Crossfade activates even when playing sequential tracks in an album

[Eo300]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

United States

Device

Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra

Operating System

Android 13

App Version

8.7.90.544

My Question or Issue

When I play an album sequentially (shuffle is off) with crossfade activated, the crossfade activates regardless. Historically, crossfade only activated for non-sequential tracks (where "sequential tracks" is defined as tracks which follow one another within their respective album). Typically, this is the case when playing a playlist (shuffle on/off) or an album with shuffle enabled.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Set crossfade on (example for these steps is 3 seconds)
2. Play an album with Shuffle disabled.
3. 3 seconds before the end of the track, the next song starts, shown visually and audibly (via the fade transition)

Expected Behavior:

• Crossfade transition should not occur due shuffle being disabled.

[kmstan]

I’ve been a premium subscriber since 2014. Never had any grievances about functionality until the recent Wrapped update. I always have loop on, which now reset everyday. I was willing to live with that.

But just today, any album I play crossfades the tracklisting as it plays through. I’ve had crossfade on for years, and it’s only affected playlists which I have loved. I am extremely frustrated that it’s affecting albums. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

[eero28]

You are right. This ruins the artist's intended listening experience.

[Yordan]

Hi folks!

This could be related due to the recent changes our teams made regarding Gapless playback: previously, as long as the feature was toggled on, any albums that were played in order would play without crossfading the tracks, however, the feature is now missing from the app's Settings for most users.

You can try to get back the Gapless playback by logging out from the app (go to Settings and scroll all the way down > Log out), then logging back in to your account to see if it would show up. If it does, make sure it's toggled on, then try playing an album to see if the Crossfade will be ignored.

Let us know how it goes. Cheers!

[kmstan]

Hi I tried logging out and back in. I’ve also deleted the app and redownloaded. Neither have resolved the issue. Please advise why these changes to gapless playback were implemented? Sequential tracks should be unaffected, and it’s negatively affecting my user experience. 

[Eo300]

Some things I've tried/additional observations based on your suggestion:

1. On my iPad Pro (app version 8.7.92.521, iPadOS 16.1.1), I experienced the same crossfading issue as described in my original post. Gapless Playback was missing here, so I logged out and logged back in. Gapless playback was still missing and the issue persists.
   • I've updated the tags in my post to reflect that it's affecting iPadOS too
2. My PC installation (Spotify for Windows 1.2.0.1165.gabf054ab) also has the Gapless Playback feature removed, but I haven't yet encountered this issue on that environment.
3. Lastly, I didn't try the logout/login on my Android device since my downloaded albums/playlists would be deleted from my device if I do, and there are no means to catalog/save a template of downloaded albums/playlists.

I hope this helps give insight into the issue, as now it appears to be a bug in the application, not limited to Android.

Thanks!

[gowen08]

I really like the crossfade feature when listening to music on playlist or queue, but it doesn’t make sense to have crossfade enabled whilst listening to an album, as it ruins whatever flow the artist has setup. 
I’ve had crossfade enabled for about 6 months and only in the past week or so has this started to happen, I’m not too sure why.

[#8]

In the past, if you shuffled an album, there would be a crossfade between tracks, but if you listened to an album in order, it would play as it is supposed to, with no crossfade. As of at least 12/15/2022, an album played in sequential order will experience crossfade between songs, marring the album listening experience.

[Bigg_Bill7]

I’ve also had this issue pop up recently and it’s really unfortunate.

I already left a comment on this community post, but I’m not sure if it will get reactivated. It seems like the perfect solution though if it’s possible to implement: add a sub-option below crossfade to enable/disable it for sequential album tracks. (But if that flexibility isn’t possible, I would at least like for it to just go back to always being disabled for sequential tracks because that really was ideal!)

[TheVox]

Same issue here. This ruins the album experience.

[Bigg_Bill7]

I like some others am hesitant to log out since I will lose all my downloaded content, and since it seems it hasn't worked for those who have tried it. Is spotify working on a fix for this issue?