs that are added to my Liked Songs cannot be played from the search results. But when I got to my Liked Songs and select it there, it DOES play. So it seems more like some weird UI bug than a problem with my account or the song itself.

[Eni]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for the info you've sent so far. 

We can confirm that our tech team is aware of this happening and they're currently looking into it. In this case, could you let us know the exact make/model, operating system and Spotify version of your devices? We'll pass this info to them to be looked into.

We'll be waiting for your replies.