Spotify Connect works too well

[YourLocalGP]

I am experiencing something quite strange with Spotify Connect. I have a pretty standard set-up: Yamaha RX-V475 receiver, HTC One, and a normal home LAN with a standard router. The receiver is on the LAN and I can, as one would expect, fire it up and get music playing via my HTC in a few taps. As I understand it, Spotify Connect uses the network, and the amp and my phone are on the same network, just as long as my phone is connected to the wi-fi.

But here's the thing: It works even when it isn't connected to the wi-fi. I discovered this when I got home after a long journey on a train with onboard wi-fi. I was surprised to see the receiver still present in the Spotify Connect device selection page, and more so when I started playing music and the little icon lit up green (and no audio came out of the phone). I got home a couple of hours later to my wife asking why the new amp was turning on of its own accord and playing music.

At this point, to be honest, I didn't even put two and two together. I just assumed some bug had caused the amp to switch on briefly. But after this happened a few times, I decided to test it. I switch the wi-fi off on my phone, and I see the Spotify Connect icon disappear and go dark. About five seconds later, after the phone switches over to 4G, it's back again. I hit Play and after a few seconds of delay, the amp switches on and the track plays.

I am at my desk right now, controlling the amp in the other room, and the phone is not on the wi-fi. to be doubly sure Spotify isn't connecting to wi-fi silently, I checked the log of the router, and the currently connected devices list, and it isn't shown. What's more if I lose cell signal (the front of the house has no signal) then I do really get disconncted from Connect and cannot control anything.

Is there an explanation for this?!

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

That is correct behaviour not a bug. Once you have linked to your connect device with your Spotify account over WiFi then you can control it whilst it is turned on over any internet connection.

[YourLocalGP]

Well. Blimey.

[renesdk]

I kind of wish there was an option to turn the 3G part of this featureoff, so you can control that only local network control is possible.

The reason why, is because Fon is releasing a Spotify Connect enabled device called Gramofon. With that device you can let your friends and familiy connect to the WiFi and everyone on that WiFi can then share the task of controlling the Spotify that is playing music.

Basically this means that if one of my friends uses his Spotify to play music, he would in the future be able to play music on my stereo without me being there or being able to control it if the thing is powered on.

The feature of being able to use it on 3G might sound cool in theory, but it has some pretty not well thought out concequenses when you have no way of disabeling the feature.

Would you please make a posibility to disable/enable the 3G part of this feature in the settings on Spotify?

EDIT: And i see this was in the Windows Phone section, but I own an Android phone, but issue is still the same.

[Peter__]

@renesdk - Got a link to any information about that? Sounds interesting.

[renesdk]

@Peter

I've got their product already as I'm a pledger for their kickstarter project.

I'm going to test the different scenarios tomorrow regarding being able to play from 3G eventhough the unit is just powered on, but the phone is not on the premises.

I'll leave feedback here.

Official site 

https://gramofon.com/

Kickstarter site:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fon/gramofon-modern-cloud-jukebox

[renesdk]

I've now had a chance to test this, and as expected anyone ever having connected to my Gramofon via Spotify Connect with their Spotify account has my Gramofons on ther Spotify Connect list of devices and can initiate playing on it even via 3G.

This means that even from the other end of the world someone could initiate their Spotify playlist and stop what I'm playing by choosing to cast to the Gramofon.

I can't think that this is working as intended. I see the idea that you could cast from you own Spotify to your own devices, but this just doesn't seem very well thought through.

It would be nice if Spotify could somehow talk together with Fon about implementing some kind of feature where you can allow/disallow which Spotify accounts are allowed to cast to the Gramofon?

Would that be an idea? I think it sounds like a great idea. I'll open a new topic about this in the appropriate forum.