A multitude of issues and problems with Android app - and a possible solution for me

[gowman]

I've been avoiding posting on this forum as I've been hoping that Spotify would sort out my issues via email as I'd searched the forums and there didn't seem to be any fixes for the problems I was having .

However, I first emailed Spotify on 14 June and it's now 2 July and, despite much back and forth, the app still does not work. 

Some of the many issues I've had with the app include: 

• It freezes when playing, sometimes it will play again after pressing pause, mostly not.
• Then it has been freezing my phone so have had to take battery out to restart.
• More often than not it will never play the first song I select on an album through to the end, it will stop playing. Sometimes it will play properly if I select the same song again, or a different track on the album. Not always though.
• If the phone goes from being connected to wifi to not being connected (and vice versa) Spotify will misbehave in any number of the ways (most of them similar to mentioned in previous three bullet point above) even when playing a previously downloaded album. Sometimes the album needs to be downloaded afterwards again. 
• After stopping using Spotify and using a different app, often my phone will freeze for 10 seconds or so, then a dialogue box will appear saying 'Sorry, but Spotify has unexpectedly had to close' (or very similar). Phone then works fine as Spotify no longer running.
• Pretty sure the Last.fm scrobbling doesn't work on my phone but really hard to tell as data entry boxes blank out when entering username and password

I've followed all the so-called fixes on offer here, from clearing cache before reinstall, to changing my password. None of this seems to work.

Some of the issues I really dislike about all this are:

• Spotify's refusal to admit the app doesn't seem to work very well
• Spotify's refusal to add error logs on the Google Play store, or even add a note as to say when the latest update was added, or what was fixed with the update.
• Spotify's refusal to say somewhere what's happening with updates, what progess is likely to be, that there is an issue with the Android app.
• The time it takes for Spotify support to reply to emails - if this was an energy supplier with this lack of speed of contact it would be a scandal.

Anyway, I've spent quite a long time trying to fix this problem myself and get Spotify to work on my phone, probably more than 10 hours. I've lost count of number of uninstalls and reinstalls I've gone through.

While doing this again tonight I was looking through a lot of the forum posts people were having and a number of times people mentioned the connection to Facebook and it being an issue. Thinking that maybe my problems stem from how Spotify interacts with another app, and with Facebook being the main one it interacts with, on a whim I've deleted the Facebook app (which is also buggy, slow to work and the previous most crappy major Android app before Spotify 4.0, which also looks a lot of the Facebook app...) and, making sure I cleared the cache before uninstalling, re-downloaded and installed Spotify.

And, wouldn't you know it, Spotify seems to work A LOT better! Sure, it still doesn't always play the first song of an album all the way through, and it will stop playing when switching from offline to online (and vice versa). But I now seem to have Spotify working... I have no idea if this is a coincidence or not and I'll be honest, it's a little early to tell as I only did this tonight but it's worked for two albums (downloaded to phone and playing offline).

I'm sorry for the big whinge, but I used to love Spotify and use it a lot (I still do on PC). I've been evangelical about it to friends and family. Now I feel a bit like the boy who cried wolf (or something, bad analogy).

Please sort this out or at least be more forthcoming with problems.

Yours

Aaron

usergowman

PhoneSamsung GS2 running ICS

ProviderO2, UK

[gowman]

Maybe I spoke to soon. Here's a screengrab of what happened when I turned wifi back on my phone. Spotify froze, then spat its dummy out and crashed:

http://twitpic.com/a36uky

[freegeek]

the android app is a buggy piece op crap

[mike_cronin_200]

Aaron,

Thanks so much for your thoughts on this problem.  I've been having the same issues and followed your advice regarding the removal of the Facebook app on my HTC Thunderbolt.  Sure enough, Spotify plays fine now.  In the past, I thought it was my phone or at least the Bluetooth connection. No, it was Facebook.  

I wish Spotify would find a way to offer users to effectively opt out of the Facebook linkage.  

[haavardk]

I share some of the same issues.

On Galaxy S3.

After last update on the app, it does not work at all.

Just blank white screen when i start the app.

I consider switching service now..

[Joe]

Hi. Could you please check that your facebook app is up to date. If that doesn't fix things, do a clean reinstall following the instructions here.

[tahirk]

Going to bring this old thread back to life because this problem still exists and has become more noticable since the past few updates.

The only thing I can attribute it to is how Spotify handles local caching and storage specifically when using an SD card and/or additional memory.

I have tried a multitude of things on my Samsung Note 3 device and my user experience is always interrrupted by lags, crashes and loss of connection even though everything else reports a solid internet connection.

Its sad because I found Spotify to have some great features and has introduced me to some great music I probably wouldn't have heard but unfrotunately due to these problems (that are not isolated to me alone but many many users) I am seriously considering ending my subscription and remove this application.

How can it be this bad, did your testing team miss something or is this an issue that has only surfaced over time as users have accumulated local cache/songs and used the Spotify Android app for some time?

Thanks.

T