Spotify Connect randomly stops on Alexa Multi Room Speaker Groups

[DaDadioToo]

Plan: Premium

Country: USA

Device: Alexa Spotify Connect, dots, shows, echo, multi room Alexa speakers

Spotify ver 8.5.19

iPhone XS, iOS 12.4

Linksys Velop mesh router 3 nodes.

My Question or Issue

Anyone help fix this: When listening to music on Alexa multi room speakers using Spotify connect Spotify randomly stops playing. Mostly only part of 1 song will play, it's random as to how long it will play, but it will always happens. The progress bar continues but there's no sound. I can pause, then un-pause, or scrub forward or start a new song, it will start playing again for a little while, then stops again. Also, if I let the song continue to “play” with no sound Spotify will not advance to the next song in the playlist. The problem repeats on the everywhere group devices as well as the living room group of Alexa devices. When I play a song on any single Alexa device the problem does not happen. Now for more weirdness, sometime when the audio stops it will still play on the bedroom show and bathroom echo, but not always, and that they will eventually stop audio as well. If you ask Alex what’s playing she will correctly answer, but no music, ask her to pause and then play, sound comes back. And lastly if you do nothing, sometimes 10 or 15 minutes later it will start audio playback on a different song in the playlist for a bit, then stop again. I have a 100 Mbps connection so this can't be the problem. This is a new issue. Been running multi room playback on Alexa for at least a year with no problems. Problem started about 2 weeks ago. Also, tried creating a new multi room group in the Alexa app, added two devices and called it Lounge.  Lounge does not appear as an option under connect to a device in the Spotify app. I have restarted all the Alexa devices. There has been no change to my equipment, no new devices. No luck. This is a big issue. I have converted the entire house to Spotify and Alexa multiroom. Help.

[jamesjeudegmail]

I have had the same problem for months, in various combinations.  Impossible to find any reliable answer - most blog/chat discussion is around 'separate stream per room' when I'm solely worried about having my Echo groupings fail to play spotify reliably.  

[oo_-6pjfledd]

I have the same problem. No connection to Echo from Amazon. That**bleep**.

[rg11]

Similar problem, although with a stereo pair rather than multi-room. As far as I can tell, it doesn't happen with other stereo streams like TunedIn. 

[tl16u-29_4a6q]

Exactly the same problem I'm having. I'm testing on Amazon music player right now, so far it's ok. I might have to switch back to Amazon music unlimited and cancel Spotify premium.

[cmweber9]

This appears to be a Spotify problem more than anything.  I have been using Echo dot speaker groups with my SiriusXM subscription with absolutely no issues for the past 3 years.  In the last couple weeks I have been listening to more on Spotify so I tried using speaker groups and I have the same frustrating problem.  Songs play for a few minutes and then just quit outputting audio.  If I switch to a single echo device, it works fine.  Great for the rooms that I have hardwired speakers into my central audio closet, but not for the rooms with standalone Echos. 

[Yepitspat]

I know this is an old post, but I actually have been having this issue intermittently with amazon music in addition to Spotify, granted less, but still more often than I’d like

[Xenia]

Hello there @Yepitspat, @cmweber9 and everyone else!

Just wanted to let you know that Spotify is aware of this issue and is currently looking into things. If you're affected by this, it'd be great if you could add your +VOTE to this Ongoing Issue and if possible share a short video of what's happening, so that the right folks can get to the bottom of this.

Thanks - keep us posted 🙂

[BostonLogan]

Same issue with Spotify connect on Alexa speaker groups. It is really sketchy user experience - it may remain completely silent while indicating that music is playing. It may randomly utilize only one speaker in group only instead of playing on all. It renders Spotify pretty unusable with Alexa's group of speakers. And it appears the issue is not new but not yet fixed.... disappointing.

[iclems]

Used to work here and now it Nevers plays on the group. Spotify and Alex say it’s playing but no sound. The experience of Spotify with Alexa is really suboptimal. As a family, my wife can’t see our speakers in her app

[Jennyvonstraub]

Not sure if it will help you but I went into the Alexa app, disabled the Spotify skill, re-logged-in to spotify, closed the Alex and spotify apps, and when I reopened spotify, everything started working again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

hope it helps someone!

[AlexanderWolf]

Ah, I tried this and sadly it isn't working.

This whole situation is so unfortunate... I spent about $500 on two Amazon Echo Studios and Echo Sub in order to play music throughout my apartment with Spotify and now I can't listen to any music on spotify without it constantly stopping playing songs. I have gigabit FIOS for my internet connection so it certainly isn't the speed of the connection.

I guess there is nothing we can do but hope that Spotify addresses this with Amazon?

[Yepitspat]

Spotify connect has become entirely useless recently, it’s beyond frustrating paying for premium, creating playlists, trying to connect it to my almost thousand dollar Alexa driven pa surround sound system and nothing happens. If this doesn’t get resolved I’m going to have to cancel my premium because it’s useless to have if I can’t ever use it.
In Spotify’s defense though, amazon music has a tendency to be just as frustrating and has a more limited library of my likes

[wvvjoevvw]

I’ve been battling this issue for months now.  Used to work great and I bought Alexa  devices for every room.  Now the whole system is useless and ruins my night if I try to use it.  It just cuts out mid-stream and often drops from random speakers/devices in my multiroom-music groups.  Restarting things just makes it worse.  You’d think there would be a device sync/refresh button but I guess that’s too obvious.  I’m going to cancel my subscription at the end of the month and switch to something that works.  

[sharkakhan]

Same issue...not new at all...disappointing...

[jrmalicki]

I have this issue too and it is beyond frustrating because there is not a pattern that I can discern other than it seems to happen the most with my multi room music or paired devices (Echo Sub and Echo Plus for example).  Spotify needs to fix this soon or I am cancelling Premium and going with something more reliable. 

[Itzme1234]

I have the same issue with multiple rooms. I now also have one echo dot that ignores Fast Forward commands on Spotify podcasts. But that may be another issue/topic.

[Roybot]

I might have a solution for you.  I had this same issue, happening multiple times a day for multispeakers --- with both spotify and apple music --- and it was driving me batty.

My setup involved an entertainment center (consisting of a fire stick and 2 echo speakers as a stereo pair), and an echo dot in another room.

Solution 1 - Make sure your devices are not only connecting to the same router, but ALSO on the same wi-fi network within the router.  My router supports a 2.4g network, as well as two 5g networks.  If your speakers are on two (or three) different networks they will technically still "talk" to each other and play music together, but it also seemingly creates interruptions.   Putting all my amazon devices (as well as my phone!) on the same network resolved 99.9 percent of my music interruptions.

Solution 2 - Turn off bluetooth on your phone.  If you have a bluetooth device in your car and you park near your home --- and then try to use your phone to control spotify --- sometimes, as you are walking around your house the bluetooth will connect to your car briefly and then disconnect --- long enough to switch where music is playing to and stop your music.

Solution 3 --- Unplug the offending speaker and then replug.  Sometimes there's still infrequent weirdness and this seems to fix any other issues ive encountered.

Good luck y'all.

[BoFiS]

Ugh, this is still an ongoing issue for me, and this week it has gotten even worse where I cannot even see half my speakers or any of the speaker groups. Even if I trigger playback via the Alexa app and pick a speaker group, it does NOT play at all whatsoever since this weekend...

[Mihail]

Hey folks,

Thanks for reaching out, we appreciate your feedback on this.

In order to resolve the issue with Playback stopping on your Alexa devices after 5 songs or the devices not showing up in Connect, please try the following troubleshooting steps:

• Restart your router
• Perform a clean reinstall of the Spotify app using these steps. Restart your device afterwards.
• Reinstall the Alexa app
• Reset the Alexa dot (read here how)
• Relink your Spotify account to the Alexa app. You can see here how

If the issue persists, you can head over to this Ongoing Issue, +Vote and subscribe to it. We'll inform on any updates on the matter there, as soon as there are any.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on.