Spotify Connect randomly stops on Alexa Multi Room Speaker Groups

[DaDadioToo]

Plan: Premium

Country: USA

Device: Alexa Spotify Connect, dots, shows, echo, multi room Alexa speakers

Spotify ver 8.5.19

iPhone XS, iOS 12.4

Linksys Velop mesh router 3 nodes.

My Question or Issue

Anyone help fix this: When listening to music on Alexa multi room speakers using Spotify connect Spotify randomly stops playing. Mostly only part of 1 song will play, it's random as to how long it will play, but it will always happens. The progress bar continues but there's no sound. I can pause, then un-pause, or scrub forward or start a new song, it will start playing again for a little while, then stops again. Also, if I let the song continue to “play” with no sound Spotify will not advance to the next song in the playlist. The problem repeats on the everywhere group devices as well as the living room group of Alexa devices. When I play a song on any single Alexa device the problem does not happen. Now for more weirdness, sometime when the audio stops it will still play on the bedroom show and bathroom echo, but not always, and that they will eventually stop audio as well. If you ask Alex what’s playing she will correctly answer, but no music, ask her to pause and then play, sound comes back. And lastly if you do nothing, sometimes 10 or 15 minutes later it will start audio playback on a different song in the playlist for a bit, then stop again. I have a 100 Mbps connection so this can't be the problem. This is a new issue. Been running multi room playback on Alexa for at least a year with no problems. Problem started about 2 weeks ago. Also, tried creating a new multi room group in the Alexa app, added two devices and called it Lounge.  Lounge does not appear as an option under connect to a device in the Spotify app. I have restarted all the Alexa devices. There has been no change to my equipment, no new devices. No luck. This is a big issue. I have converted the entire house to Spotify and Alexa multiroom. Help.

[pkkid]

Has anything been done to help fix this? I am having trouble getting through a single song without Spotify stopping play. If I pause then play quickly it will start again, but I'm not about to babysit my phone just to keep music going. 

Second issue as well: I can't get Spotify to work with Alexa Multi-Room Music on my Sony Soundbar. However, other services such as Amazon Music work fine using Alexa Multi-Room music on all devices.

My setup is:

1x Dot 4th Gen

1x Echo 4th Gen

1x Dot 2nd Gen

1x Sony HT-Z9F Sound Bar (Multi-Room music never works for this with Spotify)

[wvvjoevvw]

Yes, this is the biggest telltale sign, in my opinion, that the issue lies with the Spotify Connect Service.  More often than not, when Spotify connect will not play properly, other services will work fine such as Pandora or Amazon Music.  

[Mom_2_Many]

Has this been resolved? 

[Mom_2_Many]

FIX:

Play Alexa Multi-Speaker Groups in Spotify 



After you update or install the ALEXA APP make sure you sign in with a non prime email



 The Amazon Alexa App is defaulting back to Amazon Prime and Prime music for GROUPS.



Unfortunately,  This will not allow SPOTIFY  to access your multi speaker groups.



If you do not have a "Non Amazon Prime" email you can create one.

This will not affect your Amazon account.

I  have 2 emails linked to my Amazon ... (kids) 

1 Has Full  Access to all the Prime Features (including Music) 

The second account can order but not use the features. (This is handy at Christmas... order for the others & they can't see 😁 )

Then,  enable SPOTIFY under the non-prime email

Create multi-speaker Groups 

✔ Done ✔

[fo209e_y-fagl]

Same problems now also. Probably since about 2019 also, come to think of it, since my second child was born... we use these for our white noise and bedtime music, it's been extremely frustrating over the years. And Spotify and Amazon seem to pass the blame... we may sell our Echos and just get white noise machines and cancel our spotify... I too wanted to convert more house devices to Amazon but perhaps not, for this unreliability.

A FIX for two rooms: IF you may be in a similar situation for kids music at all, I have found to just play the music on one rooms device, then, play music in the second room either on your phone or grab a tablet, from Spotify.

FIRST, you must have your Playlist downloaded ahead of time, THEN go to Settings and place Spotify into OFFLINE MODE (you may need to toggle your device into Airplane Mode to enable the OFFLINE Mode button).

NEXT, you can play your downloaded Playlist of choice in a second location. Take device out of Airplane Mode. And Spotify will remain in OFFLINE Mode, until you turn it off. It will remind you it's in OFFLINE Mode also which helps from going crazy at Spotify, hah. 

Hope this may help someone else ! 🙂

[Trublsmscholar]

This never works.  Can we get a real solution after years without....?

[TexasLou]

I have found that it is caused by my 2, 1st gen echos.  I have 4 devices, two 2nd gen dots and 2 first gen echos.  It only happens when I include one or both of the echos in the group.  If I only use the dots, no problem.  As soon as I add one of the echos, the problem comes right back.  The BS about reinstalling the app, rebooting the router, yadyada is just spotify deflecting.  There is a software problem playing to groups, that. at least in my case, is caused by first gen echos.  I have a high end fully managed enterprise grade IT setup and Spotify keeps trying to point the blame on it.

[teamlouish]

I t’s so discouraging to read these posts way back from 2019 and there’s still no solution. This happens on a daily basis with me, I can enjoy everywhere music for about five songs and then it will just stop randomly. 15 minutes later music starts playing and then stops halfway. There’s no reason why this should happen, even if a device drops out of its connection, that should be the only device that stops playing music. Why is it that Spotify has so many issues that are so ongoing. I don’t even think these forms work anymore because I’ve reported other issues that is confirmed by hundreds of other users in Spotify does absolutely nothing to fix the problem. It’s such an amazing feature that you want to share with all your friends but every time it stops you realize this is not some thing you can tell other people about because you’ve recommended it to so many people and you’ve regretted your decision to share your opinion because your opinion is completely wrong because Spotify doesn’t give a **bleep** about its customers or its efficiency or connectivity or reliability or anything for that matter. Every business on this entire freaking planet just cares about profit, never absolutely no freaking care about how their product works if the majority of people don’t have issues, it’s not their problem. 

[TheLopi]

Mihail,

I have read and tried numerous posts regarding this problem. Your solution, although cumbersome and taking 90 minutes, actually solved the problem. I've only had it up and running now for 2 hours but so far, so good.

Thanks,
thelopi

[TheLopi]

I spoke too soon. Looks like the fix only lasted 2.5 hours. Back to the drawing board.

[Sdhb]

I've had this issue for years.. Has anyone ever actually found a solve, or root cause. 

[davorious]

If you have a Fire TV stick which you don't use for this function, make sure to exclude it from your multi-room group and don't use the group "Everywhere".

[wvvjoevvw]

This is a good suggestion.  Personally, I use multiple multi room music groups.  Some have just two devices paired (ie the office group) and some have entire floors like the Upstairs group.  Excluding Fire TV Sticks and any older gen 1 devices is a good step in the right direction to improving playback. 

[Attakiio]

Hey everyone... Well guess what. It's the space age year of 2022 and this problem still persists 🙌🏼. As I just typed this my Echo group conked out again. Comedy timing and all. Any chance of getting this bug fixed then seeing as it was a problem predating the COVID era? 🤪

[bitlo]

Hi All!

I have two issues with the service I believe I've isolated to Spotify. 

Here's my setup

• My house is a row home in Philly with three floors. 
• I had a three-pack of tp-link deco X20 mesh network routers on the first, second, and third floor.
• JustI replaced it today with two tp-link deco XE75 wifi 6e meshed routers.  (my thinking was the faster processor would help, but it didn't)
• I have approx 50 devices on my network,  20 are IoT devices like lights, smart switches, etc.
• I have approximately 20 Amazon echo devices linked to my everywhere group.
• It's just me in the house with no crazy downloads or video streaming when I'm trying to listen.
• I have Verizon FiOS with 300MB service.

Issues I'm experiencing:

1. songs drop their stream, and snow sound starts playing.  It takes me 3-4 attempts before I can get it to play again.  Sometimes it will come back on but only play on a few speakers.

It's semi-random.  It will play great for one hour, then disconnect for 15 minutes, etc.;  When this happens, I go back into the app and notice some of the speakers saying something like "Play is Restricted" for a few of the devices.  Some of the speakers/including the Everywhere group, drops from the list of available speakers to play too.  It takes about 30 seconds for the list to reset so I can play to it again.

2. Random volume up and down.  When in the app, I raise the volume and then suddenly it starts automatically going up and down and up and down like someone else is trying to control the volume other than me.  Usually, if this happens, I tell Alexa to "set the volume to 6 everywhere", which seems to set the volume I want.  (This only started happening a few months ago)  I feel like when you introduced the group play feature is when the volume issue started.

I've tried streaming to the everywhere group with Amazon Music, and I don't have these issues.

Hoping Spotify can research as I believe these issues are caused by defects in the service.

[Vexir]

Just wanted to tell the Spotify people this is still happening. I understand you might have other product goals, but 4 years is a really long time for a bug to exist.

[natepanetti]

3 years later and I was also having the same issues. What ended up working for me was going into the Alexa app, disconnecting my Spotify account from the Alexa app, and then reconnecting it. Then the playback seems to be better when I am playing it from the Alexa app instead of the Spotify app. Not sure why that is but I haven't had any pausing or skipping since. Hope this helps!!