Bad service of Alexa's Spotify skill

[federik95]

Hello,

I would like to mention a problem that I don't found too marked in the community and I didn't find a better area where to explain it.

I have an Echo Plus and sometimes Alexa can't play my Spotify music and I don't know why, (obv it's connected to the network).

When occurs the problem like this, I try various way to fix and try to read the feedback on the Alexa's Spotify skill, every time seems like the problem is the Alexa skill, the feedbacks are very bad, like 1-2/5 stars and seems that other people have the same problem. It's not the first time that occurs this problem, why Spotify doesn't fix the problem and try to improve the Alexa Skill?

Thank you

[larsmathuseck]

I experience the same issues for a long time now, the skills seems to be buggy and nobody seems to take care in quality improvements there. I even tried to switch to Apple music, but they do not offer any "connect" feature at all.

If some of my Echo devices are in this state, they usually do not even play music, when I use voice commands.

Some times, after repeating the voice command multiple times, it starts playing music, but it is not reliable.

If the devices are in such state, only a hard restart works for me. I tried unlinking and re-linking the skill, but this also does not help.

I even tried to use the Alexa app to control / select music, but it does not work (there is even a generic error in the Alexa app - "please try again" or something.. Trying again does not help..).

Interesting: The Alexa app shows the Echo device as "playing music", but there is no music playing (yes, volume is up!).

So something is going on there.

The device then does not show up in the Spotify app at all. Sometimes, the devices shows up for a very short time and then disappears again.

Of course, my apps are all up to date, I tested for several month now on different devices (iOS, Android, Mac). All with latest version. My speakers and my devices all share the same network and WiFi. There are no networking issues.

In summary, I think there is just nobody at Spotify taking care of the Alexa skill anymore and I'm really considering switching to any other service at this point.

Appreciate any help though..

[larsmathuseck]

To add on on this thread, consider this: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Podcasts-Partners-etc/Alexa-won-t-play-Spotify/m-p/5962224#M1...

Which was closed after a lot of discussion with some generic "use 5GHz Wifi" advice..

[Mitre226644]

Good luck having every piece of hardware (in this case with competing streaming services) work without bugs. Not on Spotify here. 

[waces]

Plan

Premium

Country

Ireland

Device

Various

Operating System

Various

My Question or Issue

the alexa skill is still full of bugs. After the successful authentication it starts working and see the alexa devices on the network,but it's just temporary and within a few hrs those starts to disappear (the issue obviously  ot exists using any other streaming services). Disabling and re-enabling the skill it authenticates again and starts to work. For a while.

it seems the plugin not really in development. Never was to be honest.

questions:

- will it be ever fixed?

- if not why won't you release it to the public under gpu license? Many of us would be able to write a proper code as seems your "coders" are not on the level to write a simple skill

[waces]

Up

[waces]

The spotify skill for alexa was written by monkeys so no expect to work at all. But at least they (spotify) doesn't care about it and never tried to fix this. Unfortunately it was proven many times that the issue is on spotify side (the skill is an "official" spotify product not a random 3rd party)

[SurlyScientist]

Agreed. I've had problems with the Alexa Spotify skill for about as long as I've been using it. Sadly, it's the main thing I bought and use the echo devices I have for. I've looked for solutions countless times and came to the same conclusion, the problems is definitely on Spotify's end. Clearly, they don't care about it at all, as it's never been fixed (if anything it's only gotten worse) for many years now. The supposed "solutions" are basically the same bs they suggest for every other problem: Clear spotify cache, restart Spotify, sign out and sign back in, make sure the app is updated, disable and re-enable the Alexa Spotify skill. None of that ever works, at least not any more than random chance does. Almost every solution for Spotify problems can be summed up with "waste and absurd amount of time attempting the following: (see list above)" then "if that doesn't work, waste even more time posting on here (and/or finding others who've posted the same thing) and/or make the futile effort to reach out to support directly". This whole forum is virtually pointless because it requires an absurd number of upvotes (or "me too"s) for it to even be brought up at Spotify, and even then it's unlikely that the labotomized monkeys responsible for coding will do anything to even attempt to fix it. Most likely you'll just be asked to jump through numerous hoops, providing detailed info and screenshots proving you tried everything and that it didn't work. Then if you're lucky they'll pretend as though they'll mention it to someone who might mention it at a meeting where they'll decide whether its worth even looking into.