WebPlayback SDK stopped emitting account_error for non-Premium user's playback attempt

[kruemeline]

Plan

Free

Country

Germany

Device

Web Playback SDK (Google Chrome Version 101.0.4951.41 (Official Build) (64-bit))

Operating System

Ubuntu 20.04

My Question or Issue

Hi there,

Yesterday the Web Playback SDK stopped emitting "account_error" events for us when a non-premium Spotify user attempts to initialize playback. (Documentation: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-playback-sdk/reference/#error-account-error)

We were using this event in our application to notify a non-premium Spotify user that playback would only work if they upgrade their Spotify subscription to the premium tier.

I suspect this may be related to a new release of the SDK, since there was no change of our own application code.

I tried reproducing the working state by using an older version of the SDK I had previously downloaded, but noticed there is logic in there that would always load the newest SDK from the internet.

1. Is this change in behavior for the "account_error" event expected?

2. Is there a release log for the Web Playback SDK available somewhere?

3. Is there a way to use older library versions so as to not get hit by breaking changes immediately upon their release?

Thank you and please let me know if you need more details!

[cent0nZz]

I've been having the same issue for about a month now. Did something change with the SDK implementation?

[spotifyjosh]

Hi @cent0nZz and @kruemeline, thanks for the clear and detailed bug report. I'm looking into it further now and will return to this thread with updates 🙂

[spotifyjosh]

@cent0nZz @kruemeline Hi there, are you still able to reproduce the issue now?

[cent0nZz]

Hey there @spotifyjosh !
The issue seems to be fixed now and the error event is back working again, thanks a lot for the swift help! 🙂

[kruemeline]

Same for me, thanks a ton for the fix!

Still, is it possible for us to to lock the SDK to a specific version to keep potential regressions away from production stages? I'm not against upgrading, I just want to do it in a controlled manner in a dev environment.