Web player skipping songs then cutting the sounds

[czarpayatot]

Hello, I've been using the Spotify web player (https://open.spotify.com/) for a long time now because I'm limiting the apps and software I install on my laptop. Since then, I'm not really experiencing any problems until last month. When I press play or choose a song, it skips multiple songs, play ads, then play a song for about 7-10s before cutting the audio. The song keeps playing but with no sounds. This doesn't exist on my phone, cancelling out the possibility of my account's details.

I'm sure that the problem is not with my laptop's hardware despite it being old and somewhat slow. I use Windows 11 22H2 and Brave browser, both are not an issue since the Spotify web player is the only one not working fine. I looked this up multiple times and the main thing I see is that Spotify will skip songs when the internet connection is unstable, which often happens, but for the past month when my problem started happening, out internet connection is fine.

I tried opening the web player on my phone (see picture below)

It basically tells me to install the app because I might've blocked protected content (which I didn't), have an incompatible browser (for years I've been using Brave and it didn't gave me problems with other sites since last month except spotify's web player), or in incognito or private browsing mode (which it isn't) 

The problem is also present in Edge but not in Firefox. I did install Firefox just to test it for the site to have a fresh start, but I also deleted the history and cleared the cache and cookies of Brave weeks ago in hopes of that fixing the problem. If there are any Brave browser users that experienced the same problem as me, please do share how you fixed it!

[Joan]

Hi there @czarpayatot,

Thanks for reaching out. The webplayer is really only optimized for the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge and Safari, as you can see here. Brave is indeed Chromium-based so it will be usable for the most part, but its still different enough where issues can arise. In particular, with Brave's focus on privacy and ad-blocking, it may interrupt some functionalities of the webplayer, leading to such behaviour. You can check out this older thread for more ideas.

Hope this clears things up.

[czarpayatot]

Hello! 

Thank you for replying, I did check the older thread you mentioned but it didn't seem to have same problem I was experiencing nor offer any significant solutions for it. Indeed, Brave's focus is on privacy and ad-blocking but that didn't pose any problems for years up until now. Ads do still play because I'm not subscribed to any Spotify plans. I appreciate your reply!

[Alex]

Hi there @czarpayatot,

As @Joan has said, Brave uses several mechanisms to block certain types of ads and can sometimes re-route traffic or block certain parts of a website's code. This may very well be causing the issues you're experiencing, since other browsers like Firefox work with no issue.

Something else you can test out is if you get such song cutting and skipping when you're connected to another network, like a mobile hotspot or public WiFi. 

Songs skipping on the web player are usually caused by network restrictions or poor connection. It happens with computers connected to a school/ work network which has certain networking ports blocked by the organization. 

Hope you find this info useful.