Spotify forgets previous 'playing' song when closed and reopened

[Designic]

Plan

Premium

Country

 NZ

Device

(iPhone 5SE)

Operating System

(iOS 12.1.4)

My Question or Issue

When I return to Spotify after an hour or so, the song that was previously playing is no longer in the play section at the bottom. It's like the app resets itself after a short inactive time, sending me to the home screen. This means that I'll then restart the playlist I was playing before, hearing the same songs again. It also means I can't just open the app and hit 'play' because there is nothing selected to play anymore. 

I've tried reinstalling the app (which just removed my downloaded songs), closed other apps in case it was a memory related issue, and reset the phone itself. Nothing has worked yet. 

Help.

[Peter]

Hey @Designic.

Thanks for reaching out to us about this.

Could you make sure that you don't have any cache-clearing or task-killing apps on your phone? This might be a reason why Spotify "forgets" what song you were on.

Let us know how you get on! We'll be here if you need any further help.

[Designic]

Hi Peter, 

Thanks for getting in touch. 

Unfortunately I don't have any cache-clearing or task-killing apps on my phone. Nor do I close it from the multitasking tray. 

Any other suggestions?

[Jemi]

Hey @Designic,

This behavior can depend on the setup of your cache and whether it's built in a way to free up memory whenever possible. This can be expected on some devices, and the Play queue may be resetted.

Hope that explains things! 

[Designic]

Hi Jemi, 

Thanks for your idea. 

I've checked the local cache for Spotify and there is 1.44GB of data in there so I doubt that it has been reset recently. There is also 36.12GB of free space, so it's not like it's running out of room either. 

[Guido]

Hey @Designic.

It's dependent on your device, if the current state of Spotify gets remembered when you stop using Spotify. There can be multiple reasons to this, some of which @Jemi and @Peter mentioned.

• Not enough system memory (not internal storage)
• Battery saving mode enabled
• Cache/memory clearing apps
• Peak performance Capability has been enabled due to a deteriorated battery (You can disable this in the Settings of your phone)
• Any other apps that can influence the overall performance of the phone (in a good or bad way)

Find out if you can fix any of these. Hope it will work then! Let us know if you have further questions.

Have a nice day.

[Designic]

Thanks @Guido

• I've checked the system memory and it's using a completely acceptable amount (4.79GB)
• I ran the phone in low power/battery saving mode for a day, having the app inactive for hours at a time, and it remembered the current track fine. 
• There are no cache/memory clearing apps installed, nor does the iPhone do this automatically. 
• The battery is currently still providing 'peak performance'
• And I don't have a huge amount of apps open in the task tray either. 

The only other things I have noticed was that happened when Spotify said: "no internet connection" (even though there was; it was just dropping out of WiFi and connecting to 4G as I drove down the drive).  When it finally connected it had forgotten the current track and returned the app to the home screen. 

The other instance was when I didn't open the app for 24hours—which doesn't happen often. It had forgotten the last played song. 

[SayMoon]

Hi, this is totally **bleep** TBH. 😄
How is it possible music app does not keep the last state.
Ya'll are totally right about the app being killed by system and such.
But
BUT!
THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE PROBLEM.
They can handle that.... I know it's not easy BUT still doable.
I have to admit I "kill the app", I don't like keeping apps in recents.
I use offline mode and have some Playlists downloaded.
Every darn time I open the app I am forced to find that Playlist I was listening to and hit the SHUFFLE button just not to get bored so quickly from listening to the same songs.
It's so frustrating.
Does any of you guys use Poweramp?
Can you even imagine you'd have to start the music from the first song each and every time you want to listen to some music. ^_^'
I bet you'd get rid of that..pretty quickly!
I still have some faith there are people caring about paying users and this is gonna be solved.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @SayMoon,

Thank you for your post in this thread.

Can you confirm if you've followed the troubleshooting steps that's been provided in this thread?

If so - we suggest that you perform a clean reinstall of the app to make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

It would also be great if you can try with another internet connection to see if the issue persists.

If that doesn't do the trick - can you let us know which version of the app you have?

We'll be keeping an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[SayMoon]

Hi,

yes, I tried

And no, it's not about connection because I use offline mode

I asked my friend if this happens to him as well, answer was "sometimes"

So, I took my phone and tried, guess what!

I hit chose some playlist -> hit Play, killed the app, opened and it stayed at the last song.

However, I bet I will have to do the same in the afternoon when I leave home in hurry

It would be great to have consistent behaviour or AT LEAST know why does the reset happen, this looks a bit suspicious

I have the latest version of app available in GPStore, Android 10 on my mobile phone

Oh, I think I got it now!

When background service gets killed, last play state is in reset state, so, I have to start my playlist all over again

That's bad, IMHO, this should not happen in music apps

But if that's a feature than it's OKay....

[Jeremy]

Hey again @SayMoon,

Thank you for your post.

Can you let us know how much storage you have on your device? 

Also - can you let us know the exact version of the app you have?

Cheers!

[SayMoon]

Hello

Trust me, Storage is not the problem

However, I have plenty of it, Spotify says "Free    56.1GB"

Currently, the latest version available in GPStore for my lovcation is 8.5.82.894

[Mihail]

Hey @SayMoon,

Thanks for getting back to.

It's possible that the time your last played song is saved after the app gets killed changes or differs between accounts. The reason for this is that we're constantly running tests in order to provide you with the best music experience possible. So  it's possible that you might see something on the app your friend doesn’t, or get a brand-new feature for only a temporary period. Click here to learn more about Spotify tests.

We'd recommend that you create an idea requesting the feature that the app always picks up where you left off, regardless how long ago it was stopped running in the background. You can learn how to do this here. The Idea Exchange is a great way for us to see what our users are interested in and how many people like a certain idea. You can read more about it here.

Hope this is helpful but don't hesitate to let us know if you have any further questions!

[SayMoon]

Hello,
that is not my case.
Please, read it again - I wrote I use offline mode = it does not sync between devices.
Plus, these days, I do not use (it is not running even in background) Spotify on other devices.

& I see, you did not get what kind of problem I am facing.

So, let's try it again.
1) I open Spotify on my Huawei P30 Pro
2) I start playing MyPlaylist
3) Pause it
4) Force stop the app
5) Open Spotify again
6) I have to repeat step 2 because last played song is not saved

Do you understand the problem now?
AND what I have found is that this happens when Spotify's background service is closed

I do not know why you started writing about new feature or multiple accounts ...

[vetoben]

Ive had the same problem for years and the problem just doesn’t get solved, it’s terrible because sometimes I’m listening to a fire music sequence and it gets cut off ;(. It seems like Spotify intends for us to listen to the same old songs over and over again.