[iOS] Playback is silenced on a streamed track after a local track has played

[henrikwils]

On both iPhone and iPad with iOS 8.1 and Spotify 1.9.0.2744, the following situation occur very consistently:

1. playback of local synced track ends

2. playback of streamed track starts silenced

3. if playback is not interrupted, the silenced track, would stall after "playing"

Audio is brought back only upon searching/skipping.

One thing is weird though: When I tried to reproduce this problem, it became harder and harder for me to reproduce with the same tracks in a small playlist. Could it be related to something with caching? Bringing in "fresh" streaming tracks, immediately brings back the problem.

[116nic97]

Same here!! literally, EXACT SAME THING!! It's annoying.

[ice_nine]

Same exact issue for me.

I will add that it also occurs when I am in offline mode playing an offline track. So this scenario is:

0. be listening in offline or online mode

1. playback of local synced track ends

2. playback of offline track (previously synced, of course) starts silenced

3. if playback is not interrupted, the silenced track, would stall after "playing"

I have an iPhone 5s with iOS 8.1.2, spotify version 2.2.0.2464. All the music in this playlist comes from the iTunes store (so .m4a).

[James]

Hey everyone. 

Just checking - are you guys still having this issue? 

If so, could you please try reinstalling the app to see if that helps at all? Let us know how it goes 

[aninam]

 Hi James,

I have the same problem: Installed the app on my new iPhone 6 and playback of streamed song starts in silence after a local synced track ends.

[henrikwils]

Still an issue. Please fix it?

[Patthesplat]

More detail about how to recreate this issue from a forum posts made and repeated since mid 2013....

IMPORTANT POINT : This issue occurs after the SECOND spotify streaming track with at least one locally synced track in between during a playlist, and it ONLY occurs when "Available offline" has been selected.  If you want to recreate this issue you need to take that into account....

Still same issue - Iphone 5S upgraded to latest IOS and latest version.  I did quite a bit of testing on this back in July, and I am copying in here my findings of how to repeat this:

Create a playlist with:

Track 1 = A spotify only track

Track 2 = A local track (doesn't matter whether it's matched or not).

Track 3 = A spotify track.

It seems actually to be on the second played spotify track and after a local track that the freeze occurs.  First spotify track in the list plays fine.

If I remember correctly, someone called Victor who said he was from Spotify support was able to duplicate my test above.

NOTE:

- You must have the list switched to "available offline" for this issue to occur.

- You must play the list above without shuffle being on for this test to consistently show up the issue as it's the second spotify track after intervening local tracks that causes the issue.  If you have a long playlist with a combination of many local and spotify tracks in it, and you use shuffle, this will seem like random freezes.

- You must let the device play through the tracks normally.  If you skip forward to the 3rd track you will NOT see the issue.

- Once this issue occurs, on the screen you will most likely see the track ticking forward through the seconds as if it's actually playing, but no sound will come out.  If you use your finger to slide the play slider back to the beginning, it will then start playing normally.

- On my iphone 5S, I have found that this test only works when the screen is on.  If the sceen is off (blank) all tracks will play correctly.  However, I have seen the freeze occur later on in large playlists even with the screen off, so I think it's more repeatable in a short playlist with the screen on.  Other users on the thread challenged this and said that for them having screen on or off made no difference.  I tested this again yesterday and for me it was still the same and the screen on or off affected the test, at least if you are only using 3 tracks as described above.

The net effect of all this is that if you like to have playlists with lots of spotify and local tracks in them, you will experience "random" freezing.

I will add that there are some later posts where some users claimed that this is something to do with the way Apple Itunes is recording the duration of the song with decimal places, and that they found that songs where Itunes shows the song with a decimal places after the duration seem to trigger this issue.  I haven't been able to prove that this is the case, but most of my local tracks are in an Itunes library, so it's consistent with what they are saying.

[Patthesplat]

One point to add to this issue is that this issue has been around for nearly 2 years now.  It's not a new issue.  There are several threads discussing this on the IOS section of these boards going back nearly 2 years.

[larson7]

larson7

This is the first time I have encountered this. Thought their was something wrong with laptop connection to my speaker at first, until the next track played, As not being a tech wizard hope spotify solve this soon, I unistalled spotify then installed again which has helped a wee bit, but still have a few gremlins.

[bmilk]

I have this problem, and it's very annoying. I dont understand what you mean when you say local tracks and Spotify tracks... I only reproduce music from Spotify and I cannot listen my playlists in a continues way, even when I have a premium account and my cellphone is supported by android. I hope Spotify could solve this problem, and not only say that we should install again the app, because it doesn't work... I've done it almost ten times.