Spotify insists it's offline, stops playing radio.

[lifeblack]

Description:

Spotify tries to insist that it's in offline mode, and stops playing radio channels after one to a few songs.  I have to go back to the radio channel selection, hitting 'close' multiple times to the "listen offline with premium" notice, seeing 'no internet connection' in a small bar on the bottom of my screen (which goes away after a few seconds generally).  When spotify realizes that it is, actually, online, I can select the radio station and I'm good for a few more minutes before the problem repeats.

While spotify is insisting that it's offline, I can browse the internet with no problem, and do other things that require a connection.

This occasionally happened with earlier spotify versions, but the frequency was far, far lower. (maybe every few hours).  This started happening about the same time Spotify updated a few weeks ago.
 
What are the steps you took to get to the error/issue?

1. Open spotify.
2. Navigate to radio menu.
3. Select a station (any station)
4. Listen.
5. At some point, Spotify will stop playing and go silent.  At this point, one of several different things happens, depending on what state the phone was in.
- If the screen was off, and spotify was not the foreground app, then bringing up the lockscreen will show flickering between spotify and the lock screen pattern. (phone unlocks normally)
- If the screen was on, and spotify is the foreground app, then it looks like it's playing an ad (but is silent, and the ad doesn't end when the play bar reaches the right side of the screen)
- If the screen was on, and spotify is not the foreground app, then bringing up spotify shows the 'listen offline with Premium' popup.  Hitting 'close' then shows either an ad or a song of 1 second length.
6. Returning to the radio selection, numerous popups and complaints show about being offline and no internet connection.
7. Eventually, the radio channels appear, and you can resume the procedure back at step 3.

What I expected to happen

I expect spotify to play radio without thinking it's losing an internet connection which remains active.

Did you restart your device when troubleshooting in section B?

Yes
 
Did you read the connection troubleshooting tips?

Yes

Your device

Galaxy Nexus

 

Device’s Operating System

4.2.2
 

What type of account do you have?

Free
 

(FYI for the below points: Android devices tend to refer to the internal memory as "SD Card" and the SD card you inserted yourself as "External SD Card")

Space left on your device

unknown usage.  Refers to 'internal storage' only.

Space left on your SD card (if applicable)

24.88 Gb GB

Space left on your External SD card (if applicable)

N/A GB
 

Is your device rooted?

No
 

Are you using a custom ROM, if so which one, exactly?

No
 
Did you set your external SD card as storage location?

No
 
Did you manually install an older version before installing the latest version from the Play Store?

No
 

Do you have the same issue when switching between WiFi/Mobile Data (If applicable)?

Yes.  Problem exists on  WiFi, 3G, and 4G connections.


My mobile Spotify version

0.7.0.229


My mobile provider and country
Verizon, USA

My username

Hal Aljibury (removed@gmail.com)
 

Do you have a Spotify (non-Facebook) login?

No
 

Are you logging in with Facebook or with your Spotify login details?

Facebook
 

Do you have any screenshots you can attach to more clearly explain your issue?

No

EDIT

Removed email to protect privacy

[Joe]

Hi. Sorry for the late reply. Are you still having the same problem? If so, could you try a clean reinstall following the instructions in this post.

[lifeblack]

Clean reinstall performed according to instructions, however it doesn't solve the problem.

[Joe]

OK, I wanted to check. Do you have any settings or apps which could be trying to reduce battery usage by turning off/down the wifi/3G radios when the screen turns off?

[lifeblack]

No, no apps that turn off the wifi/3G radios.  Settings have the WiFi staying on when plugged in and screen's off.

The problem also happens when the screen is on.

[Joe]

Strange. Does streaming using Pandora or Slacker work? When you reinstalled, did you manage to find and delete both of the spotify folders by the way?

[lifeblack]

Streaming on Pandora works just fine (although the music selection on the radio lacks the depth of spotify).  When I uninstalled and did the clean reinstall, I was unable to find the com.spotify.mobile.android.ui folder after the uninstall procedure.  I looked pretty thoroughly, via a file explorer on my phone, and then later via my desktop.

After the reinstall, I looked again, and I have these two folders:

/storage/emulated/legacy/Android/data/com.spotify.mobile.android.ui

/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.spotify.mobile.android.ui

I figure that since they weren't there after the uninstall, that they were removed automagically in the process.  Does this theory hold water?

[Kaioty]

I was having this problem on my android phone (Samsun Galaxy S3) as well and so tried to do a clean install to fix it. Now spotify won't even open correctly. I just get a blank white screen with the menu icon in the top left. I can click it but the menu list is also empty. I've tried reinstalling 3 times now and it doesn't help at all.

[Joe]

@lifeblack Yeah I guess uninstalling the app might now remove both data folders although it didn't in earlier versions - I'll have to check the next time I do a reinstall. I think we've removed most of the possibilities here and I'm at a loss now.

I think it's time to call on the tech support team to see if they have any ideas! Could you use the online contact form and someone at Spotify will help get this sorted. If you get an automated reply directing you back to the community or to the help pages, please reply to it directly (even though it says not to) to speed things along.

[Joe]

@Kaioty Did you follow the instructions in this post?

[ryalyn]

I'm having this exact same problem on an Asus MeMO Pad HD 7 running 4.2.2 and have tried all the same things including the stuff in the post recommended by jwylot.   The last few times I saw it happen it looks like it was trying to play an ad that did not work. 

Has anyone resolved this yet?  It keeps coming back as an issue for me over and over.  It's terribly annoying and sometimes it messes up my device enough where I cannot get my playlist to play back.  Instead I get playback of one song at a time and have to keep going back in to restart it unless I clear the cache and start over.  This can happen several times a day for me.

[foremans_dog]

I am having this exact problem with my Nexus 7. Playback stops after almost every song. At most I can listen to about 4 songs in a row before playback stops, always after a song has ended. The small gray bar saying "No internet connection" pops up, then goes away, then I have to tap to restart what I was listening to. Would love to know if there is a fix for this.

[Caprico]

I've exact the same problem. Same phone, same situations. Does exist there any solution? 
It makes no sense to pay for premium if the app runs just half. 

[lifeblack]

Since I originally posted, the problem has come and gone to some degree.  At its worst, it happens after every song, and there have been times where it would go for an hour or more before quitting.  Clearing spotify's cache (from within the app) and logging back in seems to temporarily help - it would go from quitting every song to lasting what seemed like an avg of 10 or so.

I'm going on a limb and speculating here... I have no way to verify any of my speculations, but maybe somebody else who's reading this has the ability to.

1. I wonder whether the issue might be due to a login conflict between the facebook app and the spotify app. ( I have a facebook login to spotify.)  I had experimented with rebooting my phone and force-stopping facebook's processes before logging into spotify, and things seemed to work better (although this was not ideal, because sooner or later I'd check email, see something happen on facebook where I'd log in, etc. and the problem would seemingly get worse)

2. I am speculating whether 3g/4g network connections are always up, or whether the phone reconnects every minute or so if there's no data being transmitted.  If my phone takes a while to bring up a network connection in order to serve up an ad (or maybe if the ad server is slow), then it might well detect a network connection problem.  An argument against the network up/down status is that I have seen this problem _while_ websurfing on my phone.  Still, it seems to happen more often while the phone's screen is off.  Is there a way to lengthen the amount of time spotify waits to see if it's got a network connection?

[ryalyn]

I don't think either of those are causing the issue, at least not for me.  I don't use my Facebook login for Spotify (in fact, I purposefully kept them separate to keep from spamming my friends) and I rarely ever visit Facebook on my tablet.   Also, my tablet does not and cannot use the 3G/4G network.  It always uses my home and work network wifi and I'm not out of range when I use the app.  In fact, I'm within 2 yards of a router nearly all the time.

[Caprico]

Is it possible that using spotify in browser (IE, Chrome.. Firefox?) could bringing some troubles?

I would say no, but even I use it also on my chrome at work, this problem has started.
It's confusing because spotify says I've no connection but I can surf in the internet without any problems. Every other app is connected.