Playing my library playlist in Spotify crashes after random time

[user-removed]

Plan

Free

Country

Romania

Device

iPhone 12 Pro

Operating System

iOS 14.6

My Question or Issue

Playing my Spotify playlist from library will stop / crash app after some random time. I have tried reinstall / clean reinstall of the application and the behavior is the same. I hit Play button, it works for some time, then crashes. Opening the app again and hitting the play button works. No other issues with other features.

[user-removed]

iOS app version 8.6.60 and above should greatly improve this issue. I haven't had the app crash since updating.

[Ver]

Hey @user-removed,

Thanks for posting here 🙂

Just to double-check- does this happen with a specific playlist or different playlists? 

It's a good idea to try on another device to check if the issue persists.

In case you're using any battery optimization or power saving apps, you can deactivate them for Spotify. Does that make a difference?

Let us know how it goes.

[user-removed]

Hey Ver,

Thanks for the time you took for this issue.

So the problem seems to occur only when playing my custom playlist from "Your Library" section.  Unfortunately, I have only one playlist for the moment but for any other playlist found in Home section it works without any issues.

There is no battery saver option activated or battery optimization software installed on the device. I also tried to play my playlist on a similar phone (iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 14.6) using a different account and the issue was reproducible.

So far, I have tried to uninstall - reinstall the app, clean reinstall the app and use different accounts and devices but does not seem to make a difference on iPhones. However, the playlist seems to work fine when playing it on my smart TV or computer.

Do you think that maybe I should try to re-create the playlist or try with a new playlist?

Thanks!

[Ver]

Hey @user-removed,

Thanks for the info 🙂

It's a good idea to try selecting all songs with Ctrl-A and then to add them to a new playlist to see if anything changes. Does the issue persist?

In case nothing changes you can send us a video recording of what you're seeing. We'll look into this further.

Keep us posted.

[user-removed]

Hi there,

So, I have tried the following:

1. Create a new playlist and copy the songs from the old playlist.

2. Create a new playlist and manually add songs.

None of the above options worked, the issue is still present. I start the playlist, screen gets locked after 30 seconds, the Spotify widget is displayed and music is playling then after some random time (anywhere from 30 sec to 25 min) the music will stop. After the music stops the Spotify widget is no longer displayed on the lock screen and opening the app shows the playlist as currently selected but paused.

However, playing any playlist recommended on Home tab of the application does not reflect the same behavior. Widget is displayed at all times on lock screen and music never stops playing.

Thank you!

[Julian]

Hi @user-removed,

Thank you for coming back with the list of steps you tried.

Would you mind sending us the URI to the playlist that is having the issue? This way we can try to reproduce it on our side. 

Keep us posted!

[user-removed]

Hello Julian,

Thank you for your time invested into this issue. Of course, please find the playlist URI below:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7oqs3tJBSZVvtG86gVbyG3?si=xVOTvugVTQKAfK2eRQeNPA&dl_branch=1

Please note, as previously mentioned, I was able to reproduce this behavior on two iPhone 12 Pro phones using different accounts, both running latest iOS (version 14.6) and latest Spotify app version.

Thank you!

[Jeremy]

Hi there @user-removed,

Thank you for your reply.

We tried this on our end and we couldn't reproduce the same behavior.

Can you see if you get the same behavior while using the web player?

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

Cheers!

[user-removed]

Hello Jeremy,

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I was able to find in my iPhone some analytics regarding the Spotify app crash. Please find the log attached. As far as I can see this is clearly a Spotify app problem: "48 seconds cpu time over 51 seconds (94% cpu average), exceeding limit of 80% cpu over 60 seconds"....basically it's throttling the CPUs so badly that the iOS will eventually terminate all Spotify processes. Do you know if there is there a fix available for this problem or when a fix will be available?

By web you mean in the iPhone browser, right? Because the issue is present only on Apple devices running latest iOS version and latest Spotify app version. Using the same playlist or different playlists does not seem to make a difference. Only using playlists from Home tab makes a difference and works without any issues.

Hmm, seems strange that the issue was not reproducible on your end since I am able to reproduce it on two different iPhones with two different accounts. Could you please let me know if you were using the latest iPhone, iOS and Spotify app version to play the playlist and let the device screen locked throughout playing?

Thanks.

[Jeremy]

Hi again @user-removed,

Thank you for your reply.

We tested it on an iPhone 11 as we don't have a 12 Pro available at the moment, but it is running iOS 14.6,  should behave the same

We'll try our best to get a hold of a Pro 12 to test it on as well, but we'd think that if this was very common we would've received other complaints from folks with the same device.

II general, there might be some instances where the App needs to use more CPU power, like syncing cache, when the connection is worse, etc. So far we have no indication that the app is using more CPU than necessary on a larger scale.

We'll be on the lookout for more reports, but unless we can get more cases to be able to dig into it, there's not much we can do, as killing a process is managed by iOS and we cannot modify that.

Take care!

[user-removed]

Yes, I agree. A test on an iPhone 12 Pro should reveal more details on this issue. While it is expected to have moments when CPU usage goes up / stays up, 94% CPU usage over 48 seconds for playing some music in the background is extremely high and abnormal, thus the iOS action is to terminate those processes.

I’ve tried to dig out more and ran a search in the Community for similar issues (at some sort of degree). I was able to find multiple reports (some even for Mac with 99.7% average CPU usage for Spotify app over more then 7 hours of running the app).

So this might actually be a general issue for Apple users of Spotify and maybe it would be a good idea to involve one of the developers. I find it very strange that the Spotify app has very high CPU usage only while playing music from my own playlists but not playing playlists of other people because basically the fundamental action is the same: play a playlist in the background.

Thanks!

[Ver]

Hey,

We wanted to share more info regarding this 🙂

We tried reproducing this with an iPhone Max Pro for a few hours but the issue didn't occur.

During overnight the app stopped working once but the log didn't show a high CPU usage. 

In this case we'd suggest you head here and contact our support team. The folks there can check your account and investigate this further.

If you need anything else, the Community is here for you.

[Ver]

Hey,

We just wanted to jump in to share more info on the matter 🙂

We've investigated this further and were able to identify what might be causing this.

We're happy to say that this should now be fixed.

In case someone else has their app crash reporting too much CPU usage, feel free to post in the thread to let us know.

Cheers! 

[MattSuda]

iOS app version 8.6.60 and above should greatly improve this issue. I haven't had the app crash since updating.