Spotify control on Pioneer AVH-X490BS with Android not working

[bhaugen]

For the last few months I have not been able to directly control Spotify on my Samsung Galaxy S7 via Bluetooth connection to my aftermarket Pioneer car stereo receiver. Basically when I try to initiate the connection from the Spotify App on my Pioneer unit (with Bluetooth already connected), the Pioneer gives me an error message that it "could not connect" to my Android device.

This functionality worked normally for quite some time. This is very frustrating, and makes using Spotify in my vehicle unsafe.

Can someone please explain why this might be? Could it be that there was a Spotify or Android update that caused the problem?