Songs not playing on Ubuntu app. 'Spotify can't play this right now'

[jens-vlijtig]

I'm getting this error when I play any song on my Spotify desktop app on Ubuntu. The same songs play without any errors on my phone.

Saw other suggestions, like deleting local files (can't seem to find any when searching for 'local' in the spotify folder) and I've also tried reinstalling the app in terminal using [sudo snap install spotify], but that hasn't helped either.

Please help!
Thanks

[jens-vlijtig]

By the way, I just recently installed Ubuntu, version 22.04.02

[Sebasty · Accepted solution]

Hey @jens-vlijtig 

I suggest you go to Ubuntu's App Store (mine is called Software). Find Spotify there in the Installed Apps.
The app comes with permissions you can disable and enable. Among them is "Play Audio":

Make sure the Play Audio bit is enabled in your permissions. Browser-support and access to network would be necessary too.

Outside of that this issue is usually caused by improper audio settings (too high sample rate or wrong audio output), issues with cache and issues with firewall or antivirus software blocking Spotify's traffic.

You can wipe the cache and storage through Spotify's settings. Scroll down to the bottom, and there you'll find the settings.

Spotify will refuse to play when the sample rate gets above 192 kHz, so in case your audio card/interface supports high sample rates, set it to 192 at most.

Firewall should be turned off by default, but  you can check its status by running

sudo ufw status

 if it says it's not active/enabled, then that's definitely not the cause.

(mine is enabled and hasn't caused any trouble either, to be frank)

Let me know how you get on 🙂

[jens-vlijtig]

That quickly solved it. The 'play audio' permission was turned off.

Kind of a weird default setting for a music app if you ask me... 😉

Thanks a lot!

[Sebasty]

You're welcome!

Yes indeed. It was enabled for me when I installed the client, so I don't even know why it would be disabled by default for some users.

[RobG59]

Spotify did not play my local mp3 files either at first.
But this was due to my configuration: Laptop linked to Sonos speaker through Wifi.
By switching to bluetooth, local mp3 streamed correctly to speaker ...