why can my family only play on one device at a time?

[shinybr3nda]

Plan

Family premium

Country

Aotearoa

Device

Google home (multiple)

Operating System

Google home

My Question or Issue

If one family member tries to play music on google home, while another is also playing music on another device, we get the message "Sorry, the music stopped since your spotify account is being used on another device"

I've upgraded us to Premium Family accounts -- but this didn't change anything - there doesn't seem to be any way to play in more than one place.

If I'm driving, and someone at home asks the google speaker to play music, the music in my car stops.

If I'm listing to music in the living room, and the kid asks the speakers to play in her room, my music stops.

If I'm at work listening to music on my headphones, and someone gets home and starts music, my music at work stops.

why why why?

It's driving us nuts - why can't we play different music at the same time? What's the point of a family account if only we can only stream music to one device at a time?

[shinybr3nda]

Hey @shinybr3nda,

Thanks for reaching out.

Your Family members can indeed listen on different devices at the same time, without interrupting each others playback. They have to be logged in to their own personal Spotify accounts. These can be added by the Premium Family manager to the plan so that they can enjoy Premium. You can find out how to do this and other useful info on Premium Family here. 

Hope this helps. If something else comes up feel free to contact us again.

[shinybr3nda]

Hey @bauerat02,

Thanks for the post.

We understand that this might be inconvenient for a set up with many shared communal devices.

What you can do is create a separate account and connect all communal home devices to that one. This way you can have your personal account logged in your personal devices and your playback and music recommendations will not be disturbed when other family members use the home speakers.

Hope you find this info helpful.

[Mihail]

Hey @shinybr3nda,

Thanks for reaching out.

Your Family members can indeed listen on different devices at the same time, without interrupting each others playback. They have to be logged in to their own personal Spotify accounts. These can be added by the Premium Family manager to the plan so that they can enjoy Premium. You can find out how to do this and other useful info on Premium Family here. 

Hope this helps. If something else comes up feel free to contact us again.

[adesignrobot]

I'm having the exact same issue. All family members are logged into their own Spotify accounts on their devices and have their own Google voice match profiles. Keeps happening no matter what I try (disconnecting, reconnecting, logging in to account again, reconfiguring Google home..). Very infuriating. Thinking of switching over to YouTube Music especially after the sizeable Spotify price rise. Does anyone in Spotify have a suggestion that works? These threads are full of people having the same problem.

[Ver]

Hey @adesignrobot,

Thanks for posting here 🙂

It's a good idea to give these steps a go and log out from everywhere to see if anything changes.

In case there are no changes, you can send us a screenshot of the error message. We'll look into this further.

Keep us in the loop! We'll be right here if you have any questions.

[jlocke1979]

A version of this has happened to me as well.  If someone in my home plays Spotify on an Amazon Echo...it will automatically kick me off my personal phone.   I've tried many of the articles on the web, to no avail.  Spotify it would be great if you smoothed this experience out as I'm considering a switch to Apple Music for this reason alone. 

Thanks

[adesignrobot · Accepted solution]

We have more or less sorted this problem in our house now. I had to freshly set up each Google Home device (complete reset). Where possible I set up each Google Home device with the device users own phone and assigned it to rooms. I also made sure that each user was logged into their own specific Spotify family account on their devices (phones and tablets). An important step I found was making sure voice recognition in Google Home was turned on and set up correctly for each active user and that it is working for each individual - this stopped Google defaulting to my main account when someone in the house asked to play music.  It (mostly) works OK now. That all said I still find it very clunky to set up use overall and the music choices presented to me when I ask Google to play something on Spotify completely baffling (live or karaoke versions of well known songs for example?). I'm hoping it all improves with time. I was seriously considering switching to YouTube music for ease of use and having the entire YouTube audio available but held off due to Spotify's superior surfacing algorithm - it's second to none and I've tried most other music streamers. Hope this helps. 

[bauerat02]

Having people logged into their own accounts is fine for some of our devices, but not an overall solution where we have many shared devices - living room, family room, basement, kitchen, etc.  It works fine for the kids bedrooms when they ask Google to play music when in their rooms since they have their own account through the family plan, but I have my account logged in across all shared devices, so this doesn't work when I want to have my phone playing if I am away or doing yardwork outside, and someone inside wants to listen in the kitchen.  There needs to be an option where one account can be used across multiple devices at the same time.  I've played around with other providers like Apple Music, and am thinking of switching to them for better family sharing, especially with the free high fidelity audio, which Spotify lacks.

[Alex]

Hey @bauerat02,

Thanks for the post.

We understand that this might be inconvenient for a set up with many shared communal devices.

What you can do is create a separate account and connect all communal home devices to that one. This way you can have your personal account logged in your personal devices and your playback and music recommendations will not be disturbed when other family members use the home speakers.

Hope you find this info helpful.

[Spikey432]

This is not a solution. If they all have their own phones that can stream from their phones to their Alexa's but not by using voice commands as Spotify seems to only have one stream (which is ok when using multiple phones as each phone is one stream). And to get Alexa's to work in a house they all need to be on same account so you can make announemts etc. Get this sorted spotify and Amazon

[coreybirtles]

This is not a solution- as many others on the many threads have stated.  There are plenty of us who pay for the PREMIUM Spotify service so that our household can use it wherever we are and whenever we want.  At home, there are two of us and we have a number of Google speakers around the house that would all be considered "communal".  We also have a Tesla that is also connected to Spotify.  I've tried to have three Spotify accounts (even though there is literally only two of us)...  one for each of our personal phones and then one that is shared on Google Home and the car. But if one of us is in the kitchen listening and another is in the office working, we can't play from Spotify.  Same if one of us takes the car and the other is at home listening to music.  The above "solution" is not a solution at all...  particularly since the power of Spotify should be to learn what we like to listen to - with multiple accounts it can't do that. Based on the hundreds of community posts on this issue, it looks like this has been happening for many years.  @spotify - as many other posters here have stated, Google and Apple have products that work better - I don't want to give them any more of my money so please fix your PREMIUM service and allow us to use it the way it was intended.  If you are allowing 5 concurrent users, then allow the one user to have 5 concurrent sessions instead - simple.  Else you will lose this PREMIUM customer and I expect many others.

[KoriDoty]

I am facing this difficulty especially with Spotify Kids. I tried setting up my kids' spotify kids account through a secondary email, but I can only set up spotify kids attached to the family plan manager, and as the plan manager, I would really like to be able to access my playlists and account while my kid is listening to sing alongs on her own. It seems ridiculous that I have to give her an adult account in order to allow us to listen to different music at the same time.

[Trevinated]

Exactly. Frankly, I think that this is deliberate by spotify, and a means to squeeze more money out of people. My home is setup so we can broadcast messages to the whole house of individual rooms when sending messages or alerts. Yet even though I pay a premium, I can't have different speakers in different rooms play different musice simultaneously? Or even better, lose my music stream when driving because someone at home wants to hear a song? Talk about creating a distracted driving risk. Maybe when people get in to accidents due to the distraction, and sue spotify, maybe then they'll do something about this. 
Frankly, if Spotify cares so little about their customers, not delivering premium value to those accounts to use in a premium $$$ way, people should start looking elsewhere. It doesn't really matter how much you like it when it when it works only for one person at a time in your family setup. You aren't getting the access you're pay for. They're failing to let you access the service you've purchased. You are being cheated out of the streams your paying for, with your premium accounts. You're getting a "meh" level function, and response from Spotify about your needed use.

[Bigdave1980]

Yup having the same issue with Alexa. I can be 30 mile away from my house listening to a podcast in the van and all of a sudden it'll stop. Look at my phone and the wife will have some Taylor Swift sh*te on even tho she's logged into her own Spotify account

[Murpa]

This is driving me round the bend also.  I will frequently ask Alexa to switch accounts on the kitchen or living room, so I can listen to some of my "daily mix"es.  I usually forget to switch out of my account though.  If I then try to play music on my account while I'm away from home, I'm more or less guaranteed to have playback stopped because my 7 year old daughter waltzes into the kitchen and asks Alexa to play kidz bopz or some other **bleep**.  Super annoying - can't you come up with a super-override so I can force my device to control playback, and make the other device default to an unused "free" account?  As the others have said, this issue is seriously making me contemplate chucking it!

[11102320783]

Spotify - It about time you rectified this. It never used to be a problem. It if only in the last 5 months this has happened to us.   It needs addressing.

[Chris595]

This is so stupid. Why not just allow listening on up to six devices at a time under the same account… the way it set up now different devices all need another account. So dumb.

[Helen1234]

hello, does anyone have a good fix to this please?

I have spotify family, 4 different profiles. 
2 Alexas

the two kids (one profile each respectively) want to play their own music on their own Alexas. Can’t seem to do this despite relogging in with different profiles. Kids re arguing and it’s driving me crazy. Any good workarounds please?