Stream Keeps Cutting Out

[seaneclark]

I had been using the free version of Spotify and noticed that the stream kept getting interrupted (pausing). At first you'd assume a bandwidth issue my end. Unlikely as I am in a City and have a consistent 10mb connection.

Anyway to be sure I tried a well known UK competitor beginning with D and there was no issue streaming from them.

Must be the free service? So I upgraded to unlimited, still getting an interrupted stream!

I followed the uninstall and cache clearing procedure, the reinstalled and still no joy.

Currently I have a Spotify account that is unlistenable (if that is such a word) and I am having to use D(UK) in the meantime.

Suggestions?

[Gromet]

Thought I would post here first in case anyone can help before I start a new thread.

 For the last day I've noticed that songs are taking up to a minute or longer before they start start playing, then cutting out after only a few seconds of play. Searching for music taking incredibly long as well - just the "waiting" circle for a good while before results slowly populate the screen.

On my network monitor I can see that the throughput to my spotify app on my desktop is a hopeless 30-40kbps, however my bandwidth is way more than this and connections to websites are coming though at their normal speed. I have a premium account. 

Any one else experiencing this?

[Joe]

Is this slowness constant throughout the day or does it only happen at certain times of the day (evenings maybe)? Is the web player any faster?

[Gromet]

The problem occurs anytime throughout the day. 

The web player and my mobile player work just fine (although I can't seem to stop a track once it has started in Chrome, IE is fine).

Looks like it is just the windows app which is not working for me. I have tried turning off hard acceleration and re-installing the app but neither worked.

Thanks.

[Peter__]

@Gromet - Is it possible your ISP are throttling your p2p connections which the desktop client uses for streaming (but all of the other clients do not)? 

Peter

[Gromet]

Not sure - I use BT. Would you know if this was something BT would do - has it happened to anyone else here?

Thanks

[Joe]

It looks like they do throttle P2P from the table on this page. It is worth getting in touch with them for an explanation.

[lukejackson]

i had this issue and tried various steps to no avail.

finally i realised it may because i use google dns, which could be sending me to the US spotify servers, rather than the ones in hong kong where i live.  

i reverted to my ISP's dns servers and finding spotify is much faster - no more stuttering, cutting out and long delays when searching.

[Gromet]

Thanks for your responses - I'll look into your suggestions.

Many thanks.

[zapatasghost]

Spotfiy for mac with airfoil not working - cutting out. Ahhhh...just like the old days of working PC's. Anyway...Like Windows - Spotify is awesome when it works. Please fix this - or bye bye Spotify. Do one thing well or don't do at all.

[crabette1]

Hi I have just read your post ....and i have the same problem.  I have subcribed to premium spotify for months with out a problem and suddenly in the last week i have had the intermitten streaming.  I would appreciate the solution.  I am not impressed as I pay the premium rate and expect a premium service. 

Crabette1

[crabette1]

Gromet, if you work for spotify then you need to notify them of this problem of intermittent streaming.  I am sick of it.  I pay a monthly subscription for streaming music from your company, so  I would like you to fulfill your part of the contract and provide music without continual pausing every few seconds.  I know my hardware, software are not the problem so it must be at your end.  If there is a problem rectifying the the problem, I would appreciate someone contacting me.

Cheers

[Peter__]

Spotify employees have a special symbol beside their name to indicate so, so I don't this the user in question works for Spotify. 

Reports of this sort of issue have seemingly died down over recent months though, what operating system and Spotify version are you using? 

[samiaira]

Actually I have this problem as well, intermitten streaming on my ubuntu client (9.4.0.xx). I think this behaviour started to happen week ago or so (at least I myself noticed it). Behaviour varies, but its not uncommon to have cuts in every 5-10 minute intervals. My ISP doesn't throttle p2p (officially), I use high quality stream and my measured bandwith is 80/50mbs. Also premium customer so I would like to have stable streaming.

I know that these community posts keeps getting buried over time, but I'm not sure where to officially make complaint about this. Does somebody know?

[Peter__]

You can get in touch with the customer services team directly using the online contact form if you like, but since the linux client is not officially supported I'm not sure what kind of reply you will get. 

If you get an automated email reply back directing you to the community or help pages, you need to reply directly to that email (even if its from no-reply) and one of the customer services agents will get back to you as soon as possible.

If you start Spotify from a terminal, do you see any error messages in the text output when the stream stops? 

[samiaira]

I contacted them via that online contact form (and got "complete removal and install could solve your problem"), but thanks for that tip. Got me thinking that does spotify client suffer from somekind of cache corruption...

That terminal thing is actually good tip, why didn't I thought myself ;). Will try out and report findings (here and to the customer agent as well).

[samiaira]

I think this might be something to do wiht SoundDrop application rather than direct spotify streaming. I have verified problem with SoundDrop music rooms, but not getting cutting when playing same tracks directly from spotfiy catalog.

I did some digging, from the logs I saw that when stopping  happens I see this AppManager notification "Keeping application soundrop alive..." and Right after that SocialReporter that "A track was played" even though track is still in halfway. Could it be that those are just normal/expected behaviour from spotify clients end, and soundDrop App just misbehaves?

That 102 connection error I saw only once, and it might be just coincidental.

08:37:54.647 I [AppManager.cpp:297              ] Keeping application soundrop alive because it is "playing".
08:37:54.663 I [social_reporter.cpp:191         ] SocialReporter: A track was played
08:39:00.644 I [AppManager.cpp:297              ] Keeping application soundrop alive because it is "playing".
08:39:00.663 I [social_reporter.cpp:191         ] SocialReporter: A track was played
08:40:04.971 E [ap_handler_impl.cpp:1425        ] Connection error:  102
08:40:05.113 I [ap_connection_impl.cpp:898      ] Connecting to AP sto3-accesspoint-a5.ap.spotify.com:4070
08:40:05.125 I [ap_connection_impl.cpp:538      ] Connected to AP: 194.132.162.227:4070
08:40:05.288 I [index.html:0                    ] WebSocket connection to 'ws://wocket.soundrop.fm/websocket' failed: WebSocket is closed before the connection is established.
[0419/114005:ERROR:socket_stream_dispatcher_host.cc(200)] socket_id=6 already closed.
08:40:06.770 I [AppManager.cpp:297              ] Keeping application soundrop alive because it is "playing".
08:40:06.864 I [social_reporter.cpp:191         ] SocialReporter: A track was played

So maybe I need to contact sounddrop developers about this.

[Peter__]

In the instance above, I would say with certainty the 102 error caused the drop out, which in itself might have done something causing the soundrop error.

Do you ever see that error (the soundrop one) without a prior connection error?

[ethiopianclown]

It's getting worse and worse. I even signed up for premium just to see if that was it. It wasn't.

I'm currently (not) listening to a 3-minute song. So, it's now beyond "cutting out;" it's simply not working. 

When I first got Spotify in fall 2012, I had zero issues and spreading the gospel of Spotify to friends and co-workers. But for the past five or six months, it's been terrible. Not just a little bit here and there, but constant interruptions. It's just not worth trying to stream it.

What's going on Spotify? Please help. You're about to lose a once-happy and currently-paying customer.

[samiaira]

Yes, I do. Therefore I deducted that its not causing that soundrop stream cutting. Though I will gather more evidence about this.

Do I find those specific app logs somewhere, or are all logs outputted to console?

[Peter__]

They only get logged to the console sadly, but if you are using Mac or Linux you can probably redirect the console output to a file (never seemed to be able to get it to work on Windows). The console output (instructions on how to get it) is often the best place to catch errors as it displays all errors even ones which aren't displayed in the client. 

If you are providing logs here on the community, putting them up on http://pastebin.com/ and then posting the link here is normally the neatest way to do it and saves others having to download zip files etc.