Spotify for Android causing massive battery drain and heating of phone

[stegnersaurus]

Hello. I recently became a Spotify Premium member after using Freefor about a year. I love the service; however, I feel that the Android app is a bit lacking. I use the downloading playlists feature to avoid having to be constantly connected to a network and therefore save battery, but have noticed that any usage of Spotify, even while listening to downloaded music in offline mode while my phone is in airplane mode causes the battery to die very quickly. 1% of drain per minute is the average, I would expect this behavior while streaming high definition video; not while listening to downloaded music. It is very frustrating to have to stop listening to my music to charge my phone after only an hour at work. Additionally, my device becomes very hot when listening to music with Spotfiy.
If this is a normal occurrence with the Android app, I would hope for a fix very soon. I am glad to be a Premium member, but am not too happy with the Android app.

My phone is the HTC EVO 3D on Sprint, if that helps with anything.

Thank you for your time.

- Ben

[riko-eksteen]

Can someone/James Porter remove the "Solved" status of this issue? It has not been "solved", not for me, not for many others on the post since, seemlingly.

In fact, on my LG G3 with Android Lollipop update, Android OS even notifies me that the Spotify app is using a huge amount of battery (see attachment).

This doesn't happen for any of the other apps on my phone, not event the battery-intensive ones, so obviously Spotify is using more battery than everything else, relatively speaking! It also doesn't happen with other streaming apps, whether that be Google Play, Netflix etc.

Spotify please fix this, you are losing valuable customers. I myself am evaluating Spotify Premium at the moment, and will not join (despite how much I like the service) if this issue is not fixed!

[Daniel]

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@riko-eksteen wrote:

Can someone/James Porter remove the "Solved" status of this issue? It has not been "solved", not for me, not for many others on the post since, seemlingly.

In fact, on my LG G3 with Android Lollipop update, Android OS even notifies me that the Spotify app is using a huge amount of battery (see attachment).

This doesn't happen for any of the other apps on my phone, not event the battery-intensive ones, so obviously Spotify is using more battery than everything else, relatively speaking! It also doesn't happen with other streaming apps, whether that be Google Play, Netflix etc.

Spotify please fix this, you are losing valuable customers. I myself am evaluating Spotify Premium at the moment, and will not join (despite how much I like the service) if this issue is not fixed!

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Have you tried a clean install? Usually a clean install is the first step to take and resolves most of the usual issues; the guide details the steps to take to ensure a full 'clean installation' is achieved - This includes checking redundant folders and a REBOOT!

[COMPLETE GUIDE] How to fix most Android issues

Also as you are on Lollipop can you try disabling nuplayer as detailed in this post: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Android/PLEASE-READ-Android-5-x-Lollipop-Distorted-playback-so...

[riko-eksteen]

Hi Daniel

I did try a clean reinstall yesterday, following the full instructions in the guide you mention, including removing redundant folders and rebooting.

This did not resolve the issue (I would have been surprised if it did, as it is a new phone, and I only installed Spotify recently).

I have now found nuplayer in the developer options and disabled it, thanks for that. I am disappointed that Google would add an experimental feature to the OS, enable it, and hide it away! 

I will let you know if it resolves the issue.

Thanks

Riko

[riko-eksteen]

Disabling nuplayer didn't resolve the issue, see the attachment (I rebooted my phone after enabling it).

I am not even playing music from my phone currently, I am playing from my desktop PC, and my phone is showing the now playing tile through Spotify Connect (which is a great feature, btw...).

Looking at the posts on this thread, there is definitely a more fundamental issue with how the app interacts with the Android OS, possibly also affected by the user having a SD Card installed. It could be related to not properly putting the system to sleep when not playing music, or having too many services running, or Spotify Connect, etc.

I would like to know if Spotify is actually acknowledging the issue and investigating it, instead of just asking everyone to reinstall the app/disable nuplayer which seems to be a bit of a stab in the dark, hoping the problem will go away.

The fact that the Android OS itself highlights the app as causing a problem is concerning, it probably has some internal battery consumption limits/metrics that the app is exceeding. And I get this warning even when I have completely exited Spotify, and am not connected to Spotify Connect. I have to go into app settings and "Force Stop" Spotify or restart my phone for it to go away.

Riko

[stepanzel]

Hello guys,

I just wanted to report that I too have this issue.

Device: Samsung Galaxy S2 i9100

Android: SlimKAT 4.4.4 rooted

Spotify version: 2.5.0.942

Internal free space: 4,49GB

External free space: 9,86GB of 32GB (FAT32)

All my downloaded files are on the internal SD card (I installed Spotify without having the MicroSD installed, downloaded my playlists and then put the MicroSD card back in).

The following is happening on my device: whenever I'm listening to Spotify after a few songs it stops playing and seems frozen. It makes no difference whether offline mode is turned on or off. Neither previous nor next in playlist works, the only possibility is to kill the app.

If I do this a new process named "com.spotify.music.service" pops up and wastes all the CPU power. It's not possible to kill this process (not even as root user), because there is no PID listed for this process. The only way to stop this process draining the battery is rebooting the phone.

Please don't tell me to cleanly reinstall, I did that a thousand times already...

If there's anything I can find out on my phone, please let me know.

PS: I too am a premium user.

[atte_atte]

Since I got Lollipop on my LG G2, I keep getting these messages too. And yes, I've done a factory reset.

It seems like Spotify is keeping the phone awake more than it should be.

Probably has something to do with Spotify connect doing unnecessary syncs or something when I'm listening on my computer, not using my phone. Shouldn't the app just stay off until I decide to open it?

About that nuplayer fix. Why not just fix the app instead of resorting to having your users poking around in the developer settings? Other apps obviously work like they should.

I've heard lazy programmers are the best programmers, but uhh....

[Kirkpad]

Signed up to throw my two cents in:

This is NOT a SD card issue, this is clearly a software issue.  Its been happening across many devices for almost 2 years (based on the date of this thread), including ones that don't have an SD card at all (Nexus 4 and 5).

Stop telling people to do a hard reset, its not going to fix anything, you are wasting peoples time.  The issue must be something to do with Spotify Connect keeping the device awake and on Wi-Fi.  (I was using PS4 earlier in the day.)

Put my device on battery saver mode last night at 100% and woke up 7 hours later to the device being dead. Looking in the battery section, Spotify is the only thing listed, and the Wi-Fi signal chart is lit up for the entire time.  I assume this is the way the app was coded so people can stream when their screens turn off.. but the app should attempt to stop being awake when music is paused.

Would this have anything to do with the fact that I signed up for a premium trial? Is it trying to stay awake for some premium reason?

Anyways, good luck to the android development team, it looks like they're going to need it.

[kekxbox]

It is really sad to see that after all this time this issues remains more ore less the same. All the attempts from the mod/android people in here to help much appreciated, but preaching the same old troubleshooting howto (sd card/reset etc.) is not going to cut it since it is obviously something else. For my part after tinkering around for over a year on more than 3 devices (custom AND stock) I simply gave up using spotify on my phone. And if I can't avoid it then the MO is *install ->use app->uninstall->reboot phone*. I use other apps/services instead to listen to music on my phone, keeping my premuim account for the sake of my playlists. Does not feel very "premium-y" however.

Cheers

[joe1016zw]

Much more than the android player reproducing mp3. Does your android version have a battery usage by application display in settings? Samsung accessories

[jonyoder]

I'm having this same issue. It's terrible! I haven't even used Spotify for more than 10 minutes, but it's keeping my phone awake (screen off) almost constantly.

Wakelock detector indicates my phone awake for almost 3 hours so far.

Details: Nexus 5, Android 5.1 stock, is rooted.

[rossisdead · Accepted solution]

The battery drain is due to Spotify Connect. If you force close the app when you're done using it, the drain stops.

[zaubara]

Absolutely not fixed, that's clearly Spotify Connect aggressively pulling updates - therefore a developer issue and not to be "fixed" on the users side. The fact that this is still marked as resolved and how this and other issues are handled is more than annoying. But rejoice! Soon there is going to be an alternative.

[samcackett]

I have the same issue on Nexus 5 for a long time now too. Have latest updates. I have to manually kill Spotify after using it as it just drains the phone otherwise. 

I find also that if I'm listening to Spotify on PC (which I do often at work), the app comes up on my phone with what I'm playing, and this seems to completely drain the battery as well, despite my phone sat there doing nothing. Even if I put it in Airplane mode it dies. But again if I kill spotify my battery lasts fine. I don't even understand this feature, why on earth would this be useful to a user. 

PS: By battery drain, I mean in a couple of hours it'll go from 100% to nothing. 

PPS: I borrowed my wife's iphone and was amazed when I took it for a 1 hour run using Spotify and the battery went down 2%....! On my phone typically a 1 hour run takes between 40-50% battery.

[devices]

I'm also getting this issue on the LG G2. Premium user. 

The phone keeps interrupting my streaming, warning me that the Spotify app is draining the battery. Looking at power consumption statistics, Spotify for Android is using noticeably more power than other streaming apps, such as the SR Play radio app. 

This issue started occuring for me quite recently, since the upgrade of Android for the G2 (I'm currently on android 5.0.2 if that has any bearing on the issue), and can sometimes (but not always) be temporarily resolved by rebooting. 

Any info on a fix would be greatly appreciated. 

[jvanespotify]

I also noticed this problem on my brand new Samsung S6. Whenever I play music on my iPad, my preferred device for playing at home, or my iMac at work, it is detected by the app on my S6 and this is draining the battery for NO reason at all! What nonsense is this! I don't need and I don't want this option so why the heck can't I disable it?!?

Anyway, it seems that manually closing the app on my phone will solve this problem but imho this shouldn't be needed at all. I am sure I will forget this often, causing my battery to go down south.

Together with not being able to simply add my own mp3's to Spotify using the app (like Google does, using the cloud) this is seriously making me rethink if I want to stay a member or switch to another music service. 

[miguedrive]

My Samsung S4 mini (i9190) start heating a lot ! the phone reboot itself after some minutes and the temperature is really high, the battery starts draining really fast too. PLEASE FIX THIS! WE'RE PAYING YOU SPOTIFY!

[Suopeschleg]

This is a massive problem for me as well. My phone can't even charge fast enough to counteract the battery usage of Spotify even when it's supposedly not running. I just became a premium member and downloaded all of my playlists to my phone, so I never stream music from Spotify, but whatever is using all of my battery has something to do with the internet because the drain stops when I go into airplane mode.

[olexity]

Yup, it kills battery on LG G5

[user-removed]

Spotify is killing my LG G2!!!!!
Fix it or hire better programmers to do that.