Radio stuck on loading symbol - ios 5.1.1

[speptobie]

The spotify radio will not load on my iphone 4s running 5.1.1 nor will it give me the chance to search within the Radio tab of the app.  I'm running on AT&T 4G

I have tried with no success:
Launch radio from playlist

Launch radio from single song

Close all background apps

Re-install on the iphone

Hard Reset of the iphone

The app will play my playlists and other search music with no problem but the Radio just doesn't want to get passed the loading screen.  The radio works fine on my wife's iphone.

[Gekkosan]

@BanA

Well, I am in Puerto Rico, where we live under the perpetual ambiguity that sometimes we're considered part of the US, and sometimes we're considered some weird and unknown alien nation. In any event, the radio did work for me for a while, and then suddenly after a recent update, it started displaying that problem that everyone's complaining about here.

I have a vague, but hard to prove hunch, that there could be some sort of compatibility or interference issue with Pandora...

[GurraGustaf]

I'm not using Pandora and never have. So it shouldn't be that. Unless my installation is conflicting with some other app...

[BenA]

Curious. I wonder if for some reason they are going a "jurisdiction" check for the radio app that they are not doing for the regualr streaming. Perphaps due to a licensing restriction. 

The 3rd party Spoton IOS app works for me for now, but i get the impression the native app has better features for radio. Either way, I would like to try it so it would great if they could tell us why this is.

As an alterntaive, RDIO is an alternative I'm thinking about if they dont fix or address this soon. 

[moogleiiforum]

Not working for me either. Has never worked under iOS 5. I'm on 6 beta now. I know their kneejerk response will be to dismiss that, but seeing their response to issues under 5.x...not really convinced. Also, does not work on my Windows install. Does work on my OSX box. All instances are using the latest version. 

[Meisaj]

So i just got back from vacation really annoyed that I couldn't use the spotify radio in my car on the trip and that they could offer no suggestions.

I actually got an e-mail from them one last time in addition to the contact I had earlier in my previous post. The email had a link in it that lead to the spotify app on iTunes. Because for some reason I must be complaining about the radio part of their app not working without having it installed or checking for updates. Regardless thought I deleted Spotify off my phone and installed using their link, unsurprisingly it didn't work. What was the kicker for me was this line in the email: 'I am very sorry that we ask you to do this again but this will finalise the work we have done on your account.'

So redownloading the app, something I had already said I had tried was going to work this time, but not only that, everything has been finalized and the wok on my account is done. That killed me. What a crappy email to get from tech support.

Anyways, I came home from vacation and decided to do something desperate to see if I could fix it. I reset my iPhone through iTunes on my computer an set it up as a new phone rather than from my backup. I believe someone earlier in this thread suggested that. It worked, but it is an immense pain in the ass, and having to completely reset your phone from scratch shouldn't an isn't a real solution. That's like wiping a computer hard drive when a program freezes. I wish they would take this issue seriously. Even a 'We're working on a solution for the next update but don't have a fix now' would've have sounded better than 'this will finalize the work we've done on your account.'

It really left me with a bad impression of their help department.

[Meisaj]

I should amend that first statement; they offered no suggestions that worked.

[nemws1]

The radio worked for me the first day I tried it (about a month ago), for about 10 minutes, then stopped working.  Finally decided to look into it last night.

I used the Mac App "Phone View" to go and look in the Spotify App directory and removed any files with the name "radio" in them.  There were three.  2 were SQLite database files and one was a PNG.

The two SQLite databases will be named "sp_radio.(big hex string).localstorage"  One was in Application Support/LocalStorage and the other wus under Webkit if I remember correctly.  The PNG was named "screenshot-radio".  Sorry, I'll follow-up with more details/paths when I get back home again.

At any rate, removing these files DID get my radio working again!

[Gekkosan]

Nice work Nemws1. I can't help but feel a sense of "borrowed shame" that it's the users doing this level of troubleshooting and not the developers.

[JayMars]

I'm also having this problem. It will not start over 3G. It starts over WiFI fine, then continues on 3G if you turn the WiFi off though. I tried Nemws1's method to no avail. I restored my phone (because of a separate issue, not Spotify) but that did not help and restoring the phone should not have to be an option.

I will cancel my Premium account if this isn't resolved soon, not because I find the program useless without radio, but because of the poor support being displayed.

[MikeAK]

This is most certainly not solved.  I still have this problem, and logging out does not help.  Spotify Radio works on wifi but not on 3G with iphone 4, iOS 5.1.1.  Is Spotify addressing this issue?  It seems like a lot of people are experiencing it.

[Liam]

---

@MikeAK wrote:

This is most certainly not solved.  I still have this problem, and logging out does not help.  Spotify Radio works on wifi but not on 3G with iphone 4, iOS 5.1.1.  Is Spotify addressing this issue?  It seems like a lot of people are experiencing it.

---

The solution was accepted as it answered why it wasn't there.

I have un-marked it for now, to avoid confusion.

I am unaware is this issue is being addressed.

[CitenX]

iFunBox works well for windows. However, I still can't find the png. I'll keep looking.

Deleting the sqlLite dbs had no effect, though. 

[Isko]

Hey Spotify tech dept, get your act together.  I'm a free user interested in upgrading to premium service, but no way I'll do that until the app performs flawlessly on iPhone.  As of now, it's not working . . . again.

[nemws1]

Make sure that Spotify is *NOT* running on your IOS device before you run PhoneView to delete the SQLite databases (if not, the bad copies won't actually go away, since Spotify will have them open and will likely re-write the bad SQLite databases back to the device when it quits).

I wouldn't think deleting the PNG would have any effect, but it might be more important that deleting the SQLite databases (who knows).  I'm writing down a note to myself right now to check this when I get home and will post the exact paths tonight.

[ejschenck]

The issue ISN'T being addressed. 

I was ECSTATIC that they added the Radio feature to iOS and was jusssst about to become a premium subscriber when I reazlied it just sat there and did the spin...

I emailed tech support and was told that a) it was my fault because I'm running iOS 6 and b) they didn't even plan on LOOKING at the problem until iOS 6 was released to the public...

...OK... the concept here is that you fix your buggy app BEFORE iOS 6 goes live and you look like a bunch of boobs.  Except, their customer service PROVED they are boobs because this issue isn't JUST an iOS 6 issue - it's everyone.

[nemws1]

Okay, here is my process for getting the radio function working again (this fixed my "forever spinning wheel of nothingness" problem when trying to access the Radio function).  Not sure if this will help the 6.0 users out at all or those with WiFi/3G working/not working issues.

1) Kill Spotify on your device.  Go to the application switcher and make sure it is dead.

2) Connect your device to your workstation and run an application that lets you modify the filesystem.  I'm using PhoneView on a Mac.  When I select the Spotify app, I see the following:

Documents/
Library/
Spotify.app/
iTunesArtwork
iTunesMetadata.plist
tmp/

Everything we want to kill is in the Library directory.  Delete the following 3 files, make sure to find the file first, since the hex digits and your username will be specific to you:

./Library/Application Support/LocalStorage/sp_radio.bunch_of_hex_digits_0.localstorage
./Library/Application Support/PersistentCache/Users/your_spotify_username-user/screenshot-radio
./Library/WebKit/LocalStorage/sp_radio.bunch_of_hex_digits_0.localstorage

3) Quit PhoneView (or whatever app you're using)

4) Launch Spotify on your device and try to Radio function.

Worked for me, but YMMV.

[JayMars]

No Webkit in my Spotify folder. I.m not sure how/if this matters but what phone and firmware do you have?

[nemws1]

iPhone 4 and I think 5.0.1.

[demeeder]

Thanks for the detailed write-up nemws1.  This, however, did not work on my phone (5.0.1, iPhone4, Jailbreak).  I had a single attempt a few weeks ago work (before doing the deletions mentioned above), but for sometime before and since then I have had no radio on the iPhone.  What a shame.

[nemws1]

What is the symptom? Spinning wheel of no responsiveness? No audio on wifi and/or 3G?