When are Spotify stopping supporting Pioneer Receivers which support Spotify Connect?

[bradavon]

Hi,

I received an email yesterday to say Spotify are stopping support for my Pioneer Speaker soon.

- When is soon?

- Does stopping support mean Spotify just won't support it or it will stop working?
Stopping support means a company won't address issues but I believe Spotify are going to actually stop the feature from working.

- Why? There's no reason given why this is necessary.

The email rather bizzaely says:

"We want to make playing Spotify on your speaker and other devices better and easier"

How is stopping support better or easier? Why not just stop supporting it? So if it breaks too bad.

I only bought my receiver 2 years ago specifically as it supported Spotifty Connect. Spotify is in part more popular over rivals as Spotify works on so many devices, or did.

I guess like everyone else I'll need to buy a Chromecast Audio 😕

[bradavon]

It's possible they want to do something with Spotify Connect these older devices can't do/support. We don't know.

[JTONK]

Right, and they should keep innovating. Buy why not keep a legacy system running and offer newer functionality for newer devices. If it's a killer feature, people will upgrade, but I haven't read or heard about any new functionality.

Their lack of loyalty to the premium users who are affected makes me anxious into buying new spotify hardware.

[Bakersdozen]

Chat with support after orginal (very confusing) email was sent. Stated that the Spotify Connect feature would still work with my Amp VSX-528 moving forward. That's b*sh*t as i'm facing the same issue as all you folks are now too. 

I am wondering if we downgraded the app - would it still work? ie. install a previous version where it was still working. Does that make sense, or would that not work? Obviously not something I'm very happy about having to do, but could be a viable work-around.

[Fedeciapi]

delete

[PaulVg68]

Same problem on my Pioneer VSX-924. Pioneer and Spotify, please fix this. It is unacceptable that a receiver stops working after 3 years. I cannot switch to another proposed soltion, as the receiver is not in the same room and wifi network as where the spekers are (in-ceiling in kitchen, using only smartphone to control receiver).

(My other receiver is an Onkyo TX-8050, where I switched to bluetooth to listen to Spotify, bot that solution is not working for the Pioneer due to the location of the receiver)

[user-removed]

Well, since I don't see Spotify reenabling this functionality on our older speakers due to 'contract' issues, since it's also one of the causes, I shelled out 20EUR on a Chromecast Audio since it was on promotion, gonna use my speaker USB port to feed it power when I get home and will reply back on the results. It should be the same or pretty close since it's the same Connect system and it just AUX's to the speaker.

Kudos.

[neobr]

Hi guys,

I'm having the same problem with my VSX-823K, everything worked fine until last week, I have reset all the devices in my infra (router, receiver, etc) until I find this thread, never received any email with the alert.

This morning I made a twitter interaction to them (@SpotifyCares), including the link to this thread, whoever answered me said that I would send to the "relevant team", I recommend everyone to do the same.

It is unacceptable for me to have to throw away a very expensive Receiver because they have decided not to give more support to it, I'm really angry.

[meyster]

Have connected a Chromecast 2 with HDMI today. As Spotify Connect is not working anymore I cannot make a side by side analysis. But for my understanding the sound quality is the same. 

Only issue now is that the TV turns on when I start the Chromecast. So Chromecast Audio would have been the better choice here.

[hss]

Just got mail from Pioneer Finland and they told that they dont have anything to do with this, not their decision or problem, they cant be responsible from 3rd party services.

So, this means i wont be using Pioneer products or Spotify in future anymore. Cancelled my premium subscription and moved to Tidal, using Google cast at the moment but need new AVR soon.

[bradavon]

@ Bakersdozen:

"Chat with support after orginal (very confusing) email was sent. Stated that the Spotify Connect feature would still work with my Amp VSX-528 moving forward."

From past experiance they don't know what they're talking about.

"I am wondering if we downgraded the app - would it still work? ie. install a previous version where it was still working."

How do you mean?

It's firmware not an app and the firmware working perfectly fine. I'm not sure what installing an older firmware would do or if you could even downgrade.

[Danpp74]

Yeah, I got a Chromecast Audio. Cannot honestly say I hear lower quality than with the direct native integration of the Pioneer VSX-923.

[deechtewber]

"Just got mail from Pioneer Finland and they told that they dont have anything to do with this, not their decision or problem, they cant be responsible from 3rd party services."

@hss Oh, they most certainly are. They sold you a product with a certain description and features. They are responsible that their product delivers.

[deechtewber]

@Bradavon he means downgrading the app on your mobile device, not on the Pioneer. Someone else mentioned it earlier on this thread. Don't know if it works though.

[tjakobi]

Same problem on my Pioneer SC-2023 😞

[user-removed]

Firmware changes could help, but Pioneer won‘t probably do it. Rolling back versions won‘t help as this is a change in Spotify‘s Core it‘s integrated in their services and not App

[hss]

Downloaded older apk-file of spotify and tested, its not working.

[user-removed]

The loss of audio quality is none with Chromecast Audio through it's aux port. The only thing missing is track skipping but oh well, you can't have everything I guess.

This is in my opinion, the most cost-effective solution.

[Musicuriousity]

If I had to change to Chromecast Audio (which I'm not going to do) because
of what Spotify did to cripple my Pioneer amp, I wouldn't choose Spotify as
streaming service anymore. If that's how they treat their customers then
let it be. I'll also make sure other people choose something else over
Spotify.

[megadro]

@hss

Thanks for trying.

I think someone shared the error code their receiver gets when they try to connect to spotify servers. I have 2 theories:

1- Spotify changes their api's and new ones are not going to be backwards compatible with existing ones.

Solution: a) I don't know if these devices can get over the air updates but, they can work with pioneer to release new firmware for these devices with new api's. Pioneer can come up with a way to flash latest firmware maybe?

b) They can make their code backwards compatible at least upto "x" years 

2- Spotify is having a fight with pioneer and firewalling/blocking connection requests from pioneer devices.

Solution: Pioneer solves this for us, who paid for their spotify enabled devices.

I sent a tip to verge as well. Please help me try to reach out to other tech/music pages 

[user-removed]

It's deffo the 1st.

They are updating their API and our devices apparently do not support these changes, prob due to the old library of Spotify installed on them.

And if the agreement with Spotify/Pioneer has fallen, you can bet there's no more Connect in our devices...