Alexa and Google Home can't find artists

[jaxx084]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

Echo, Echo Dot, Google Home

My Question or Issue

As of the last week or so, Alexa and Google Home have both stopped being able to play most artists on request. These are the same requests we make nightly, and with the exact same verbiage, have stopped working in the last several days.

For example: 

On Alexa: When I say "Alexa, play songs by Pete the Cat", the response is "I can't find songs by Pete the Cat"

On Google Home: "Hey Google, play songs by Pete the Cat", the response is "Playing Pete the Cat" immediately followed by "Sorry, something went wrong"

The same happens with most artists, and it started happening on both of these assistants (Alexa and Google Home) at the same time. The artists are on Spotify, I can search in the app and play them. 

Things I have tried:

- Unplugging all of the devices, my router and modem

- Unlinking and relinking Spotify

- Uninstalling and reinstalling the apps on my phone

- Checked the localization (all of my accounts are US, and have only ever been US)

- I tried unregistering and factory resetting one of the Echos to nothing but frustration...

The songs are still on Spotify, the commands have worked in the past but the same commands don't work anymore, and it's affecting Alexa and Google Home. My workaround was to create a playlist of the things we want all the time (like what my kid listens to to go to bed) and it will play the songs, but I don't think it's a good solution to create a playlist of every artist I listen to, so hopefully there's a solution.

[Julian]

Hi @jaxx084,

Thank you for posting on the Community, and welcome!

To start, try performing a clean reinstall of the Spotify app on your phone. This is often an overlooked step, but it’s more thorough than a regular one and can be helpful to get rid of any cache that might be causing trouble. 

Also, let us know if you're able to play songs on your speakers using the Connect feature from the Spotify app. 

Keep us posted.

[benjaminhoong]

I’ve also started recently having issues asking Alexa to play a specific song / album / playlist. Probably only in the last 2 days or so…

“Play Spotify” works with no issues, the Echo will just resume whatever was playing before. But when I ask Alexa to “Play Song X” or “Play Songs by Y” or “Play the Playlist Z” Alexa will respond with “I can find X/Y/Z on Spotify”

I’ve tried disabling and enabling the skill, changing geographic regions, resetting the Echo, but still having the same issues. Anyone else?

My brother in a different household doesn’t seem to have this problem so I’m just confused where it’s stemming from!

[Jeremy]

Hi there @benjaminhoong,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

Can you confirm that you followed the steps that's provided in this article? There's some more steps to help thoroughly uninstall the app from your phone so if you haven't, we'd highly suggest it since the steps will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

We also suggest that you make sure so that your device doesn't have any pending updates.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

[benjaminhoong]

I have followed the post and done an uninstall (including cache and data and documents) but I still have the same issue on my Amazon Echo Alexa not being able to find albums or specific songs. But just using the command “Alexa, Play Spotify” is fine.

[jaxx084]

What I think eventually worked for me was clearing the cache, disabling my
Spotify from the Alexa app, and deleting both the Alexa and Spotify apps
from both my phone and tablet. Then I reinstalled them both,.logged into my
Spotify account first, and then reconnected Spotify to Alexa. Haven't had
any trouble since :fingers crossed: Basically I logged out of Spotify and
Alexa everywhere I had them and started fresh. Hope you get it working!

[benjaminhoong]

Thanks for these steps! I’ll try them all out soon and hopefully it works. May I ask what country your Amazon account is under?