Skipping songs when playing on Speaker Group

[RandomDude9]

Plan

Premium or Free (tested multiple accounts)

Country

Sweden

Device

Spotify: Android or PC (tested both with same issue)

Speakers: B&O Balance, B&O Stage

Operating System

Makes no difference

My Question or Issue

When casting to a single speaker with either Spotify Connect or Chromecast music plays as expected. But when connecting to a Google home speaker group, Spotify starts to skips over song at random.

Let me clarify, I start a song and it plays until it ends without major issue. Spotify then changes to the next song, but only for about 1 second, without audio being heard, then it directly skips to the song after that and starts playing. Hence every other song is skipped when playing an album.

I see several other posts here about skipping songs, but not for this scenario where it only happens on speaker groups.

Hence I wanted to ask if anyone else have experienced the same or have suggestions on what to test?

[Eni]

Hey there @RandomDude9, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this and welcome to the Community! 

Could you let us know if this started happening after a specific event such as an update? Also, it's worth checking that both of your speakers' firmware and your Spotify app are up to date. 

If there aren't any pending updates for the speakers' firmware or the Spotify app, we suggest that you try to unlink your Spotify account from your Google Home and then link them again. 

If this doesn't do the trick, we'd recommend connecting your devices to a different network to see if the same happens. 

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[RandomDude9]

Hi @Eni,

I recently purchased more speakers and I think the issue has existed for a couple of weeks, but I have not really understood the issue until now.

Firmwares and Spotify are all up to date. I have even tried resetting devices to factory default, and also tried different WiFi networks/routers.

I tried your suggestion of unlinking Spotify in the Google Home app, and I even deleted my entire "Home" and configured everything from scratch. But this made no difference.

I should note that the same issue occurs from different Spotify accounts on any kind of device. So it is not linked to a specific account.

I am starting to think that it is Bang&Olufsen that has a poor Spotify implementation when it comes to Speaker Groups. But I have no idea of course. I have contacted the B&O to see what they say, I will keep you updated.

If anyone has any other suggestions then I am willing to try them. I have spent more than 10 hours troubleshooting now so I'm getting desperate!

[Eni]

Hi @RandomDude9, 

Kudos for all the troubleshooting you've tried so far! 

Since the issue only happens when using the Speaker Group with Spotify, we'd like to rule out some other possibilities. First up, could you try lowering your streaming quality in the Spotify app to "low" to see if the skipping changes? 

If the issue persists, would you mind trying to cast to the same Speaker Group from a different streaming app to see if the same happens? Also, just to confirm, has it never worked with that new group of speakers since you bought them? 

In the meantime, keep us posted on what B&O replies, as that could help us narrow things down further. 

We'll be waiting for your reply. 

[RandomDude9]

Hi @Eni,

Changing the streaming quality makes no difference. I also tried playing downloaded songs vs. non-downloaded songs with no difference.

Different streaming apps works without issues (I tested YouTube Music, Tidal and VLC for local streaming of MP3s).

I now suspect that this issue has always existed on this group of speakers, which were purchased about 1 to 2 months ago. But it took me a couple of weeks to realize the issue, at first I thought there was something wrong with my memory when a song on an album or playlist was missing. until I started paying attention to what the app was actually doing.

[Dessi]

Hey @RandomDude9,

Thanks for testing this out and for the additional info!

Another thing that comes to mind and is worth checking is if this happens when manually adding a song to the queue via the Add to queue button or by swiping right to check if it skips when the currently played one is over. You can also try force stopping the app after starting a song to test if the playback continues afterwards and if it the next song gets skipped.

Let us know how it goes.

[RandomDude9]

I like your thinking, and I found somethin really interesting! 

If I'm playing a song and am just in the first minute or two, then if I swipe right it switches to the next song correctly. But if I'm at the end of a song and then swipes right, then it tries to play the next song for ca 1 sec but then skips to the song after that one. So the skipping seem to depend on the duration/play-time in a particular song!

I did a lot of trial and error on this and found that the threshold time was about 2:25 when I was playing "The Great Plain" on album "Tubular Bells II".

But the time threshold for when the skip bug occurred was at about it was about 4:00 while playing "West Ruth Ave", by "Night Flight Orchestra"

Hmm... why is this happening?

But then I made a new playlist and added the same songs in different orders and found that it is not the song that is being played that affects the time threshold for when the bug occurs. It is what song comes after that determines this!

The song after "The Great Plain" on album "Tubular Bells II" is called "Sunset Door" and it is 2:24 min long (which matches with the threshold for when the bug occured)!

When I initially tried the "West Ruth Ave" song the song after that was "Brave New World" by "Kalandra" which is exactly 4:00 long (which also matches)!

So as long as the song that is being played is shorter than the song after it, the bug never occurs!

Regarding your second suggestion of force closing the app. I tried this on both PC and Android, and it has no impact. The issue lies in the Speaker, Spotify, or at Google, but not in the app.

[RandomDude9]

I further confirmed this with the song "All" by "Descendents" which is only 5 seconds long. If I place this very short song after any song on a playlist, then if I'm above 0:05 when pressing next song, the bug will always occur skipping over the very short song.

[Dessi]

Hey @RandomDude9,

Thank you so much for all the valuable info and all your efforts!

This really is a great find and we've reported this whole issue to our tech folks so they can check what's happening and investigate further. We can't really give a timeline for a fix at the moment, but we'll let you know as soon as we have any news to share.

One thing we wanted to clarify, since we might have confused you - you can add songs to the queue either by clicking on the three dots next to the song and then on Add to queue or by swiping right on a song from a playlist, an album, or the queue, etc. You can give that a try if you haven't just to see if the issue persists with queued up songs. You can indeed swipe right or left from the Now Playing View, but that will either go to the previous song or skip to the next song as you already described.

We really appreciate all your input on this and don't hesitate to let us know in case you need help with anything else.

[RandomDude9]

Hey @Dessi,

Thanks for the clarification, I can add songs to the queue just fine, both with swiping and pressing the three dots.

But the issue still persists, if the next song in the queue is shorter than the current play timer, then when you switch songs the next song in the queue is skipped. I also tested this with shuffle mode on and the issue still exists there.

So it does not matter what order the songs are in the playlist or the album, it is only the order in the queue that matters, and if the next song is shorter than the current song the bug appears. (Still only when playing on a speaker group with Bang &Olufsen speakers, I have not tested it with different brands of speakers yet)

[Dessi]

Hey @RandomDude9,

We appreciate you taking the time to test this out!

We've passed this info on to our tech folks as well so they can have a closer look. As mentioned, we can't give you a timeline for a fix, but will let you know if there's an update on the topic.

Thanks for your cooperation again ✨

[tommyttcat]

Same thing is happening to me.

[motuM]

I'm experiencing the same issue with playback on my Google TV Streamer 4K.
It happens with every playlist I've tried, and doesn't seem to be song-related.
It doesn't happen on my Android phone or the web, and I've tried doing a clean install of the application and changing my password according to external knowledge, but it didn't resolve the issue.

[RandomDude9]

The issue explained here is still there for me, but now I also have this new issue:
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Choose-between-Google-Cast-and-Spotify-Connect/td-p/7163965

I downgraded to a much older version of Spotify on android, 9.0.46.493, it solved the issue in the link, but not the original issue of top post.