Has Spotify become "Click to play"?

[Adam1977]

Lately, on all of my devices, when I have any of my playlist playing, the playback stops randomly, as a kind of pause / stop button was pressed, but it wasn't. It happens entire randomly. Sometimes after 5 minutes of playing, sometimes after 5 hours.

Like half of the "unexpected stop" behaviors happen at the end of the track (next is just not played, like the playback was "finished"). Other half happens mid track. Like stop was requested. But of course - it wasn't.

Of course clicking the playback button resumes playing. However - I get an impression when I'm driving my car - the Spotify app is trying to actively kill me, because I'm forced to move my attention from the road to the app to click.

This is getting dangerous and people will eventually die because of it. Back in the days - when I started a playlist on Spotify it played for hours. No interaction was ever needed. Now it demands clicks every few minutes - this is just insane and dangerous.

I also used Spotify to help myself with insomnia. I started a playlist for falling asleep. Now it of course stops playing randomly, sometimes after 10 minutes, sometimes after 20 minutes. And again, it demands CLICKING in order to keep playing, which defeats the sense of using it to help with sleeping. What's more - it infuriated me so much, than my hands are shaking when I press play. I just count minutes until it stops and demands clicking again.

This is not a network nor cache issues. I tested this on 4 devices, with both playlist not downloaded and downloaded. I tried deleting all application data on all devices, I redownloaded all playlists. The random stopping occurs in ALL CASES.

Of course I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the application on all devices. It didn't help.

I tested it on my Android phone, car DVR and Samsung Wi-Fi speakers. 3 totally different devices, consistent bad behavior. It plays when I click every couple of minutes. I stop clicking - no playing. Don't treat your customers like clicking monkeys. It's supper annoying at home, but on the road, while driving it's dangerous.

[Eni]

Hey there @Adam1977, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this here in the Community. 

We're sorry to hear you've been having issues with the playback. You mentioned that you've been experiencing this behavior across all your devices. Just to confirm, has this been happening while your devices were connected to external devices such as headphones, speakers, etc.? 

On another note, it's also worth checking the apps that are linked to your Spotify account on your account page under Manage Apps and remove any you don't recognize.

However, if the issue persists, could you ask a friend or a relative to log in to their account on one of your affected devices and check if they can replicate this behavior? This will help us determine if the issue is account-related. 

We'll be waiting for your response.

[Adam1977]

In my car DVR, the playback output is "this phone", so it is by all means internal. The problem occurs. On my phone - I never use its speaker, so it's always external (either BT earphones or BT speakers). Problem occurs. I'll check out some friends about the problem. Also - IDK if it's related to another problem - sometimes when using random sequence, the app falls into a loop of playing like 5 up to 10 songs all over again, despite the playlist having hundreds of songs. The only way to break the loop is to make the app play other playlist, then restart the previous playlist. The behavior is consistent through different devices. So when my phone falls into a loop, my DVR plays in the same loop.

[Joan]

Hi @Adam1977,

Thanks for the reply.

The issue of shuffle playing the same sequence is something we've seen before and we're trying to look deeper into it. Please check out this thread, try the troubleshooting suggested and provide any relevant info you may have. 

As for the issue of playback stopping randomly, we'll be happy to keep investigating that in this thread. Please test as soon as you can using a different account as @Eni suggested and let us know how that works. With that info, we'll be able to look into this deeper.

Keep us posted.