Group Sessions missing two main features after most recent update

[Semx11]

Plan

Premium

Country

Netherlands

Device

OnePlus 5T

Operating System

Android 10

My Question or Issue

After the most recent update, you can no longer seem to scan a code to join someone's group session. 

You can also no longer choose if you want to play on the host's device, or on your device. It is stuck on your device.

The support site still says it's possible: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/group-session/

These two features were great when playing music in the car with friends. Is this a bug or was it intentionally removed? If so, why? It was so useful, I loved it.

[Julian]

Hey @Semx11,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

As Group Session is a Beta feature, it might change over time. Now it includes the option of automatic device joining on the same network and the limit for people joining remote sessions has been increased from 5 to 8.

As you may have noticed, there are also a few differences in the interface. How you join a remote session or a specific device differs from before.

If you want to listen on the same speaker, the session's host needs to send an invite for that speaker, instead of starting a remote session. To do that, they can tap on the arrow next to the device they're listening from. Then you can accept their invite and start listening to music on the same device as them. You can see the process on the screenshots below.

 

We appreciate the feedback about the article in the support site. We’ll pass this to the right team to make the change.

If you have any additional questions, the Community will be here for you. 

[m4xe]

We are missing the code scan feature a lot as well! Sometimes there is no network to be in together, and sending invites around is annoying or also not possible.

[Alex]

Hey @m4xe,

Thanks for sharing your feedback here.

We appreciate it and have passed it forward to the right teams 🙂 It's important for us to hear what options are important and often used for features in development, like the Group Session.

Cheers.

[deepshah0420]

I am seeing the same issue and do not see the arrow next to my device. 

 

[Yordan]

Hi @deepshah0420,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community!

You need to be connected to a Bluetooth / WiFi device first. Just play something so that the current playback switches to your Bluetooth / WiFi Speaker and you should see the option available.

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers!

[m4xe]

Hi Yordan, in our case there is no BT/WiFi audio device. There is a tablet which has speakers connected via plain old audio jack and potential session participants have no access to the same network. So, your suggestion doesn't work for us.

[Semx11]

I have this issue as well. My car doesn't have Bluetooth, but only has an AUX cable. Spotify doesn't detect this as a device, so I can't start a group session with friends in the car through code scanning. I have to send a link, which is cumbersome, and everyone has to turn their phone's volume to 0, as the music plays on all devices...

I believe this is a oversight from the design team. Where do we submit this feedback? This is a severe downgrade compared to how it used to work.

[dfwadawdawdwaw]

It took spotify support 45 minutes having me reinstall the app and troubleshoot for them to tell me that it was removed from the beta. best support out there

[Gauten]

I would like to add to the feedback with everyone else, that in practice this change is a downgrade for most use cases.

Nice that you increased the number of people that can que together to 8.

Please bring back the scanning. Sharing via text is less a bigger hassle and in my experience, pressing on the link in messenger or text rarely connects the other person to the que the first couple of times. The scanning had hick-ups sometimes - but much more rarely. 

The old implementation was much better and it was easy for a group of people at a party to que music together.

As this was one of my and others favorite features - please revise it as soon as possible. 

Thank you! 

[BudosoNT]

yes! we appreciate the new features (especially improvements to connecting to devices to make it more consistent) but that doesn’t mean you should remove useful features! this was the only way i used the session feature before and i’d like it back

and while you’re at it, make the session qr code unchanging so you could print out the code - similar to songs. i’d love to have a session qr code sticker

[xwell320]

this actually worked, now it doesn't, stop messing with it

[Johan1976]

Want to use this feature to let other user control Spotify on my phone rather than another speaker. Seems like it's not possible to invite other users to my phone if not connected to another speaker.

Now I need to start a group session by sending sms and other user needs to turn off the volume since group session on phone no longer supports remote function only. 

Any ideas about this? 

[CHVSE]

Maybe add a delay slider in the options. My friend and I were trying to play the same song from two separate boats. Mine is plugged in aux. his is connected to his Bluetooth stereo in his boat. We have a delay. A slider might solve this issue

[TechnØmatter]

 My girlfriend and I want to listen to the same playlist with both our own headphones on, while at the same time both having control over what song is playing. This seems no longer possible in the current version. A speaker is not viable in a public library. 

[ClayBenson]

I think I understand why this feature was removed (opting for network sharing over camera-based code scanning is an upgrade in some cases)

However, I've found that there are many cases where folks aren't able to get it to work (multiple networks in a home, like guest networks) or those less technically savvy usually need an explanation. Being able to show a code to someone and have them just scan it in generally worked a bit smoother - curious if there's a solution that could allow for both network-based session joining AND camera-based code scanning to join the same session!

[dfwadawdawdwaw]

Being able to text the code is nice, but it was able to do that before. All that happened is that they removed the option to do it easily if your near the other person. The most simple solution to this would be if they added an option to just convert the link that we have now into a normal QR code

[misterblokhead]

I want to bump this topic as well, it's very cumbersome to need to share the link through some third-party app instead of the scanning codes with Spotify itself.