Playback issues: Songs going silent on Android app

[Yordan]

We've received reports from Android users that the progress bar of a song keeps moving but there's no sound coming out. When the app is restarted, the progress bar goes back to the point where the song went silent.

Some users noticed that the issue doesn't occur when the features below are toggled off:

• Gapless playback - found in Settings > Playback
• Equalizer - found in Settings > Audio Quality

[PatrickUrlberger]

Hi, 

i have this issue in my android mobile app.

Is there still no availabe solution?

[Flynnmace]

Plan

Premium

Country

Uk

Device

Google Pixel 6

Operating System

android version 14

My Question or Issue

When I listen to music sometimes the song just goes silent. The bar keeps moving but no sound is coming out. When I go back to the app and pause and play it returns to the position before it went silent. 

I've uninstalled the app, checked for updates and cleared my cache. I've checked with different headphones and the same thing happens. I have no issue with sound from other apps. How do I stop this ?

[Maxlab1]

I have the same issue. It only happens when Spotify is playing in the background. When I leave the Spotify app in the foreground, it doesn't randomly pause. When it's paused, the progress bar says it's still playing. If I pause and play it from the bar, it picks up where the audio halted, not where it said it was on the progress bar. I have reinstalled Spotify multiple times. The pauses are getting more frequent. 

Pixel 6a

[Maria]

Hey there @Flynnmace & @Maxlab1,

Thanks for reaching out on the Community!

Just to check, does this happen if you play the tracks directly through the phone, without connecting to headphones or speakers?

We suggest checking that your phone's sound settings are configured as well. For example, in settings, make sure that Spotify is allowed to run in the background. It's also worth checking if there's an update available for your device's operating system.

Should the issue persist, can you let us know what Spotify version you're running?

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[Sloomtrein]

So when I am listening to Spotify Every now and then I just don't hear any audio anymore. Just like the song paused but when I look at the player the song continues to play there is just no audio. And then when I pause and play it works again for a little while and then it happens again. It's really random when it happens sometimes it doesn't happen for days and then it happens every 5 minutes or so. Is there a way to fix this? I already tried to do a clean installation but this didn't help.

[Flynnmace]

Hi thanks for you time.

This does still happen when my headphones are disconnected and playing on the phones speakers. 

The setting are all set for background play and background sound has worked on other apps like minimized calls ( if that's the same thing). None of this has solved the issue 

 I thought it might be something to do with notifications but it happens even when Do Not Disturb is on and notifications are set to silent.

Also I'm running version 8.8.96.364 I believe.

[DML13]

I had the same issue and it was unbelievably frustrating! I deleted the latest content I'd downloaded and cleared my cache and that fixed it on my Google Pixel. I'm not techy but sharing in case it helps

Hope that helps! 

[ROBYER1]

Same issue here on Xperia 1 V running Android 14, I will follow up with some Logcat logs:

As an android app developer myself, I was noticing this myself on a Sony Xperia 1 V running Android 14, all battery optimization/pause app activity if not used is disabled and I clean installed Spotify first. The only change I made in spotify was to make the download storage location for my local music the SD card, however in this session I was streaming an album that I didn't have saved locally.

Log of playback on logcat until the track playing next was suddenly playing back silently:
spotifyerror.txt

Log continuing from the previous log where I tried play/pausing the music a few times before skipping to the previous track then skipping forward again to the track that was playing silently to force it to play correctly:
spotifyerrorwithresume.txt

Entire log of the whole session from above:
spotifyerroraftersilent.txt

I had some interesting findings looking at the logs, when I was trying to play/pause the silently playing song, I could see `Unexpected activity event reported! (com.spotify.music/com.spotify.nowplaying.musicinstallation.NowPlayingActivity event : 23 instanceId : 185947366)`

When the silent playback happened, there was an SQLite error about local cached auth-cache.db in /data/user/0/com.spotify.music/databases which seems to be the root cause of the error
I could see this here in the first log attached above: 
` A resource failed to call SQLiteConnectionPool.close.
2024-01-09 16:14:24.873 9631-9642 SQLiteConnectionPool com.spotify.music W A SQLiteConnection object for database '/data/user/0/com.spotify.music/databases/auth-cache.db' was leaked! Please fix your application to end transactions in progress properly and to close the database when it is no longer needed.`

[Maria]

Hey there folks,

Thanks for providing us with some more info!

@Flynnmace & @ROBYER1 - usually, this is caused by the phone settings, and right now we don't have any reported issues of this behavior caused by Spotify. To be sure where the issue lies, we'd recommend that you test out the following 2 things: 

• Logging in with your own Spotify account on a friend's device to see if it pauses.
• The friend logging into their account on your phone to see if it behaves the same way.

Let us know how you get on!

[1113736922]

Just writing to say I'm having the same issue also on an Xperia 1 V