Music is muted when casting to Google TV

[Balmainboy23]

Plan

Premium

Device

(Samsung Galaxy 9, Sony X90J Google TV

My Question or Issue

When I cast music to my new Smart TV visa my phone the musical always starts playing on mute by default. The volume on the tv is still at a normal level, you just can't hear the music. 

I have to load the Spotify app on my phone and then go into the song that's playing and increase the volume and then I can hear it from my TV. For some reason the casting experience mutes the volume from the primary source do the outlet sound from my TV gets nothing.

I can cast other apps to my Google TV without any problems, such as YouTube. And I've been able to cast Spotify to my Google nest hub mini without any issues.

Can this big please be instigated ASAP as it's a very poor user experience to have to load the app on my phone every time I want to play music on my TV (rather than just have the Google assistant load the music automatically)

[Alex]

Hey @Balmainboy23,

Thanks for the post.

You can try turning off Normalize Volume from the app settings on your phone. 

If that doesn't do the trick, you can try casting Spotify from another device to the TV and check whether playback starts muted as well. This will help us check whether the issue is related to the phone or the TV itself.

Keep us posted.

[RommyAppus]

I believe I have this same issue using chromecast with google tv. I have stopped using it because the audio randomly mutes and often starts without any sound at all. I’m not sure if this work around would work for me since I removed the device in favor of a regular chromecast that works just fine. We have an iPhone and a Samsung s20 fe and both exhibit this behavior. My tv is a Samsung branded one.

this has been very frustrating.

[Alex]

Hey @RommyAppus,

Thanks for the post.

Can you clarify what you mean by "using regular chromecast"? This will help us look into this matter further.

Cheers.

[RommyAppus]

This is what I mean by a regular chromecast
https://www.target.com/p/google-chromecast-charcoal-3rd-generation/-/A-54010906?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000...

[Kiril]

Hi there @RommyAppus,

Thanks for your reply and the linked info.

Do we understand correctly that you are experiencing the same issue on both of your mobile devices ( which are using two different Spotify accounts) with your smart TV that currently uses a Chromecast? Also we'd be happy if you can share with us, whether the suggested change of settings in the app given by @Alex has made any difference for you.

Keep us posted, we'll be on the lookout for your reply. 

[Balmainboy23]

Hi Alex,

I tried the normalise volume setting and that didn't do anything.

I've opened Spotify from my laptop and when I manually send music to the TV it plays fine, albeit in the background (the menu I'm on doesn't change). If I Select listen from my TV when in the Spotify Mobile app the music also plays correctly.

When I ask Google to cast music to the tv the Spotify app opens on the tv and then the last recent song starts playing - with the volume muted. So perhaps it's something to do with the app on the tv being loaded remotely by my Google nest hub or Google assistant on my mobile phone. If I Ioad the Spotify app on the tv and start playing music it also plays correctly.

[Kiril]

Hey @Balmainboy23,

Thank you for getting back to us with more info!

This sounds indeed like a specific issue with the TV app's interaction with Google Assistant. Can you share with us the version of the app that's currently installed on the TV, and also can you check if there are any pending updates for your TV's firmware and the apps included. If yes, please make sure you run them and see if this would make any difference.

Also, if nothing changes after updating, a short video of the situation will help us a lot in investigating and reporting this issue further.

Keep us posted, we'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[Balmainboy23]

• Hi Kiril,

I have updated everything and it made no difference. My tv has version 1.52.0

I finally got around to creating a short video to further illustrate the issue. Still the only way to hear the music is to manually go into the Spotify app on my phone and adjust the volume in the app. (Didn't show this as couldn't video my tv and phone at once...)

 https://youtu.be/rQ8xAM77_Zc 

[Ver]

Hey @Balmainboy23,

Thanks for the info and the video.

It looks like there is an issue with how the Google Assistant on this TV model interacts with our API. We don't have full control over that and we can't guarantee that we'll be able to influence this.

This could really be due to multiple factors, but what Spotify does is just fulfill whatever command it receives via the API, which for some reason defaults to mute.

This is why when opening the app on the phone, you then override the previous command and get control of the volume.

It's worth trying to modify the voice command to something like: Play Music on Spotify at half volume to see if there're any differences. 

The Community is here for you if there's anything else!