Spotify vehicle controls no longer work

[gwar9999]

Up until a few days ago when I started my vehicle (Ford Escape '17 / Sync 3) the media controls to skip to the next track, previous track, play & pause no longer control Spotify over bluetooth.  If I launch Google Play Music the controls work as expected so this is certainly a Spotify bug and not a Sync 3 bug.  

I don't use the in-car Spotify app since it's the worst "feature" I've ever seen (makes the rest of the phone totally useless) so it's just the regular Android app (Nexus 6P / 7.0).  

Also, with Tasker the usual media controls no longer work. So it seems that Spotify has locked down controls somehow.  Please fix.

[gwar9999]

Rebooting my phone seems to have corrected the media controls (at least from Tasker, so hopefully for the vehicle too). So I suspect a recent upgrade of Spotify had some cache issue that rebooting corrected or something like that. 

[gwar9999]

Well the reboot "fix" worked for a few hours then Spotify doesn't respond to the Sync 3 media controls again.  Not sure why it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't but it's really annoying and frustrating that it doesn't "just work" considering I'd rather focus on driving then on why I can't skip to the next track from the Sync 3 controls.

[evo4g63t]

The solution for now is to uninstall Spotify and revert to Spotify 6.2, you'll have to redownload your music but it actually works. Neither 6.3 or 6.5 versions fix anything.
You can get Spotify 6.2 from here:
http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/spotify-ltd/spotify/spotify-6-2-0-1028-release/
Download the arm version.

[4jornas]

We are not able to use the controls in either of our vehicles.  This is extremely frustrating and with the new legislation coming into effect in Ontario Canada July 1, 2018,  we really need this working again.  Hopefully Spotify can offer a fix or I may have to change and just subscribe to satellite radio.