Some songs do not play

[chuna]

Plan

Premium

Country

Ireland

Device

Galaxy A70

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

I recently liked several songs, some of which but not all exhibit unusual behaviour:

-When tapped to play, nothing happens

-If something is playing, tapping these songs to play them stops all playback

[chuna]

Just did some more testing and its not limited to just newly liked songs, some of the oldest liked songs i have exhibit this behaviour

[chuna]

Fixed it by uninstalling and reinstalling application

[ksremesnik]

I've been having the same issue on Android for several weeks now. I've had to uninstall and reinstall my app twice now. Reinstalling the second time seems to have fixed it? But I'm concerned that I keep having to reinstall. This seems like a bug to me.

To elaborate on my problem: Many songs in my "liked" library show no response when clicked on. It seems related to whether the song also exists in a playlist I've made. If the song also exists in a playlist I made, then I can play it. Perhaps there's a caching issue? I do have a large "liked" playlist, coming in at 1234 songs right now. Am I stressing the limits of how many songs can be in a playlist? I can force a non-responsive song to play if I click a known "good song" first, then queue up a "bad song" after it and skip ahead through normal means. However I suspect the "bad songs" are not coming up in shuffle. When I hit the play button in my "liked" playlist, it will always start on the most recent "good song" which is currently 14 songs back from being the latest. If I hit play from a browser, it will start with the actual latest song. It's almost as if the app on my phone is not seeing the "bad songs" as playable. None of them are greyed out though.

For context I'm on a Google Pixel 6a and I only see this issue on my phone. I can listen via my browser normally.

[ksremesnik]

My experience also seems to match the post here as well: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/won-t-let-me-play-a-song-by-clicking-on-it/m-p/6264201

My previous attempt to fix this with reinstalling hadn't been successful either, so I'm not sure if reinstalling is a reliable solution.

[Dessi]

Hey @ksremesnik,

Thanks for reaching out and all the details!

Can you test this out with a different network if possible? Does this only happen with your Liked Songs playlist or with other ones as well? If you're using a VPN, it's worth disabling it to see if that makes a difference. It'd also be great if you can ask someone to log in their account on your phone to see if they experience the same.

A screen recording of the issue would be very much appreciated, so that we can have a closer look. If the file is too large to attach, you can upload it to Google Drive (make sure to allow general access to the file) or as an unlisted YouTube video.

We'll be on the lookout for your response.

[Sisentiq]

Hi Dessi,

Here is a screen recording of the issue on my android phone. Interestingly, the song plays when you navigate to the song's album and select it from there, but not in my Liked playlist.

Google drive link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/110FqG6wI2DT2uPLR716Gj9MNRlzuZlpX/view?usp=sharing

[Yordan]

Thanks for the screen recording @Sisentiq!

Have you folks tried un-liking then liking the songs back to see if that does the trick? Something else that's worth trying is clearing the app's cache.

Let us know how it goes.

[ksremesnik]

Hi Yordan,

Thank you for the response. To answer your questions:

---

Can you test this out with a different network if possible?

I've seen this happen on my home WiFi, the public library WiFi, and on my cell connection.

Does this only happen with your Liked Songs playlist or with other ones as well?

I've only observed it with my "Liked Songs" playlist.

If you're using a VPN, it's worth disabling it to see if that makes a difference.

I don't use VPN on my phone. I don't see this issue on the desktop application though.

It'd also be great if you can ask someone to log in their account on your phone to see if they experience the same.

I could give this a try... I do notice that my app takes up a lot of storage space for user data on my phone. 🤔

Have you folks tried un-liking then liking the songs back to see if that does the trick? Something else that's worth trying is clearing the app's cache.

I did try the "un-liking and re-liking" trick and curiously, it did not work. The songs that failed to play before continued failing to play (but only in my "Liked Songs" playlist. They played from the artist's page just fine...) I also tried clearing my app's cache but this didn't seem to have an effect either. Then I cleared all user data from the app's storage, which effectively logged me out. Upon logging back in, I can play those "broken" songs in my "Liked Songs" playlist. However, it's worth noting that this is the 3rd time I've had to log out and log back into my app to get my songs working again. And based on the time that's passed between my original response to this thread and today, it took about two weeks for this problem to re-emerge. So I don't think logging out and logging back in really fixes the situation so much as it resets it. I've attached a screenshot of my app data on Android in case that's useful.

[ksremesnik]

Just want to chime in to say this is pretty much exactly how the bug looks on my phone as well. I went to take a screen recording myself, but it's pretty much identical to this. Only other thing to note is that I can't queue up the broken songs after attempting to play them because the app throws an error saying it can't queue when nothing is playing. (the error didn't get captured in my screencapture video since it's part of the OS rather than the app, I think)

[AlejaR]

Hey @ksremesnik,

Thanks for all the detailed info you kindly sent to us.

Just to confirm, do you use any cache-clearing or task-killing apps? Take into account that these apps can affect the performance of the app. If you do, we suggest you set Spotify up as an exception. 

Now, we'd like to continue gathering further info. Just to confirm:

• Does this happen when running other apps in the background? We'd suggest you close everything aside from Spotify and try to see how it goes.
• Does this happen on a different mobile device? You can ask for the mobile device of a relative or a friend to open your account and check.
• Did you notice if this started to happen after a specific event such as an OS update?

Keep us in the loop!