One of my Podcasts Wont Play or Download

[ariansuns]

Plan: Premium

Country: USA

Device: Samsung Galaxy S10e

Operating System: Android 

My Question or Issue

I listen to several podcasts that all auto-download on release. Only one of my podcasts,  Opening Arguements, has not been downloading or actually playing the podcast. The last few episodes will show up in my Your Episodes list, show that they are trying to download, but never do. I've tried to just play the episodes without downloading but the episode only buffers and never actually plays, even if I try to skip further into the episode. Nothing happens and I can't hear the episodes. It seems to have started on 6/28/2024. I can't play any episodes on the feed. Any episodes I had downloaded previous to that date, did play, but nothing that is not currently downloaded. And nothing from that feed will download. 

This is the only podcast I'm having issues with. The other 14 podcasts I'm actively listening to download and play with no issue.

[AlejaR]

Hey @ariansuns,

Thanks for posting in the Community and welcome.

This is odd, indeed. In this case, we'd recommend you try the following:

• Clearing the cache on your device. You can follow the steps in this article to do it.
• Performing a clean reinstall of the app. By doing that the app can be up-to-date and you can make sure the cache is not leading to this inconvenience. You can see the steps for a clean reinstall here. You can see the steps for a clean reinstall here. You'll need to download all the content you listen to offline again afterwards.

If the above doesn't do the trick, we'd like to gather some additional info:

• Does this happen across all you devices? 
• Send us the exact OS version you're running on your device.
• Does this happen when casting the content to a speaker or a Bluetooth device?
• Send us the exact Spotify version you're running in the affected device.

Keep us in the loop!

[ariansuns]

I followed the instructions for a clean reinstall. That did not work. However, I use a VPN and apparently pausing the VPN allowed me to play and download the episodes for Opening Arguements. 

I did try using Spotify on my PC and the episodes played just fine, until the VPN on my PC started up. Then I couldn't start the episodes anymore on the PC. 

I've been using this VPN on my PC and cellphone for months and never had this issue on either device with any podcasts.

I guess NordVPN causes an issue with, specifically, the Opening Arguements podcast on my Spotify?