Spotify problems

[Enigma667]

Hello, 

For the past week or so Spotify will only play around 10-15 seconds and then say it can't play this song at the moment. Now I know what your going to say and yes I have already spoken to Spotify and they say there is no problem their end and that VM has a routing problem which they need to look into. I can already see some one replying saying its a Spotify issue and I need to contact them, but this will just get passed back and forth with no one taking any responsibility for it.

[maciejd]

I have better luck but similar experience with the Android Phone.

So to answer your question, I get the same problems on 1x PC, 1x Work Laptop and 1x Private Laptop - all running most up to date Spotify. The problem is most noticeable during the day, and usually goes away after 8pm. It also goes away if I switch to encrypted off-site VPN.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @maciejd,

Thank you for getting back to us about this issue.

Can you tell us if your Laptop/ PC that allow you play Spotify okay are running on WiFi or on an Ethernet connection?

Please take a look at your Spotify settings > scroll down to Audio Quality > lower it to low quality, to see if this stops the interruptions.

Are you using the Spotify app or website?

Please get back in touch when you can.

Thanks,

[maciejd]

Can you please read previous replies?

I have tried on both cable & wireless, all quality settings, and both App & Website.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @maciejd,

Thanks for getting back to us about this. 

I have read the previous thread, and as I do not want to miss any details, I thought I'd ask again.

Are you having any similar issues with any other streaming devices?

If you're not having any issues with Spotify on your laptop or any other devices while using a WiFi connection, this could potentially be an issue with Spotify or your Spotify account. Especially if this is only impacting you on certain devices.

Please let us know what you think.

Thanks,

[maciejd]

Ok let me just go through everything again in one post, so it's all clear.

I keep saying I have problems with Spotify on ALL of my computers (1xPC and 2 laptops) where it stops playing songs randomly saying "Can't play this song at the moment", which often resumes automatically after a few seconds up to a minute (no error showing on Web player, although behaves the same). It's doing this over and over again, sometimes resulting in full stop of streaming. It doesn't matter what streaming quality I choose, it does this regardless.

I have tried WiFi and direct Ethernet cable to the VM Hub - no difference - same problem.

This occurs mostly in morning hours till late afternoon - I normally don't experience this after, let's say 9pm (I don't often listen Spotify between 4pm and 9pm).

If I connect any of problematic devices over encrypted VPN then Spotify plays OK. Spotify also plays OK over my EE Mobile Phone Hotspot on all those devices.

I don't have any problems with ANYTHING else other than Spotify. Including Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube and others.

I have spoken to Spotify about this and after about 90 minutes of troubleshooting, including multiple accounts, Spotify support suggested the issue may be with the IT Provider.

I cannot test modem mode as I am working during the day and cannot afford the downtime, and by the time I can test modem mode (which is after 9pm) I no longer experience the issues.

I don't think I can be more specific than this, but if you need clarification of any of the above, please ask.

[Laurie_C]

Hi maciejd,

Thank you for getting back to us and explaining in more detail, this really is appreciated. Could you try changing your DNS settings to 8.8.8.8.? If you need any more help with this, please let us know.

Kind regards,

Laurie

[maciejd]

Hi Laurie,

Whilst I didn't believe your message had much technical merit, I have tried it anyway, just to rule out. It has however worked in a way and pointed me in the right direction, identifying that the issue is with Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1, https://1.1.1.1/). I guess something must have happened about a month or so ago (perhaps usage surge) and I am having problems with Spotify during the day - it works OK in late afternoons / evenings / night (yesterday worked flawlessly from 4pm, hence my silence. 

I have now converted to OpenDNS and been playing Spotify without an issue for the past 2 hours.

One last question remains, is this something that Virgin Media & Cloudflare are looking into? I haven't had problems on VPN with DNS set to 1.1.1.1. Cloudflare offers more secure, private & fast browsing than Google & OpenDNS and I'd very much prefer to keep using Cloudflare.

Thanks for the help.

Maciej

[Laurie_C]

Hi maciejd,

I'm glad that I was able to help with this. It seems like this is an issue that other people are having, and that Spotify are investigating on their own forum page.

I don't believe that this is a problem that we are aware of at the moment, but I can certainly raise this for further investigation. Could you please confirm if you are using the Spotify Web Player using Google Chrome? If so, have you tried listening using another browser?

Kind regards,

Laurie

[maciejd]

I have tried on Google Chrome, Firefox and the new Edge. The results were always the same for me I am afraid.
I hope someone resolves this soon. Thanks again.

[ChuckMountain]

Thanks maciejd for highlighting this I am having exactly the same issue as you still 😞

Spotify in the morning will randomly stop playing and often state cannot play the current song, then sometimes it will just randomly start playing again.  In the evenings no issues with it.  This is the application and not the web player.

I am also using Cloudflare for DNS, though in this case the 1.1.1.3 variant.

This is the same across both wired desktops and laptops plus iPhones and as you say as soon as you connect to a VPN there are no issues.

It's really frustrating as it just has one job to do, play music so you can chill to it.  Not why the beep has it stopped again... 🙂

I also don't want to update my DNS settings on a permanent basis and as you say everything else works fine.

I haven't had chance to check where the spotify streams are actually coming from and if there is a material difference in using different DNSes, have you?

It would appear to be a network issue somewhere between my local cabinet and Spotify whether it being transparent caching or a weird routing as Cloudflare is bypassing the "preferred" route.

Did you manage to find anything further?