[Chromecast][Music] Chromecast is very buggy

[tiiina]

Chromecast has an overall buggy experience. The worst one is that playback randomly pauses while casting. 

These "fixed" (not actually fixed) issues are related:

• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Spotify-Pausing-On-Chromecast-Issues/idi-p/4432989
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Please-fix-chromecast-with-Spotify/m-p/2459136

Overall the Chromecast experience seems like an after-thought. I am tempted to switch to Google Music but I would much rather support Spotify.

Please give Chromecast the support it needs. We just want to play our music without it stopping randomly. Netflix doesn't do this, YouTube doesn't do this, this problem is unique to the Spotify app.

Agents have been unhelpful in linking me to Chromecast support: I do not have a problem connecting so that suggestion is not helpful.

Uninstalling the app and resetting my Wifi doesn't help.

Please forward to your engineering team. 

Thank you

[Kiril]

Hey @l_andrew_l,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop here.

Can we ask you to share with us the exact version number of the Spotify app you have now on, and also the version of your Chromecast device. You could also ask a friend or a relative, who is connected on your local network to try and cast from his Spotify account on your Chromecast, to see if the same situation occurs. We're asking this to determine if the situation is connected specifically to your account or if it is device related.

Also a short video recording of the experience would be helpful for our investigation, so we can take a closer look at the situation and advise you better.

Keep us posted, we'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[l_andrew_l]

Spotify version is 8.7.4.1056

Chromecast is:
Chromecast Ultra
Firmware: 1.56.281627

[Kiril]

Hey again @l_andrew_l,

Thanks for the additional info!

It seems you're rocking with the latest versions which is great! Meanwhile, have you tried our suggestion to invite a friend/relative to cast from their Spotify account on your Chromecast device? We're still trying to determine if we can rule out if your account could be a reason for this situation to occur.

Also if you are able to catch the whole issue you're experiencing on a short video, would greatly help us reproduce the situation and give you a meaningful advice.

Let us know how things work out, we'll be keeping an eye out for your reply.

[l_andrew_l]

I don't have anyone else available with a spotify account unfortunately.

I'm also not sure a video would show anything. In fact it's very easy to describe. Hit pause, the playback stops. Hit play again (after a number of minutes) and the playback now comes out of the phone instead of the chromecast. A video would essentially be hitting pause, minutes passing and hitting play again. Everything would look fine but playback would be from the wrong device.

[MafeG]

Hi @l_andrew_l,

Thank you for your reply!

We're aware of the intermittent connection and playback issues with some casted devices and we've passed the feedback and info to the teams working on this. But since this is happening on a third party device and we aren't able to reproduce consistently, an immediate and direct solution might not be possible

The developer team working on this is continuously trying to optimize net code and API integrations to make these disruptions occur as little as possible. 

Lastly, we also recommend you folks reach out to Google, so they can look at what's happening from their end too.

Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[l_andrew_l]

Thank you. It's unlikely that this is a chromecast issue (specific to this device that is) as the YouTube app works perfectly. That said, I have seen issues with other "third party apps", namely Plex, so it wouldn't surprise me if the Chromecast APIs aren't the best to work with. You might want to pass that on to the team as well.