Spotify taking over Stations on Android Auto

[mcguirev10]

Premium Family plan, LGV60, Pioneer WNEX4400 head unit, latest Android (as of Jan 2022), latest head unit BIOS, connects via WiFi-Direct.

My preferred music app is Stations and it has been working for more than a year (which is when I ditched Pandora and subscribed here). Starting about a week ago, when AA connects Spotify comes up instead of Stations. It's glitchy, sometimes it'll play the Stations content anyway, sometimes it hangs. If I select the Stations app from the AA menu, I see the Stations icon and UI flicker briefly, then it's back to Spotify. Most of the time it won't play anything at all.

Here and there I've been able to eventually get Stations to take over, but I'm not sure of the exact steps. Eventually I just uninstalled Spotify and at that point Stations always works, but since I'm paying for this, that isn't exactly acceptable.

As of today, my wife started experiencing the same problems in her vehicle (same model devices).

For whatever reason, Google Assistant settings doesn't even list Stations as a music player option, so I can't force the setting there. (I really wish they'd just add Stations functionality to the Spotify app, seems a bit silly to maintain two apps, and there's some crossover -- sometimes Spotify canned playlists show up in my Stations app -- but that's a gripe for another day.)

[mcguirev10]

So nobody from my expensive Spotify subscription is here to help customers?

We just throw it out there and hope some other random person has figured it out?

[Alex]

Hi @mcguirev10,

Welcome to the Spotify Community.

I just came across your post. Note that as community moderators we don't have access to your account and what we can do from our end is limited, but we'll do our best to help you get to the bottom of this 🙂

First of all, can you run a clean reinstall of the Spotify and Stations app, following this guide? Follow the steps provided to make sure that all app cache is cleared before reinstalling the newest available version. You can also clear the cache for Google Assistant, as corrupted cache can sometimes cause similar issues, like certain apps to not appear in the default app picker.

If that doesn't help you can try the following:

• Go to Spotify to settings, scroll down to Car view and turn off "turn on automatically". (note that Spotify is currently developing a new car mode and you might not see this option.)
• Go to your phone's app or battery settings for the Spotify app and disable Allow Background Activity.

Your wife can run the same troubleshooting steps on her phone.

The autolaunch &autostart functions are dependent on the way a mobile device is configurated to interact with the app API. We recommend that you reach out to the manufacturer to report the issue with them as well.

Keep us posted on how you get on with this.

[MitchTalmadge]

Same problem here; opening Spotify Stations and selecting a station will redirect to Spotify and not play anything. If I click play on the song in Spotify, it then takes me back to the Stations app and starts playing, for a while, until it eventually randomly stops and opens Spotify again. More glitchiness happens than this, it's hard to explain it all. I can upload a video if it will help. It's a mess!

[CarlosE]

Hi @MitchTalmadge,

Thanks for posting on the Community.

In this case, could you tell us if you already followed the steps shared by @Alex before? If so, send us over the make/model, OS version (phone) and firmware version (head unit) currently installed. 

Lastly, you can send us a video in order to check it further.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply!