Spotify almost always shows the wrong track, wrong play/pause status, wrong position in track

[broast]

This has been happening every day for several months.

Spotify's display on the phone screen will almost always not show the correct track being played. It will often show some previous track I listened to. This applies to the full screen display of what is currently being played, the bottom preview bar of what is being played, as well as my home screen widget.

If I switch to a different track, the audio successfully switches, but display does not update - continues to show the wrong track.

The play/pause button also does not reflect whether or not the track is actually playing. Usually I will have to click the button a few times to toggle it between the play/pause icons until it does what I actually want. For example, the track is playing, but the button shows play. If i click the play button, usually nothing happens, but if I get lucky, nothing still happens but the play button changes to a pause button. Then if I click the now available pause button, the track pauses.

During this type of state, the song progress bar does not move. However, if I change the song progress, it will navigate to that time in the track and/or playlist.

I mention playlist because, for example, if the track display is frozen on a podcast that is 45 minutes long, but i begin listening to a playlist full of songs that are 3 mins long, if I use the track progress bar to scroll to a point that correlates with 30 minutes in the track progress bar, the audio will pick up in the middle of some song, presumably found 30 minutes later in my playlist

I have tried a few tricks to stop this, and this has occurred on multiple installs of the application. Hoping these details will help draw attention to some of the quirks around this terrible bug that affects me every day.

Plan

Premium

Country
USA

Device

Samsung Galaxy Note 9

Operating System

Android 10

[Davegry]

I see this too (on a Motorola phone) and it’s been around for ages, judging from a little searching. I don’t know the names of the bits of Spotify’s ui, but the “now playing” part is simply not reliably kept in sync with the actual playback.

I wish they’d fix it.

[Alex]

Hi there folks,

Thanks for reaching out about this.

Apologies for the delayed response, we've just come across this thread.

We are aware of this issue and our team is currently looking into it. Head over to this Ongoing Issue thread and leave your info as a comment. This will greatly help our developers fond a solution faster.

Don't forget to add your +Vote and subscribe to the thread in order to stay up to date with any development.

Hope this helps.

[Dayday1]

just want to say Im having the same issue. Was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, wanted to skip back 15 seconds to hear again what they said, and it started playing at least an hour skipped back however the progress bar shows that its only 15 seconds back. Now I cant find where I was in the podcast which is hours long 😵‍💫

[Novy]

Hey @Dayday1,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

Looks like the issue you're experiencing is a bit different from the one in the original post.

In this case, we'd recommend starting a new thread in the relevant help board and the Community will surely help.

Cheers!

[banksybanks]

Hi,

I've been having this issue for a while as well, which seems to have got far worse lately. When using my phone - Samsung S10, android 11 on Spotify 8.7.2.1205 - to connect to a device - either via Bluetooth or voice (Alexa), the track regularly freezes on my phone but continues playing on the device. So every time I want to check what's playing or skip the track, the app displays the wrong info and I have to restart it.

I see a link above to an ongoing issue, but that gives me an access denied message, so I guess it must have been closed??

[Novy]

Hey @banksybanks,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

We’ve tested this from our end and we couldn't replicate the issue. Would you mind sending over a video where we can take a better look at this behavior?

Also, let us know if it happens only with your phone or with other devices too.

We’ll be on the lookout for your next response.

[banksybanks]

Hi, I'm afraid I don't know how to take a video.

I'm also not sure how it would be useful in this example. If my phone screen is on, I don't have a problem. If the screen turns off, when I wake it to view/change the track, it will often be stuck at an earlier point in another track. 

Sometimes, by clicking into the play queue, it will update, but normally, I have to close the app. 

I only use my phone to connect to Bluetooth or Alexa 

[Ver]

Hey @banksybanks,

Thanks for getting back to us.

In case you're using an SD card, you can try removing it, reinstall Spotify and then try running the app without the SD card. Sometimes the SD card can lead to issues with the cache.

If you're using any battery optimization or power saving apps, you can deactivate them for Spotify.

If nothing changes, it's a good idea to log in to another device to see if that makes a difference.

As we can't reproduce this, a video recording of the issue will be very helpful. That way we can get a better overview on the matter.

Let us know how it goes.

[banksybanks]

Thanks @Ver, it seems power saving is the cause of this problem. I can't find how to exempt Spotify from this so will either have to lose power a lot quicker, or live with Spotify not functioning properly

[banksybanks]

Ok, I managed to find how to exclude Spotify from power saving - on Android 11, go to settings > apps > special access > optimise battery usage then scroll to Spotify and change the button to OFF - this seems to work without having to disable power saving mode

[Ver]

Hey @banksybanks,

Thanks for keeping us posted 🙂

Glad to hear that it worked out and the app is running as expected.

If you need anything else, the Community is here for you.