Issue: When idle, Sonos takes longer to respond, making Spotify timeout and start the wrong track

[tacoe]

This issue has been around for a while (at least 4-5 months) so it seemed worthwhile to me to file a report.

Version/device: This is Spotify Premium on MacOS 14.4.1 playing to a Sonos Five+Sub system (all less than 6 months old, all up-to-date firmware).

Expected Behavior: When selecting the Sonos system in Spotify and then playing a song, the song should start playing within reasonable time (usual response time is under 1 second).

Actual Behavior: When playing the song, it takes Sonos/Spotify quite a while to connect. When it finally does, it starts to play the wrong song: it has skipped to the next song or even the song after that. 

Reproduction: This issue can be reliably reproduced using the steps under 'expected behavior', assuming there has been a period of not playing music of some time (a few hours will do it, but haven't done research to determine the precise timeout period).

Anecdotally, it seems as if a timeout is throwing a wrench in the works: the Spotify client tries to play the song; the Sonos system in the meantime went to idle mode and needs time to resume and resync speakers; by the time it's done so, something in the chain decides it's taking too long and throws a timeout; Spotify registers that a failure to play the song, prompting it to move on to the next song and try that; by the time this happened once or twice, the sonos system is ready to play and starts the next ('wrong') song.

[Novy]

Hey there @tacoe,

Thanks for reaching out here in the Community. 

Just to confirm, is the Spotify app behaving correctly on its own? Are you starting the playback directly from the Spotify app or the Sonos app?

Also, have you already tried unlinking and relinking Spotify and Sonos?

We'll be on the lookout for your reply. 

[tacoe]

Hey Novy, thanks for your reply!

• Correct, this only happens in conjunction with Sonos. Playing on the device itself or on headphones always responds well.
• And yes, it only happens when playback is started from the Spotify client. When it's started from the Sonos app directly, this behavior doesn't manifest.
• Yes, I have tried relinking (in addition to other diagnostical steps like re-installing apps and resetting sonos)

[OscarDC]

Hey @tacoe,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared.

We've reported this internally, but as it only happens with Sonos and not on its own, it's not easy to replicate it since it doesn't seem connection-related. We don't have a specific date for this to be resolved due to the complexity to replicate it, but we hope it will be as soon as possible.

In the meantime, it's worth trying reinstalling both apps to see if it makes any difference, but if that doesn't work, we suggest to keep both apps up to date and start the playback directly from the Sonos app as a workaround.

Thanks for your feedback regarding this behavior. If anything else comes up, the Community will be here for you.