Casting to a speaker is way too loud now on lowest volume

[Fabiandoz]

I use my smart speaker to fall asleep to music, and the lowest volume (between 5% and 10%) has been perfect for years. But recently this got changed: even 3% volume is much louder than 10% used to be (seriously, my ears get blasted), while anything lower just mutes the sound altogether. Needless to say, I can't fall asleep when the music is way too loud for comfort.

Please fix this as soon as possible. I need my music to fall asleep.

[OzStone]

I also noticed that in the last week, my volume setting of 45% is notably louder than it's been for the last year. If I had to guess, I'd think this is on the device side, not anything that Spotify changed. I'm using Chromecast Audio devices from Google. What hardware device are you using?

Edit: just found this thread on Reddit from 3 days ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/11g6y1s/volume_range_too_loud/

And a post on the Google Nest Community this week:
https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/Lowest-volume-has-suddenly-become-too-l...

[Fabiandoz]

I'm using a JBL Link Portable with Google Assistant. I wasn't sure whether this was an issue with Google or with Spotify, and to complicate things Google basically said I should complain at JBL. Either way, my Assistant's volume is unchanged (apart from this weird mute glitch at 2% -- but I don't know if this already existed) so that made me think it was a Spotify problem. This thread also seems to suggest it was a change on Spotify's end, though it's still unconfirmed: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Low-volume-when-casting-Spotify/idc-p/5515477#M13398...