Ads are causing podcasts to skip

[InLawsAndOutlaws]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 12 Pro Max

Operating System

iOS 18.4.1 running the most current version of Spotify as of 4/27/2025

My Question or Issue

Not sure if anyone else has been experiencing this, but every time I start a podcast that begins with a third party ad, it skips the entire podcast and goes to the next podcast in the playlist. This happens whether I fast forward through the ad or not.

I have the “Your Episodes” playlist set to remove episodes I’ve listened to, so the episode is marked as finished and removed from the playlist when I haven’t listened to it.

Having to go back and marking the podcast as “not started” and redownloading the podcast is the only way I have been able to listen to them after this happens. It’s incredibly annoying and inconvenient especially if I don’t have access to wifi at the time.

This also sometimes happens when the ad comes in the middle of the episode, but that has been less consistent.

The remedies I have tried so far have been clearing the cache, logging out of all devices and logging back in, restarting my phone, and lastly performing a clean restart. So far nothing has worked unfortunately. I’d appreciate any insight into fixing this.

[Yordan]

Hi, @InLawsAndOutlaws,

Welcome to the Spotify Community and kudos for the troubleshooting!

Does this occur only in Your Episodes? Have you tried playing the episodes directly from the podcast to see if that makes a difference? If possible, test if everything looks good on another device.

It'd be great if you could share some of the episodes which you've noticed this with so we can check on our end too.

Let us know how it goes 👍

[InLawsAndOutlaws]

Hi, thanks for your response, Yordan!

It looks like the podcast episodes don’t skip at the beginning when listening on a specific podcast page. It’s just inconvenient not being able to add a lot of different podcasts to one playlist.

Most recently this has continued to happen with both the Tony Hawk and Tony Hinchcliffe episodes of Whiskey Ginger back to back and episode 110 of The William Montgomery Show. It also happens on every episode of Bad Friends I try to listen to. Performing the clean restart actually seems to have made the problem worse and happen every time. Also now after listening to an ad mid episode will either skip the podcast or fast forward 20-30 minutes.

When listening on my Windows laptop or PS5 this doesn’t happen, but I rarely listen to anything on either of those. I also keep a lot of songs and podcasts downloaded directly to my phone. Could the potentially be something contributing to this issue?

[Yordan]

Thanks for the reply, @InLawsAndOutlaws!

I wasn't able to reproduce this on my end. Do you have the podcasts in Your Episodes set to automatically download new episodes? if so, try turning it off to see if that makes a difference. 

If the issue persists, would you mind sharing a short screen recording which captures the described behavior in action so we can take a closer look?

Keep us posted on this 👍

[InLawsAndOutlaws]

Hello again!

Recently, the podcasts have stopped removing themselves from the playlist which is an improvement!

I do have episodes of shows set to autodownload, however, I was able to get a clip of this happening to an episode I manually downloaded. In this clip, I am attempting to listen to the episode “Bobby Lee 3.0” of Whiskey Ginger. This time I was still unable to start the episode from Your Episodes. Going to the actual episode page and pressing play from there allowed me to play the episode.

However, the clip was too large to attach, and even compressing them didn’t really help. I will try to send a few smaller clips instead.

Thanks again for your time!

[Yordan]

Thanks for the screen recordings, @InLawsAndOutlaws! If I understand correctly, you tried to play "Bobby Lee 3.0", but then an ad came along and when it ended, the app skipped to the next episode, which was "68. Monster Kids".

Does the issue occur only with episodes you've downloaded? I also noticed that you were listening on your Airpods: have you tested if listening directly on your phone's built-in speakers makes a difference?

We'll be on the lookout for your reply. Cheers 🤘

[PohloxZeta]

I have the exact same problem. It seems to only happen when I’m listening with airpods pros.

[Yordan]

Hi folks,

Thanks for the reports!

We're unable to provide an ETA for a fix at the moment, but we’re regularly looking for opportunities to enhance the user experience for everyone, so your feedback on this is greatly appreciated.
 

In the meantime, make sure you're always running the latest version of Spotify so you don't miss out on any updates.
 

The Community is here if there's anything else you need assistance with.

[Kotasenski]

I have been having this same issue when listening to The White Vault. The third party ada from the content creators will play and then skip the episode and go directly to more ads. This will go on for multiple episodes at a time before it finally plays an episode but not the one I originally selected.

[Harumi93]

I’ve have experience the same problem with podcast from Brazil. Version 9.0.50.511 iPhone 15 with and without AirPods. 
after ads the podcast just fast forward almost 5 minutes of a long podcast or just skip the entire short podcast. I just listen to 1-2sec before it happens. Have this issue for at least 2 weeks now and just with downloaded episodes. Please fix it soon I had to download 20+ episodes again due to this problem

[jprmcintyre]

I'm having the same issue. Seems to happen on all podcasts when a third party ad is inserted near the start of an episode, then when ad is complete it will either play next downloaded episode, a random episode from "my episodes" (downloaded or saved), or a random "recommended for you" episode.

[erokore]

Same issue here when listening to The Rest is History. Ads start the episode then once done, skip to the midpoint of the episode just after the second ad break. Super annoying.