Spotify on iOS "connecting..." for a very long time on my home WiFi network

[burajin]

Hello,

I have searched and haven't been able to find a post with the exact problem I have. Spotify on my home network takes very long to connect on the iOS app. The app loads fine, but I see "connecting..." for always at least a whole minute (sometimes more) before I can finally load songs. I use a Chromecast Audio so this is very tedious when I want to skip or change a song since I have to load the app and wait every time.

Things to note:

• This ONLY occurs on the iPhone app. Friends with iPhones on my WiFi have the same issue with Spotify. My desktop version of Spotify connects normally. I unfortunately don't have an Android phone to test.
• This only occurs when I am connected to my WiFi. The app connects normally when I'm at my parents', work, or anywhere else, including using cellular data.
• This only occurs with Spotify. I get roughly 30mbps and all other apps connect quickly.

I'll add any more bullets if I think of anything.

Please help! Thanks!

[konqurz]

Exact same issue for me, cellular works fine it connects instantly but if I'm on WiFi it says "Connecting..." for about a minute.

The issue started when I updated to the new Spotify iOS version (the one with the new UI). The exact version I'm running now is 6.5.0.1665 on iOS 10.0.2.

[tarciomeixeira]

I have faced the same problem last friday. One hour later I realized the cause of this was the app's update process.

[vash64 · Accepted solution]

I have exactly the same issue: extremely slow login time (and this also prevents me from Scrobbling). I read in a post that the solution is to change the firewall settings of the router, but my Netgear router doesn't allow me to tinker with the firewall settings (as described here).

More specifically, I have an iPhone 5 (iOS 10) with Spotify 6.5.0. In the past, I had a Buffalo router and everything worked fine. However, I suspect that there is something amiss with how Netgear's firewall is set-up and how Spotify connects. To make things even more confusing, I have been able to successfully test Spotify on a Mac OS computer, on a Windows 7 computer and using a SONOS device - all connected successfully and fast. When on cellular data, Spotify logs in pretty quickly and scrobbling also works fine. Also, I connected through a VPN and it works well. In summary:

-WiFi (Netgear): slow login, no scrobbling. ALL OTHER APPS work just fine, no problems at all

-WiFi (Netgear) + VPN: fast login, scrobbling works

-Cellular: fast login, scrobbling works

I think connection issues are rather universal and might have the same cause. I've seen it posted in the Android forums, too:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Can-t-connect-through-WiFi/m-p/1168952#M45924

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Why-does-spotify-require-port-forwarding/td-p/1212533

and in that discussion, they mention this other discussions:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/WiFi-problem/m-p/1149394#M44650

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Cannot-connect-to-internet/td-p/1151254

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Works-on-some-wi-fi-networks-but-not-others/td-p/1197343

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Can-t-access-and-material-design/td-p/1195693

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Spotify-shows-quot-no-internet-connection-quot-when-I-am/td...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Constantly-says-I-m-in-quot-offline-mode-quot-even-though-I...

[danieldrake]

Same issue here on Netgear router. Updating the router firmware didn't help.

[quickmana32]

If you have these symptoms where it works as you would expect with cell data but NOT on WiFi (and even friends phones break at your house!) you should check your DNS settings and see if it is being filtered for:

spclient.wg.spotify.com

You can get a DNS utility on IOS and try to look up the A record to above site.

[danieldrake]

That server resolves from the DNS app on my iPhone over Wifi.

[quickmana32]

 @danieldrake are you sure you resolved through wifi?  Try: put your phone into airplane mode and reboot (or clear dns cache).  Connect to WiFi in airplane mode and see if you can resolve quickly via DNS app.

Another thing you can try on iphone is go to network settings and click "i" icon, write down your IP address, subnet, gateway.  Change from autoamtic to static and enter the same values in each field, except use 8.8.8.8 for your DNS server.  Run the same test again in airplane mode on wifi with spoitfy app.

Remember to change your wifi network settings back to automatic after testing!

Can you post your exact model number of netgear router?

[danieldrake]

Changing to Static settings with DNS at 8.8.8.8 appears to have solved it. Will try it for a while. 🙂 Thanks.

Netgear JWNR2010v5.

[quickmana32]

@danieldrake glad to see that helped!

I looked up that netgear router and it looks like you might be using a parental controls feature (powered by openDNS)?  If so, you can go to openDNS website, log in and whitelist spotify (preferred).  Specifically, you should whitelist spclient.wg.spotify.com.

On your router you could add your iphone as a bypass account (no filtering).

Another alternative is to configure your router to use google for DNS (no filtering).

Lastly, you can keep your phone with static config (no filtering, not recommended).  The risks of leaving your phone with a static IP is unlikely but your DHCP server on your router might assign that to another device on the network.  If you want to leave it in this mode you should exclude that IP address from the pool used by DHCP or create a reservation (google how to do this).

Good luck!

[danieldrake]

It's definitely the DNS. I ended up using DHCP on iOS and just overriding the DNS field. Works so far.

Parental control wasn't on, but I tried enabling it with no filtering, even whitelisting the domain. It still wouldn't work.

I also set the router DNS to 8.8.8.8, but that didn't help.

Something's just off about this router. Hopefully the iOS solution works.