Can't Play on 2 Devices on 2 different account on family premium

[hamza-mian]

Plan

Family Premium

Country

UK

Device

iPad Air & Windows App

Operating System

iOS 13 & Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I have a family premium subscription and my windows PC logged into one account and my wife's iPad logged into another. Till now this worked fine and I was able to play music on both at the same time.

As of this afternoon every time my wife starts to play music it stops the music on my windows machine. I have double checked the accounts each device is logged in to and they are different.

Also your community board UX is truly awful, Its currently telling me I can't post this message because I've posted two in the previous 300seconds when I have not posted anything but have been given errors to correct in the form twice.

[OneByBoo]

Hi there @hamza-mian,

thanks for reaching out !

I can only assume this action is accruing through Spotify's Connect feature on your devices.

What I would like you to test is to remove one of the devices from your home's WiFi to see if makes any change.

Let me know how it goes 🙂

[hamza-mian]

well this is still happening. Removing a single device probably won't help much as I've seen this happen across a number of different devices (including new ones acquired since this was first reported).

Just today it has been doing this when playing on account on either a Mac Mini using the Spotify App or a Cambridge Audio CXN v2 using Spotify Connect and on the other side using the app on an iPhone.

If you can't find a solution this, I really don't see the point in paying for a family subscription if I can't actually play on multiple devices at the same time. This seems to happen any time both accounts try to play in different locations of the house at the same time.

I have probably about 10 or so different Spotify Connect devices in the house across two different networks (that can't see each other). 

[hamza-mian]

Sorry just noticed you're not a Spotify employee. Appreciate you trying to help anyway!

[Alex]

Hey there @hamza-mian,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

You can try to Log out Everywhere on both accounts. After that try logging in on two devices with two separate accounts.

Check if that's working fine.

If not send us some screenshots or a video recording of what you see if playback is interrupted on one of the devices.

Keep us posted on this.

[hamza-mian]

Thanks. Already tried that and it didn't make any difference.

A couple of weeks ago in fact when this happened Spotify also locked both accounts and sent email asking for the password to be changed

"
Hi

To protect your Spotify account, we've reset your password due to detected suspicious activity.

You need to create a new password to log back in. Just click the big green button.

"

So something funky is clearly going on.

[Novy]

Hi @hamza-mian, 

Thanks for this info. 

Would you mind sending over a video where we can take a better look at this issue? This will help us investigate further. 

You can attach it to your next response to us by using the Insert Video option in the post editor.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

[hamza-mian]

Hi,

please see the video attached.

[hamza-mian]

some more information for you to help diagnose this after having spent far longer than I'd care to trying to pin down when this happens (not easy with this many devices in the house).

Scenario is as follows:

iPad logged in on account 1

iPhone logged in on account 2

Connect both iPad and iPhone to a bluetooth speaker (i.e. connected in iOS, not playing on Spotify).

Play Music on iPad, use Spotify Connect for sound to go to another device (not the bluetooth speaker, another device a Cambridge Audio CXN V2 in this example)

Play Music on iPhone to bluetooth speaker.

Music will stop playing via Spotify Connect on iPad.

Naturally this is not desired and when there are a number of shared Connect and Bluetooth devices in the house, many of which will connect to multiple devices automatically when just switched on this becomes quickly impossible to manage.

We have 4 or 5 bluetooth speakers, several Amazon Echo devices as well multiple iPhone, iPads and other computers so having to manually manage this by finding the offending device and disconnecting it from bluetooth (which does solve the problem) isn't really a viable solution.

[Alex]

Hey there @hamza-mian,

Thanks for the info and the video.

Can you clarify what you mean by the "offending device"? And also, have you tried connecting that device via cable or WiFi instead of Bluetooth? If there is one device causing this issue it might be worth performing a factory reset on it.

You can also try restarting your routers and creating one or two new free accounts and adding those in the family plan. After that connect the new accounts to some of the devices and try playing at the same time from different accounts.

Note that if two separate devices like an iPhone and iPad (witch two different accounts) per say, are connected via Bluetooth to the same speaker, stopping playback on one device can also affect the other. As some speakers will automatically disable playback to all devices linked to them if one is stopped.

Keep us posted on how you get on with this.

[hamza-mian]

Hi @Alex

by offending device I mean the device that happens to have a connection to the bluetooth speaker that is in use by another device (but not using it).

I understand that if two devices are connected to the same speaker you'd want one to pause if the other starts playing, however that should not happen if one of those devices is not actually outputting any sound to the bluetooth speaker and just happens to be connected to it (as in this case). i.e this feature should apply only when the bluetooth speaker is being used by Spotify to play the audio on device that would get paused.

It can also actually get more complex than this. The following scenario is also problematic

iPhone 1 on account 1
iPad 1 on account 1
iPhone 2 on account 2

iPad1 is not being used. (and potentially not even looked at)
iPhone 1 is playing Spotify via Spotify Connect on device 1.
Turn on bluetooth speaker
iPhone 2 connects to bluetooth speaker (automatic)
iPad 1 connects to bluetooth speaker (automatic)
iPhone 2 selects bluetooth speaker as output for Spotify
Play audio on Spotify on iPhone 2
iPhone 1 will stop playing Spotify.

Note in this scenario, iPad 1 was never touched. This is clearly a bug in my view.

I don't see how creating additional accounts or rebooting the networks will help? It is not just one device, this will happen any time any two devices are connected to the same bluetooth speaker (but one of them is not actually using it).

[hamza-mian]

just to clarify, in the above example the "offending device" would be iPad 1

[Alex]

Hey there @hamza-mian,

Thanks for the detailed description of the issue.

As I've mentioned before, if two separate devices are connected to the same Bluetooth speaker, playback will be paused on the original device streaming music if you start playing from another device.

This is because the app automatically pauses if you disrupt it's default audio output, which is what is happening when another device starts streaming through that speaker. 

This might not be the case with every Bluetooth speaker, as some have more advanced software which allows for the handling of multiple devices and connections.

But in general, this is like pulling out the headphones from your phone while music is playing - the app will pause, as the audio output is cut.

You'd have to make sure that BT connection is not active on the device you want to start playing music from if another device is connected to and playing music through that speaker currently.

Hope this makes sense. 

[hamza-mian]

How you propose that addresses the scenario I outlined above where an untouched device can cause this behaviour?

I maintain that this is incorrect behaviour in Spotify because it is not checking the bluetooth device that has been pulled is actually in use before pausing the audio stream. Further an app on device that has not even been touched has done this.