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CarPlay and Spotify...a match made in HELL

CarPlay and Spotify...a match made in HELL

Apple's CarPlay has been out for awhile now, but Spotify hasn't seemed to address any of the major issues I and I'm sure many of you have encountered.  I primarily use Spotify in my car to replace using the builtin music player. I purchased my AVH-4000NEX for the sole purpose of CarPlay and the Spotify integration. Unfortunately in it's current form these 2 don't seem to play well with each other at all, and the experience is often frustrating and borders on being unusable at times. I currently am running the latest firmware update from Pioneer (1.0.8) I believe, and have that paired with an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1.3.

 

Here are the problems I've encountered. Feel free to add yours and let's see if Spotify reads these boards and will do something about it

 

1. Trying to open Spotify from CarPlay results in app freezing (happens fairly frequently)

 

2. Selecting playlists and tracks from CarPlay results in huge lag or becomes completely unresponsive (happens fairly frequently)

 

3. Music shows as playing but no sound is output. Have to close app on phone and restart. Sometimes that works, or have to shut down phone completely and restart (happens every once in awhile)

 

4. Most annoying and most common problem: Almost every time Spotify connects with CarPlay, it randomly starts playing music from the YourMusic playlist, instead of continuing to play from where it left off. This is beyond annoying as re-selecting the desired playlist results in many songs playing over and over again. Just make it continue playing where it left off. (Occurs 99% of the time Spotify connects with CarPlay)

 

5. Lastly sometimes the app just flat out crashes in the middle of tracks, and restarts the phone.

 

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6. Won't stay paused; cuts off Siri by resuming play on its own.

Thanks for the reports of this, I have escalated the CarPlay issues to the Spotify team, I will let you know when there is an update.

I hope so! This is an unmitigated disaster and is downright dangerous to use while driving. It's enough to make me consider bailing to Apple Music when it debuts.

Hey everyone. Staff here. Thanks for reporting.

 

Could you please give a clean reinstall of Spotify a try and let us know if this improved things?

 

Also, could use to know the following @BenjaminP

 

  • Your Spotify version
  • Firmware version 
  • Steps to reproduce

Once we have this, we'll get it looked into. 

 

I sent a feedback report at the suggestion of @SpotifyCares.  My case number is 03092907.

 

I have app version 3.2.0 on an iPhone 5S, with iOS 8.3.

 

Steps to reproduce the issue?  Plug in phone to Apple CarPlay and tap Spotify.  From that point, it all breaks down.

 

1) tap to play but the screen goes blank with just the play button and nothing plays yet on the phone, the timeline is progressing like it is playing

2) when pausing or accessing Siri, Spotify will start playing on its own again (which disconnects Siri)

3) a playlist will be interrupted mid-song and begin play from the entire library

4) playlists not loading

5) unresponsiveness and crashing of CarPlay

 

These issues are DANGEROUS to fool with while driving, which makes the service unusable.  It is deal breaking for me, if not addressed.

Hey Benjamin,

 

I have the same problem like what you are mentioning with the same config on my Iphone 5s.

 

Do you have any new level of awareness with your issue?

 

@__spo__: Is there a solution within eyeshot?

 

André


@BenjaminP wrote:

@I sent a feedback report at the suggestion of @SpotifyCares.  My case number is 03092907.

 

I have app version 3.2.0 on an iPhone 5S, with iOS 8.3.

 

Steps to reproduce the issue?  Plug in phone to Apple CarPlay and tap Spotify.  From that point, it all breaks down.

 

1) tap to play but the screen goes blank with just the play button and nothing plays yet on the phone, the timeline is progressing like it is playing

2) when pausing or accessing Siri, Spotify will start playing on its own again (which disconnects Siri)

3) a playlist will be interrupted mid-song and begin play from the entire library

4) playlists not loading

5) unresponsiveness and crashing of CarPlay

 

These issues are DANGEROUS to fool with while driving, which makes the service unusable.  It is deal breaking for me, if not addressed.


 

I just spent a weekend on the road with my new Pioneer with CarPlay and my updated iphone 6.  Every other app worked just fine but the Spotify is 100% unusable.  

Luckily, I lhad access to iTunes and Pandora which both worked well. 

 

This is a big problem for Spotify and I hope they fix it soon.

t-minus 2 days till I ditch Spotify and head over to Apple Music.  Good job working on that app Spotify!

Hey guys!

Can you try starting Spotify before connecting to the car and see if that improves things? Also, what version are you running? We believe this is fixed in 3.4.0.

Particularly this helps. You are right, it works, if you start Spotify before connecting to carplay. But only once a time. The second and third try didn't work anymore. In my opinion a poos solution which is not workable for me. However, thanks for that.

I will move to Apple Music.

 

I am on version 3.4.0.684

 

It works, but only sometimes, and there's no rhyme or reason to it.  It definitely is not right and certainly compares unfavorably to how other apps work.

 

Absolutely not "fixed" yet.

 

We have been working to improve the Spotify experience on CarPlay. It has been difficult as we are not easily able to reproduce the issues that many have described here and some issues are related to the car radio and iOS. However, we believe we have fixed many of the issues around playback not starting with the Spotify version 3.6.0 release available in the app store today (some improvements were already made for version 3.5.0 as some users on this thread have already noted). We are also working on more improvements, such as audio playing over a phone call.

 

We are sorry for the inconvienence and trouble that many of you have experienced. Please try out version 3.6.0 and post any feedback here. For issues, please list the phone, OS version, car radio, Spotify version, and very detailed steps to reproduce the problem.

 

Known issues that are outside of Spotify's ability to improve:

No Siri integration - Please request to Apple to enable 3rd party apps like Spotify to access to Siri APIs

Spotify Menu will sometimes appear halfway down the screen

Thumbnail icons are not always loaded

Sometimes there's no audio after connecting to CarPlay. This happens with other audio apps as well. Reconnecting the phone to the CarPlay HU solves the issue.

Updated Spotify yesterday, and every time I open the app, whether that be from the phone or from Car Play stereo, it crashes within seconds. The update has made the app completely useless for me.

 

iPhone 5

iOS 9.0 (13A4305g)

Pioneer SPH-DA120

Spotify 3.6.0

 

I appreciate that the latest release may not be fully compaitble with iOS 9 yet, but at least the previous version wasn't crashing every time I opened the app. I'm unsure whether or not I can downgrade now, but if I can't then I'll likely have to move over to Apple Music for the time being as the Spotify App won't even stay open now.

Hi Dee Dee, Thank you for reporting the issue. We have just started compatibility testing with iOS9 and will look into this immediately.

IMG_0051.jpg

This is still happening. This is my issue #1 from previous page: tap to play but the screen goes blank with just the play button and nothing plays yet on the phone, the timeline is progressing like it is playing

 

I've got the latest everything for iOS, Spotify, CarPlay, head unit firmware, yadda yadda yadda.

I can confirm that: Whenever I plug in my phone in with the Spotify app already running, playback on CarPlay just doesn't work until I close the app on the phone and start it again using CarPlay.

Same here. I frequently have to force close the Spotify app, and then re-open it from my Car Play stereo for it to work correctly. Sometimes the app doesn't play music for the first time it's opened via Car Play, even when it's not open in the background. Having to force close the app from the phone isn't really safe whilst driving. I wish Spotfiy would address this issue.

I have the same issue... when I start Spotify I have to select the playlist and start the music from the iPhone.

The screen on the car display goes black... very few times I get the menu where I can select the playlists, but most of the time just a black screen.

 

Working with iPhone 5 running iOS 9.2 Spotify 4.6.0.1466 and it's running on a new Apple Carplay in a VW Sharan I just bought 3 weeks ago.

Same problems for me!

 

Got a new VW Sharan since 2 weeks and it wont play from the CarPlay menu. When i start songs from my iPhone 6s, then it plays music but with blank screen. When i click on "listening", then i see the song title and the cover.

 

But: this bug is the same with DEEZER - so it has to be a problem with the interface streaming service-->CarPlay

 

Hope you can fix it very soon..!

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