External monitors disconnect when opening Spotify

[jackspencer]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Operating System

Windows10

My Question or Issue

Whenever Spotify is active my monitors will constantly disconnect and reconnect (and my bluetooth mouse). This happens with the web player, the desktop app, and on webpages with embedded Spotify songs. 

[PatMathews]

Yordan, you guys need to remove the "soplved" status from this asap.

[MikesMusicSpot]

Spotify employee Rodrigo said, evidently completely in jest:

TECH #4:  Thanks for getting back to us. This is Rodrigo, also from the Escalations team and I'll be stepping in for this one. I totally understand how you're feeling about this, and I do want to assure you that this is being reviewed by the relevant team as of this moment. I'll be sure to get back to you as soon as I hear any updates. But for now, I'd like to confirm that I can't provide a specific timeframe. With that said, I'm hoping for your continued patience and understanding while they're checking on this. Hope this gets sorted out soon.  Should other questions occur to you, reach out to us, okay?

---

In FACT, these and other Spotify problems have been discussed worldwide for years on and off Spotify forums. Spotify thinks they're fooling us by feigning, often even CLAIMING ignorance of these and other problems. Again, it took me a year to get them to add my cell phone to my 5-device premium membership otherwise serving only one device. They are a despicable, abusive and greedy company, and until enough of us replace them with better competitors (there are several; Google best online streaming music services) to impact their bottom line, they will continue to play dumb and take our money. Tidal won hands down in a head-to-head comparison with Spotify, and that's without even addressing Spotify's universally condemned, self-denied, often devastating impact on its customers' devices. Our new incoming Border Czar put it very well when he addressed the Mexican cartels as we should address Spotify: "You're done. YOU'RE DONE!" (Personally, I wish he had added another word between his last two.)

Rodrigo, I suggest you start looking for another employer. Your present one is riding into the sunset without sunglasses.

[meppyman]

I actually cancelled my Spotify subscription because of this... Mine is monitor 3 HDMI, my tow DP monitors are fine. It just blanks out briefly all the time I am listening to music, even when Spotify is minimised. I am guessing not enough people have the problem for them to care.

So, looking for workarounds before I cancel sub once again as I am already annoyed with it after subbing again today.

Will try DP to HDMI cable.

[#5]

Hey, I'm using three monitors, and one of them turns off when I start the Spotify app. This issue happens with both the desktop app (Windows 11) and the web app. Could you please investigate it?

[Sheepdemon]

Plan

Premium

Country

United Kingdom

Device

PC (Web Player)

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

When I use Spotify Web Player on my Laptop, which is connected to 2 x External Monitors via a USB-C docking station, the monitors will randomly blank out after a period of time.  Sometimes this happens multiple times in a short amount of time (I've seen this happen upwards of 5 times an hour) and sometimes it happens only one or two times a day.  The laptop MUST be connected to the base via the USB-C connection, and the two external monitors are connected using Display Port cables.  This is a work setup so cannot be modified.

From scratching around various posts on here I've discovered that this may be caused by the DRM included in Spotify for playing Video, and is due to the HDCP signal not being something something technical stuff (there is another thread on it here : Solved: External monitors disconnect when opening Spotify - The Spotify Community).

I've yet to find an acceptable/workable solution for my setup, I cannot change the cables, the method of hooking up the laptop etc, or anything else to do with this work setup.  I could possible use the desktop app if it becomes necessary, however I believe from reading other threads that this is the case on the app too.

Is there really no way to force the app to not play/show video, or any other way to stop this screen blanking problem?

[Garbor]

Started having this issue out of the blue 3 weeks ago, only figured out Spotify was causing the monitors to shutdown/tear when a music with an animated canvas started playing. Now whenever i switch to any other playlist/page i get the same issue. Turning Hardware Acceleration off did not solve the issue, I'm currently running a 5 monitor setup (3 DP, 1 HDMI, 1 Wireless) and only the "secondary" monitors shut down. Since Spotify is clearly ignoring this issue, guess this is my push to cancel the family plan since i already pay for Youtube Premium.

[#8]

I am using the Spotify App on Windows 10.
(Spotify für Windows (64 Bit) 1.2.50.335.g5e2860a8)

My setup contains 3 displays (the notebooks display included, my notebooks display is not the main display - but i scaled the size of Text, Apps and others to 125%, this sometimes causes problems with other apps).

The other two displays are connected via HDMI and DP - nothing special - both full resolution and no scaling whatsoever.

I experience a slow flickering (turning dark and back on again over a period of approx 1 second) on the one external (hdmi) display, which is not the main display. This flickering occurs (not always) either when the Song changes or the Spotify App comes up ...

[aceoforder]

Hi Spotify team,

I am experiencing this issue. I've replaced my DisplayPort cables with HDCP-compliant cables and I *still* get this issue.

If I close the Spotify app, all good. No violent flickering.

I just rebooted my computer, Spotify auto-started and BOOM, violent flickering. I can 100% confirm the findings here that whatever Spotify has implemented for DRM or such is ruining my desktop experience.

This is not fantastic. When I work from my home PC, I would VERY much like to have Spotify open and giving me music.

We need some workarounds from Support. Is this actively undergoing development effort to address? Is Spotify talking to Microsoft about this issue? Can we be provided the ability to disable these dang looped videos so my environment calms down?

Please. I did purchase cables as suggested here, and the issue remains. This would be the reason to cancel Spotify Premium if there are no substantial updates, because wowie zowie is this a problem.

[MikesMusicSpot]

Spotify clearly, demonstrably, and blatantly doesn’t give one hoot in **bleep** about this or any other problems their customers have. That won’t change until enough of us vote with our pocketbooks. I’ve 95% solved the flicker and ghosting on MY machines, but since that’s just one problem with their (non)service, I’m outta here with my $12.95 per month as soon as I verify that all my playlists, FREE OF SPOTIFY’S ^&*@%$(#$%%^& RECOMMENDED SONGS AND MIXES, are secure in my cloud and on my devices. There are too many excellent, sometimes better, Spotify clones readily available to put up with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s arrogance. He’s Got His $4.8 billion, though, and a LOT of us will have to quit before he’ll care.

OTOH, how do ya eat an elephant? $12.95 at a time.

[Dedsdidgdn]

So I just inadvertently found another instance of this happening in Windows 10. Try playing an MP3 from your computer using Windows Media Player. BOOM same issue, same symptoms. I uninstalled it.

Once the flickering and sound popping etc. have started, they won't stop until you restart the computer, which I had to do even after uninstalling Windows Media Player as it was still flickering my display. SO Windows seems to be at the root of this problem. Even after uninstalling Windows Media Player, I had to restart my computer for the problem to stop.

I later tested the same MP3 file with VLC and Winamp, and got no problems. The audio played fine and my display did not act like it was possessed.

[KinTheRanger]

This is maddeningly disappointing. 

Just let us completely disable the video. I'm going to try a third part front end, and then cancel my family account if that's not successful.

[hast_do_angst]

Agreed, I have youtube for videos. Don't need that in my music player, if you are going to invest in something new then give us lossless audio instead...

[Binkenstein]

I have the same problem on my work laptop. Thunderbolt 4 connection to a dock, two identical monitors connected (one via DisplayPort to HDMI, the other a straight HDMI cable) but it is now regularly blanking out both external monitors. Nvidia control panel reports that both monitors are HDCP compliant too.

My only work around is to disconnect and reconnect the dock, or to go back to an earlier version of the desktop client. If this can't be fixed by Spotify then I'll cancel my subscription and go elsewhere.

[dermoritz]

I have the same problem: starting spotify -> screen goes off. The same happens if it starts a new title and spotify is in front.

My current solution is to pull the hdmi cable (aout from my lenovo thunderbolt 4 dock) and put it back in.

[mobomoga]

Hi there, i have been with spotify subscriber for YEARS (maybe since 2016?), and this is making me switch to youtube music. I am not changing my three monitor DisplayPort cables because you can't make users completely disable videos on the PC app.
Thanks for nothing i guess.

[Dedsdidgdn]

Great recommendation about Youtube music! I recently signed up for Youtube premium and didn't realize that this is a feature. This isn't causing any issues with my monitor so I can free myself from Spotify!

[hannelore123]

Got this problem too. In my case with a Lenovo Thunderbolt USB C hub under Windows 10. Also changed from HDMI to DP but didn't fix the issue.
Maybe we are thinking too much about the video stream since we know the monitor is causing the issue. But maybe it's more the audio stream to the monitor that I think spotify wants to protect and if the hub doesn't support it or can't handle it properly, we get these crazy issues.

MY 2 SOLUTIONS (under Windows):

Both solutions aim at the same fix, but 2 ways to get there:

Via sound settings:
Disable all audio playback devices connected to your display. Mostly they are called something like Nvidia High Definition Audio, Intel Display Audio etc. Click the speaker icon in the right corner -> Sounds -> Playback -> [Disable all screen audio devices].
This solution will not work if you need your screen audio somehow, because it disables the screen audio at all.

Via Device Manager:
Open Device Manager -> Go to Sound, Video and Game Controllers -> Disable Nvidia High Definition Audio, Intel Display Audio, etc (any output connected to your display via USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.).

After that you can trigger the screen crashes and blinking issues by clicking the home button in the spotify app and then if it doesn't crash just start playing some music. Normally after disabling the screen audio stuff it should stop (in my case)

[hannelore123]

Sry, I mean the audio part of the data stream via HDMI/DP which Spotify has an issue with. There is no separated audio stream on a HDMI cable etc. 

[ckuhn84]

Thank you for the alternative front-end recommendation - that works like a charm. 

[codesmith77]

This has been a issue for me for over a year now (maybe longer), when is this dogsh1t app going to be fixed? Also your apple tv app is the worst POS ever with extremely degraded functionality. You charge a lot of money, and keep raising prices at unsustainable rates of increase. Fix your broken software already!