Suddenly, certain songs "play" silence.

[marquise]

Description

I've been running Spotify on my Android device for a few months now. Just yesterday it started with this problem, where it would appear to play a song, but there was no audio. The UI shows that it seems to be playing. When it gets to the end of the song, nothing else happens, it does not continue on to the next song.

Now, I exclusively stream. There are no local files. This is on 3G, and in the same locales that I have been in for the past few months.

If I fast-forward onto the next song, that one will play. But, eventually another song will not play. I have not been able to get the silent song to play properly. Skipping ahead and then back, seeking around that silent track, closing and stopping Spotify and then restarting, are all things I have tried to get the song to play, and have not worked.

I have cleared the Spotify cache and data, uninstalled, shut down my phone, pulled the battery, and then reset everthing back again, to no avail.
 

What are the steps you took to get to the error/issue?

Just select some music, and start playing it. I usually select an album to listen to. After a track or two (or three or four) I'll not hear anything, though it appears from the UI that it is playing as I already said.

What I expected to happen

I expect to hear the song, thanks!

Did you restart your device when troubleshooting in section B?

Yes

Did you read the connection troubleshooting tips?

Yes

Your device

Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon.

Device’s Operating System

4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwitch

What type of account do you have?

Premium

Space left on your device

13.51GB

Space left on your SD card (if applicable)

N/A

Space left on your External SD card (if applicable)

N/A

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)?

I do not use my phone on WiFi.

If you said "No", when does the issue not occur?

My mobile Spotify version

0.7.2.402-g40e8dcb4

My desktop Spotify version (if applicable)

N/A

My mobile provider and country

Verizon US

My username

jlyonm

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

Yes

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

Spotify login

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

No

[Joe]

Hi. Could you try clearing the cache from spotify's settings then reinstalling. If you still get this happening, is it always the same tracks which won't play?

[marquise]

I discovered that, while playing the album Evidence by Karmacoda, Tragic would play silence. So I cleared the data and cache, reinstaled, and selected that track and now it plays.

I had already performed these steps once, but did not verify if the same or different tracks would play silence. So I'm reasonably confident that I have not fixed the problem, just shifted it to other tracks.

[Joe]

That's possible. Please keep me updated 🙂

[marquise]

Update: Continued to play Karmacoda. Got to the album Reco Mended, and it played fine until Tea - Elixer, which was silent.

I don't know if this matters, but here's something else. I have sensitive hearing, and when music starts playing, I can hear a faint fuzz through my headphones, even before any actual music starts. This is normal. When a song with this "silence" problem plays, I don't even hear the faint fuzz. I've tried playing with the volume and I still hear absolutely nothing.

[Joe]

This is very similar to issues some desktop client users have been reporting over the last 24 hours or so and Spotify are fixing this right now. On the offchance that your issue is related, could you give it until tomorrow to see if things get better? If not, I'll escalate this to one ot the Spotify staff.

[marquise]

Wow, I never could have imagined that this would be related to an issue on the desktop. I also run Spotify's native Linux client, though probably not as many hours in the past two days as on my phone. I'll let it percolate and return if it hasn't cleared up.

Thanks for your assistance. Greatly appreciated.

[Joe]

They just tweeted that the issue is fixed so, if you still have problems, we'll have to think again 🙂

[marquise]

Darn, I just experienced this problem again this morning.

[Joe]

Unless there is an issue with the Gaaxy itself, I'm out of ideas. Could you get in touch with support directly using the the online contact form. 

If you get an automated reply directing you back to the community or to the help pages, make sure to reply to it directly (even though it says not to) to speed things along.

I'm sorry I couldn't help you get to the bottom of this issue.

[marquise]

I have sent my message off to support, with a link to this forum. Hopefully they can assist.

Thanks again for your help.

[nickreich]

I am having the same issue. Except it plays the first half of second and then no sound. The progress bar still moves and the song is still "playing" but no sound. If I tap to skip to a different part of the song it will play again for like .4 seconds and then cut out and continue in silence. I just got the 4.3 update and am using the galaxy S4

[marquise]

Actually, I do not believe that this is the same issue at all. I have seen other message threads where people have described similar effects. Here is what I have noticed. When Spotify is streaming a song, and you are on a marginal network (poor cellular signal or wifi) the music may cut out, but the UI will still show the progress bar as though it were playing. Spotify will continue to try to stream the song, and it may eventually continue. It will continue from the point at which the music stopped.

Sometimes I have seen the progress bar reset back to that point, and sometimes it hasn't, and so the progress bar's indication of what point you are at in the song is not accurate to what you are hearing. Then, when the progress bar gets to the end of the song, it just stops, but the song will continue playing until the very end, and then it will properly go on to the next song.

So, whenever I read about partial song silence, I think it's more a possibility of a flakey network connection, and not related to my issue. For me, the entire song is always silent, and no manner of seaking around can help that. I can immediately go on to the next song and it will play, so the network connection is fine.

I suggest trying to see if this problem continues on a verified-reliable network. Perhaps try first some other streaming option, like an internet radio station. If you can successfully stream that for several minutes or so without so much as a hitch, and yet when you stream music via Spotify it does produce silence, then it can very well be a problem with the application.

[TheSillypig]

I'm having the same problem, song will play for half a second then goes silent while the progress bar keeps going. This happens with every song, on any network ( wifi at home or mobile, downloaded playlists, nothing will play. The problem started after updating my galaxy S4 to Android 4.3.

[Joe]

@marquise  It seems the streaming issues being experienced by desktop client users are still happening and Spotify is again looking into it so there remains the possibility that your problems are in some way connected. I'll let you know when this (server issue?) gets fixed.

[Joe]

@TheSillypig Your issue is something different. As a first step. please try reinstalling spotify.

[marquise]

I did have one song fail to play from the Linux client this morning. The GUI behavior in that case was that the small round circle that travels along the progress bar was not even visible, and there was no indication that it was trying to play, unlike that which I have detailed regarding the Android UI behavior. I could fast-forward to the next song and it would play, but rewinding to the previous song would not cause it to play.

Is there somewhere that I may see the status as to Spotify's streaming issue and not continue to bother you or anyone else until we are certain that that problem is resolved?

Thanks again for your assistance.

[Joe]

---

@jlyonm wrote:

Is there somewhere that I may see the status as to Spotify's streaming issue and not continue to bother you or anyone else until we are certain that that problem is resolved?

---

@OH wouldn't that be awesome! The closest we have to that is the occasional twitter update from @SpotifStatus. The most recent tweet is displayed on the help pages.

[TheSillypig]

I did, exactly as the page tells, including removing the battery... didn't fix it 😞

[marquise]

I have not had this problem all day. I'm hoping that this is all resolved now.

Thanks again.