Songs plays at double speed / song speed playback bug

[Ghostdaddah]

I have had this issue for about 1 year or more now.

When resuming Spotify on device (iphone 6, latest iOS releases) the song plays at ~double speed. Changing tracks or playlists or anything else doesn't help. Killing the Spotify app (sometimes restarting and killing it again is necessary) and restarting it is required to get normal playback speed on songs.

This issue occurs 50%-80% of the time I get back into my car with Apple CarPlay (USB cable connection) --I say "get back into the car" because the issue seems to be related to resuming an interrupted playback session. The same thing also occurs over Bluetooth-Audio in another car I have.

I don't seem to have this issue when not using Apple CarPlay or BT Audio. But Apple CarPlay and Bluetooth Audio work just fine with Apple Music--just not with Spotify.

Having to unplug the phone from Apple CarPlay, unlocking it, killing and restarting Spotify, then plugging the phone back in... is no fun, nor safe, while driving.

Please look into this.

[RodrigoPalma]

Hey @Ghostdaddah, welcome to the Spotify Community!

We'd like to know a bit more about what's happening. Can you let us know what model of car you're having trouble with? We'll see what we can suggest.

We'll be waiting for your answer 🙂

[Ghostdaddah]

Hello,

Thanks for following up on this.

I have the same problem on both of my cars, a 2012 Mercedes E-class with COMAND where I use Bluetooth Audio for playback with my iPhone 6 and Spotify, and my other car is a 2017 Mercedes B-class with the Audio 20 system and Apple CarPlay. Here the phone is connected via the Apple Carplay USB cable. I do not have this double speed playback problem with Apple Music on the same equipment. I stream music using the "high" quality setting, some tracks are pre downloaded and some are not. For some reason I suspect the playback quality setting might be related, but that's just a wild guess really...

[RodrigoPalma]

Thanks for the update, @Ghostdaddah!

Can you confirm when this started happening? Also, let us know if changing the Audio quality settings makes any difference. To do so, follow the steps here.

Let us know how that goes.

[Ghostdaddah]

Hello!

Unfortunately it's not easy to say when it started... all i can say is I'm guessing it started "sometime during 2016"...  This spring/summer perhaps? Not much to go on, I'm afraid.

But there are other reported incidents on your forums, like this one from April 2016

https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Double-Speed-Song-Bug/td-p/1333091

I've had it happen so much with Apple CarPlay now that I have "almost" switched to DAB-radio entirely the past few days so I don't have to mess with Spotify (it can be a traffic hazard because with Apple CarPlay the phone is stowed away in the armrest), but I can start to use Spotify again to try to give you some diagnostic information.

Symptom:

When the "double speed bug" strikes, the song plays at correct pitch but skips very fast forward at approximately twice the normal speed. Changing tracks or restarting any song does not help--they all "double speed" forward. You can see the song progress bar also proceed faster through the song. The song lyrics get somewhat garbled, but I can't really say if the speeded up song skips any "bytes/frames" or if all the bits in the stream are just played back at a fast rate, if that's even possible.

Workaround:

Kill the spotify app completely and restart play. This seems to solve the issue 99% of the time. But this workaround is extremely impractical when driving. Can we have a "restart app" function in Apple CarPlay please? 🙂

Bug Triggers:

For example - Park and switch off the car (and thus connected stereo equipment) to visit a store or similar. Get back in the car, resume play. In many cases the song plays back too fast. The bug trigger seems to be resuming playback on (my?) external devices. Or get into a different car and resume plaback, the song speed bug is likely to strike again if you do that as well. This indicate the issue is not with the external equipment communication itself.

Does it happen only when playing back on (my?) devices external to the iPhone?

Not sure--I think that i once verified that, once triggered, the song speed bug stays there even if disconnecting external audio equipment and playing just on the iphone speakers.

My quality settings are usually always:

Streaming = high

Download = high

I can try other settings.

Equipment:

iPhone 6 - 64GB with Latest iOS releases through 2016. The external audio devices are BT Audio connetion to a slightly older Mercedes COMAND system and a brand new AppleCar Play system running on a Mercedes Audio-20 audio system.

[Sophia]

Thanks for getting back to us with that info @Ghostdaddah! 

Just to check, do you experience this issue if you're connected to another device? We'll see what we can suggest. 

Let us know if you have any questions 🙂

Sophia, 

[RodrigoPalma]

Hi @Ghostdaddah!

We're closing this thread as we haven't heard back from you in a while. Don't hesitate to give us a shout if you still have the same issue.

Have a great day 🙂

[notsohappy]

When  use Spotify with carplay (I have the most up-do-date version of everything), it is crazy fast. To fix it, I need to actually close the app on my phone and re-open it. The crazy fast speed happens at least 75% of the time. I have chatted with Spotify and they've tried to maneuver things on my account to no avail. It happens on all of our family's phones in cars from different manufacturers.

I've signed up for the three-month Apple music trial - I'm so frustrated that it may be time to switch.

Is anyone at Spotify working to solve this?

[Pariah_999]

This happens to me often, as well. iPhone 7+. Used to happen with 6s+ too. When I pause and play again it fixes it. My phone connects to my car and resumes when I get back in the car, that's when I notice it.

happens less as of last update to spotify (today is 8/12/17)