Spotify Windows App does not play any song nor shows my liked songs / playlist content

[BigYellowTrain]

Plan

Premium (Family)

Country

Germany

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10 Pro

My Issue

The Spotify App does not play any song. If I click play on a song, nothing happens. It does not show in the play bar at the bottom of the app and does not start playing as well. Sometimes there is an info message from the app, that Spotify is offline, but it isn't. Same problem for any other private playlist, they don't load.  I can still search for new songs and get results (so the app clearly has some sort of a workling internet connection), but just can't play them either. Public playlists found with the search don't load as well.
Every other program works normal an has an internet connection.

Steps I tried to fix the issue:
-restart the app

-restart PC

-disable/ enable hardware acceleration

-enable/ disable offline mode

-switched internet connection off and on again (disable/ enable ethernet adapter)

-log out and back in

-reinstall the app (through official website and winget); performed always a clean reinstall mentioned in this article (https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/Perform-a-clean-reinstall-of-the-app/ta-p/4746485)

-added an socks5 proxy for one installation

Nothing of the above worked. After the first reinstall and ongoing from there the app does not even show my liked songs (only displaying: Songs you like will appear here). In Spotify Web using Firefox everything is shown normally (and i can play songs etc.)
So what is the problem? I used the Spotify app for years without problems and now it doesn't work anymore.
This issue persists now for 2 weeks.

[Joan]

Hi there @BigYellowTrain,

Thanks for reaching out. We;ll be glad to help you get the desktop working properly again.

A big thanks for the thorough post and for all the troubleshooting you've already tried. We've noticed in the past with many other users that similar odd behaviour on Windows is often caused by audio hardware. Do you by any chance use a dedicated sound card, DAC, external amp or anything similar? If so, try using Spotify without any of those involved (e.g. by switching to the default sound card instead) and see if it works then. If it does, then that device isn't interfacing well with the app and is causing the issue. Also definitely try reinstalling your audio drivers as those could have been corrupted or not be behaving properly and causing this to happen.

Hope this helps.

[BigYellowTrain · Accepted solution]

My response was posted, I even got the first reply reward, but my message is gone, so here it is again:

Thanks @Joan for the quick reply.

TL;DR
The solution is as simple as stupid. Just rename your Spotify.exe, for example to Spoti.exe.
Usually located at "C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Spotify".

Seriously. After that Spotify worked again. I see all my liked songs and playlists and finally can enjoy my music again.
end of TL;DR

Yes I am using a dedicated sound card (I have a 5.1 Sound System with an integrated Sound Card which is connected over USB to the PC).
I tried reinstalling the driver for this system as well as the sound driver for the mainboard. I even checked my Wireless Headphone if Spotify works (because it uses other drivers to work). But it didn't help. And honestly I didn't expect it to work, because I am using this system for almost 10 years and had never problems with it playing Spotify songs.

But you tipped me in the right direction: I recently upgraded my graphics card and switched from Nvidia to AMD. Therefor I installed a new graphic driver which also include Audio drivers for HDMI. There is no problem with them directly, but because of them I though about the graphic driver and and have linked my Spotify issue to another problem I had with the graphic driver:
The driver includes an Instant Replay Feature, which always records your screen and keeps for example only the last two minutes and overwrites them continously, unless you hit save (cool feature for gaming, to save a nice play you did). This wasn't working as well. The problem was, that it does not work, if Spotify is open (the web says beacuse DRM/ content protection, so that you can not record songs from Spotify).
So after closing Spotify AMDs Instand Replay startet working and somehow even if you disable this feature again it breaks Spotify completly as I described. I even uninstalled my graphics driver, but even this does not restore Spotify to work properly.

The solution is as simple as stupid. Just rename your Spotify.exe, for example to Spoti.exe.
Usually located at "C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Spotify".

Seriously. After that Spotify worked again. I see all my liked songs and playlists and finally can enjoy my music again.

So there is clearly a problem between Spotify and the AMD graphic driver (involving the Screen Recording Feature from AMD). If your Devs want to fix this issue (in cooperation with AMD) I can provide additional information, because I've seen other people having the exact problem I had, where your support stuff wasn't able to help them. The only working solution mentioned was to do a complete reset of your system. But this is too radical, because you have to restore all your data and install all programs again.

[Eni]

Hey @BigYellowTrain,

Thanks for getting back to us and letting us know.

Great news! We appreciate you sharing what worked for you as it might be helpful for other users as well. 

Also, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to pass it onto the right team, as we always strive to improve your experience.

Cheers!