PLEASE HELP: Spotify Connect stopped working

[chaddjohnson]

I'm in the United States on the Spotify Premium plan, and I can no longer control any of my speakers (Amazon Echo, Yamaha Receiver) using Spotify Connect from any devices (iPhone Xs, MacBook Pro, Web Player). Everything was working two days ago, and then suddenly it just stopped working for no reason. When I choose either device from the Devices menu, it just says Connecting... and never plays anything.

I've ensured the following:

• All devices are on the same WiFi network
• Your Spotify app is up-to-date
• All devices’ software is up-to-date

And tried the following:

• Restart the Spotify app
• Close any other apps you’re not using
• Restart your devices
• Restart your WiFi

I've looked on Twitter and through the Community site, and no one else seems to be experiencing this issue.

Please help.

[Amayy]

Hi there, thanks for asking in the community. I see you are having issues with Spotify Connect. There are few steps you could try to fix this easily:

1. Go to Spotify.com, go to your account
2. Scroll down and click on Sign Out Everywhere
3. This will log you out everywhere and you will need to download your content offline again
4. After this, uninstall the Spotify App and re-install
5. Sign in and check if it is working as expected

Let us know how it goes!

[chaddjohnson]

No bueno. This did not help.

I'm noticing that I can choose either speaker in the Devices menu in the Spotify app. If I choose my receiver, I can then control playback using my receiver's remote, but I am unable to control playback using the Spotify app on my iPhone or on my MacBook. This also happens with the web player. I see this:

 

When I click the Play button in Spotify on my MacBook after selecting the speaker device, I get a blue message that says, "Spotify can't play this right now. If you have the file on your computer you can import it."

I can't believe I'm the only person complaining about this. I can't enjoy my music anymore on my speakers. Makes me want to cancel my subscription and leave Spotify because Spotify is providing absolutely zero support for this despite me being a long-time loyal paying customer.

This is SO FRUSTRATING. I'm a paying customer, Spotify. Offer some actual support. FIX YOUR BUGS. Stop ignoring your customers.

[P_Devil]

I’m having the exact same issue on my iPhone 13 Pro Max (iOS 15.4), iPad Pro 11” (iPadOS 15.4), a Windows 11 desktop, and a Windows 11 notebook. I can control the playback of my devices (like my PCs) from my phone but I can’t get Spotify Connect to connect with my Echo or Sonos speakers. I’ve completely signed out and uninstalled the app from every device, logged out of Spotify from the Sonos app, and disabled the Spotify skill in Alexa. I go through the trouble of installing and setting things up again and it doesn’t work with my Echo or Sonos speakers. I can’t even get Alexa to playback Spotify with voice commands to selecting from their displays.

Spotify plays fine in my devices, I just can’t play to or control my speakers from them.

[somedatapacket]

Same. I have a Sony STRDN1080 with the latest firmware, and any device that tries to connect to it just sits on “connecting” then fails. Issue just started this week.

[P_Devil]

One thing I noticed today is that Spotify Connect works with any songs, album, or playlist under 10,000 songs. The My Likes playlist has almost 12,000 songs in it and will refuse to play on my Echo speakers or work with Spotify Connect. It’s almost like Spotify Connect and Alexa are adhering to the old 10,000 song limit.

I’ve tried all my devices and they work just fine using Spotify Connect for everything but the My Likes playlist. There could be a bug revering to the old limit or it could be that Spotify Connect, the Alexa api, and the Sonos app were never updated to incorporate this change.

[Eni]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for your replies. 

@chaddjohnson, would you mind letting us know if the same happens using a different internet connection? Also, we'd recommend logging out and then logging back in two times in a row in your devices. It sounds a bit odd, but it forces a sync between the account and your devices. 

@P_Devil, thanks for letting us know. Could you let us know if this has always happened with your Liked Songs playlist or if it has started happening after a specific event such as an update?

@somedatapacket,  it's well worth running a clean reinstall to get rid of any cached files that might be causing trouble. This one is more thorough than the usual one.  In case the issue persists, we recommend trying with a different network, for example creating a hotspot on your phone and using that.

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[P_Devil]

Hello, it only happened after my liked songs playlist reached over 10,000 songs. Every other playlist, album, artist, and song works. It just has issues when I want to shuffle my liked songs.

Alexa doesn’t work with that playlist either, neither does my Chromecast 4K (most recent model). I can’t get the Google Assistant to play that playlist, the Spotify app refuses to play it, and I can’t play it through Casting or Spotify Connect on my various devices.

The issue appears with my liked songs playlist. I went ahead and un-liked enough songs to get the playlist below 10,000 songs and it worked just fine. It’s having more than 10,000 songs that’s causing the issue.

Luckily, I can play my liked songs playlist back on my phone, tablet, and Windows systems but I can’t get Alexa, my Chromecast, Google Cast, or Spotify Connect to work with it (the playlist doesn’t show up in the Sonos app so I haven’t been able to test it there).

I can live with it, for now, but am annoyed at this point that I can finally have more than 10,000 songs liked but am still limited with playback.

[duncati]

Add my wife and I to the growing list of customers having this problem. Spotify Connect has worked great for years but stopped playing music on my receiver about 4-5 app updates ago. We kept hoping the next update would fix itself with no luck.

Both my Android and my wife's iPhone lost this functionality a month or so ago. I have tried every posted solution including @Eni 's latest, logging out and in twice. I have also reinstalled the app, reset my network, etc.

The app _is_ connecting to my receiver (an Arcam 550). The app succeeds in turning the receiver on indicating the two are communicating on the network. However when I attempt to play a song nothing audibly happens. The app play button image changes briefly to a pause image before switching back to play (an indication that the play attempt failed).

@Eni do you have any other ideas? Pass this on to the development team, a bug was introduced within the last few app updates.

Unrelated, this is my second attempt to reply to this post. This was the result of my first attempt:

An Unexpected Error has occurred.

• Your request failed. Please contact your system administrator and provide the date and time you received the error and this Exception ID: 37FF74E2.

  Click your browser's Back button to continue.

[Alex]

Hey @P_Devil,

Thanks for the reply and for the troubleshooting you've gone though. 

We've reached out about this internally to check when this limitation has been introduced. Could you clarify if your 10,000+ Liked Songs don't play on when you want to Shuffle them or also when you start the playlist in order?

@duncati, thanks for reaching out about this. Can you try connecting your phone and the receiver to a mobile hotspot WiFi from your phone and try playing that way? Like this we can check if the issue is network related at all. 

Keep us posted on how you get on.

[P_Devil]

It doesn’t matter how I play my liked songs playlist, it won’t load in Spotify Connect, Alexa, and I tried the Google Assistant on my Chromecast 4K. I can try playing it in order or shuffling, the playlist refuses to load. It plays fine directly in the app on my phone, tablet, and PCs. Just not when casting, using Spotify Connect, or on assistants/streaming devices. My Chromecast did pick up that I was playing something on my phone and, when I selected the song, it didn’t load. That was when playing my liked songs playlist. Anything else worked and transferred just fine.

I did try playing/shuffling the playlist using the Google Assistant on my iPhone and it was fine (same with a Chromebook I have access to). There’s just something about speakers and media streaming devices that it doesn’t work. I also tried playing the playlist on my Apple TV 4K and Samsung smart TV, it just hangs like everything else once the playlist gets to over 10,000 songs.

I also have access to another Spotify account, the free tier. It only has 2000 songs in it’s liked songs playlist. Everything works great with it. I started adding more songs and, just like before, Spotify Connect, streaming devices, and Casting has issues once it reaches over 10,000 songs (exactly at 10,001 songs). I don’t think it’s related to just my account (or my two accounts).

[duncati]

Hi, thanks for offering the mobile hotspot idea. Unfortunately, my receiver
does not have wifi capabilities so that is a no go.

I wiresharked the network communication and I can see the Spotify app
communicating with the receiver over the physical network. Specifically, I
see the app subscribing to the following UPNP/DLNA services:

* AVTransport
* ConnectionManager
* RenderingControl

The receiver in turn replies 200 OK to each subscription. Otherwise there
is no other communication. I do not see the app using the AVTransport
service to start playing a song. FWIW it appears that the Arcam 550 uses
Version 1.0 of Spotify Connect, which is sent over mDNS. It is worth noting
I am a developer with experience writing UPNP applications. So I can be
your QA department. 🙂

[somedatapacket]

Looks like @duncati is confirming with evidence what I’m also experiencing. I did all the app cache clearing and logging out as requested and unsurprisingly the issue still exists.

[somedatapacket]

Spotify support eventually blamed Sony for the issue despite nothing having changed in Sony's implementation. I filed a ticket with them anyway to advise them that Spotify changed something and broke Connect for at least Sony and Arcam devices, as seen above...

[Lewkiw]

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada

Device

iphone 12

Operating System

iOS

My Question or Issue

Okay, this has been going on for over two years now.  I have a liked song playlist of 9700 or so songs.  If I try to play this from iOS, nothing happens.  No error message, nothing, the playbar simply disappears.  This is on a Naim Muso and on Google Nest and on Google Home mini.  

By now, we all  know the issue is that Spotify tries to send the entire playlist to the device somehow, the device cannot handle it and bails. 

Annoyingly, it seems most of the Spotify help technicians don't know this, and will have you running around in circles re-installing the app, clearing your cache, switching to a different modem, etc.  None of this will help... it's been happening over two years on three different phones, two different modems, a million software updated, two cache clearings and even a WHOLE NEW ACCOUNT!!!!

When oh when will this be fixed?  I briefly moved to Apple music and this is NOT an issue with them.  I came back to Spotify as it is so much better in all regards except that I cannot play my songs!!!!! 

Spotify, why is this not a number one with a bullet issue to fix?

[Alex]

Hi folks,

Thanks for your replies.

We can confirm that Connect is not able to play playlists including Liked Songs if they contain around 10, 000 tracks +. We've passed your feedback about this on to the teams at Spotify who are working on improving this in the future. For now we can't say for sure if this will be improved and when.

We'll keep you updated here as soon as we have more news regarding the general issue with playing over Connect.

Cheers.

[Lewkiw]

This seems to have been written by a bot.  It does not work, it never works, it will never work.  Spotify itself knows there is a bug in the fact that the entire playlist is sent to the device when using Spotify Connect and this causes them to crash.  

This is exactly the kind of bad advice I was talking about in my post.  

[Lewkiw]

I mean, isn't this a really big hairy bug that should be a show-stopper?  Not being able to play your songs on a platform whose only purpose is to play your songs?  Come on, this bug has been around for years, and this is a really disappointing reply.  

[P_Devil]

That’s not the response I was looking for, especially since I was excited to use Spotify after the 10k song limit was lifted for the likes songs playlist.

I can get by for now and just not shuffle my liked songs on other devices. It would be nice if this was fixed. I know I’m in the “1%” (at least according to someone in Spotify that spoke about the 10k track limit years ago) but, for me, Spotify isn’t a complete music service until this is fixed. I’d really enjoy being able to download more than 10,000 songs but I would be happy with this being fixed.

[duncati]

There are two distinctly different bugs being discussed in this topic:

1) Spotify not playing music over Spotify Connect due to a new Spotify app
bug
2) Spotify not playing song lists >10,000 songs

My understanding is that the OP's issue is the first topic. I have the same
issue and have provided detailed technical details. The Spotify app is not
sending anything over the AVTransport Service to play a song.

Can someone from Spotify kindly address this issue?