Started happening again: Web player stops after playing a song for 9 seconds

[csbubbles]

Please refer to https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Web-player-stops-after-playing-a-song-for-9-seconds/.... It was closed as fixed, and it actually did work fine for about 2 months, but recently started happening again.

Plan: Free

Country: USA

Device: MacBook Pro 2017

Operating System: macOS Big Sur 11.0.4

Web browser: 91.0.4472.114

[Jeremy]

Hi there @csbubbles,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. 

Can you confirm if you followed the troubleshooting steps that's been provided in the Ongoing issue that you provided in your post?

Another useful step to try is to restart your router to see if the issue persist.

Keep us posted 🙂

Cheers!

[csbubbles]

Sure, I checked everything, it's not my laptop neither my network environment. The issue might be slightly different, though. Several times playback stopped at 9 seconds, but it doesn't happen as often as a couple months back. A few times playback also got frozen at some different positions. It's not so disturbing as the previous time as it doesn't happen at every second song, but probably 1-2 times a day.

[Alex]

Hey @csbubbles,

Thanks for the reply.

Could you be more specific about the troubleshooting you've done, so we know what we can recommend next?

Cheers.

[csbubbles]

Everything that was mentioned in all the comments in the earlier post – using different computers, different networks, cleaning up caches/cookies, changing DNS servers, disabling extensions, etc.

[Alex]

Hey there @csbubbles,

Thanks for the reply and the info.

Have you tried using a different browser, as most users report that this is happening on Chrome.

Keep us posted.

[csbubbles]

No, I don't use any other browsers.

If you think Spotify has this issue in Chrome only, and you know for sure that it's caused not by Spotify per se, maybe the Spotify engineering team could file a bug to Chromium (it's open source, and they have a public bug tracker), and then post the link to the bug here, so people who experience the same issue could subscribe there as well?

[csbubbles]

Ironically, I just experienced the 9-seconds issue again while typing my previous comment.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @csbubbles,

Thank you for your reply.

We haven't seen any more reports about this in the Community since the ongoing issue was fixed. This have us think that it might be device related.

Can you try from an incognito/private window to see if the issue persists?

Also, if you're using any VPN to see if that makes any changes?

Keep us posted 🙂 

[csbubbles]

Please refer to my earlier comments, I answered already that I had tried everything that was mentioned in this ticket. That includes the incognito mode. I don't use VPNs.

[csbubbles]

> We haven't seen any more reports about this in the Community since the ongoing issue was fixed

It just doesn't happen that often (at least yet). That's what I said in this post at the very beginning. If a couple months ago it was every second song getting paused, now it happens just a few times a day (still inconvenient, though, but kind of bearable).

> This have us think that it might be device related

It is most certainly not. Neither is it related to networks. I tried 3 laptops in 4 different networks (home, corp and two LTEs).

I appreciate you responding in the forum promptly, but I find it quite sad that when you don't have much to say, you keep reiterating obvious issues that users most likely verify before posting here, and assuming things not working on the user side instead of trying to actually investigate what might be wrong with the service itself (especially if people don't experience anything similar with other online media streaming services on the same devices on the same networks). I think it's probably just fine to wait if there will be more reports / comments here.

[CarlosE]

Hey @csbubbles,

Thanks for keeping in touch and for all the info you've shared.

We understand this might not be obvious, but we do investigate and check with other teams on available information, hence why we mention we haven't seen any other reports - which concerns our other support channels as well. Our suggestions are based on the information that we have checked and is available at the time and we're just trying to help.

From what we do have at our disposal, we can confirm that the issue was reliant on a combination of factors between the DNS and how Chrome was handling some of the API queries, which we have reported to the right parties and partners. Unless we get more reports to be able to dig into some data logs and try and recreate what you're experiencing, we must assume some individual issue in the device or network environment, which we in no way want to play down and really want to try and help, but those scenarios are more difficult to troubleshoot than something we can clearly identify.

At this point, we'll continue to be on the lookout for more reports, including on other channels and we have other teams doing the same. As an intermittent workaround, we'd recommend running the web player from Safari or Firefox, or to download our desktop app from our site here. If you're on an M1 CPU, we also have an optimized beta for it as well just follow the steps here.

Hope you find this info useful. The Community is here in case you have any questions.

Cheers!